The Eagle And The Nightingales

his body was as tight as it could be. If he had been a human, he would have been sobbing uncontrollably.

He could not_so she wept for him.

She understood, with every fiber of her spirit, just how his heart cried out with revulsion at the simple fact that he had taken a life, that if forced to he would do so again. There was no room in his vision of the world for self-defense, only for those who killed and those who did not. She knew, deep inside her bones, why he hated himself for it.

He had not stopped; had not tried to subdue rather than kill. Never mind that he was mad with fear, pain, hunger. Never mind that the man who had tried to stop his escape would probably have killed him to prevent it. The man himself was not his enemy; the man was only doing the job he'd been set. T'fyrr had not even paused for a heartbeat to consider what he was doing. He had struck to kill and fled with the man's heart-blood on his talons.

And she told him so, over and over, between her sobs of grief for him, just how and why she understood. She would have felt the same, precisely the same, even though there were plenty of people she considered her friends and Clansfolk who would never agree with her. Her personal rule_which she did not impose on anyone else_forbade killing. She knew that she might find herself in the position one day of having to kill or die herself. She did not know how she would meet that. She tried to make certain to avoid situations where that was the only way out.

Which was why, of course, she avoided cities. Death was cheap in cities; the more people, the cheaper it was. At least out in the countryside, life was held at a dearer cost than here, where there were people living just around the corner who would probably strangle their own children for a few coins.

All of that flitted through her thoughts as a background to T'fyrr's terrible pain, and to the tears that scalded her own cheeks. But there was a further cost to this ahead for her. She had thought that she had opened herself to him completely before; but now, as she held him and sensed that this would bring him little or no ease, she realized that she had still held something of herself in reserve. Nothing less than all of herself would do at this moment_because of what he was.

The Haspur had an odd, sometimes symbiotic relationship with the humans who shared their aeries and villages. Most of the time, it never went any deeper than simple friendship, the kind she herself shared with the Elves who had gifted her with her bracelets.

But sometimes, it went deeper, much deeper, than that.

She had always known, intellectually, that she was not the only human to have her peculiar gift_or curse_of feeling the needs and the emotions of others. She had never met anyone else with the gift to the extent that she had it, though. She had never encountered another human who found him- or herself pulled into another's soul by his pain or his joy; never found one who was in danger of losing himself when bombarded by the emotions of others.

But it seemed that there were many more of the humans who lived among the Haspur with that curse_or gift. Their gifts were_at least from what she gleaned from T'fyrr_as formidable as her own. And for those who bore that burden, a relationship with a Haspur could never be 'simple' anything.

They felt, and felt deeply, but had no outlet for their extreme emotions. At the ragged edge of pain, or sorrow, or that dreadful agony of the soul, the Haspur could only try to endure, dumbly, as their emotions tore them up from within, a raging beast that could not break free from the cage of their spirits.

But humans did have that outlet_at least, the humans he called 'Spirit-Brothers' could provide it, by becoming unhesitatingly one, without reservations, with their friends, and sharing the pain.

Becoming one, without reservations. Giving all, and taking all, halving the pain by enduring it themselves.

She had one lover in all her life_one real lover, as opposed to friends who shared their bodies with her. She had not known; she was so young, she had not known that when she gave all of herself, the one she gave to might not be able to give in return_that he might not even realize what she had done. She had not thought she was the only one with this curse_or gift_and had supposed that her lover would surely feel all that she felt.

He didn't, of course. He hadn't a clue; he'd thought she was the same as all the other ladies he'd dallied with, and she lacked the words, the skill, the heart to tell him.

When Raven had left her the first time, it had felt as if something that was a part of her had been ripped away from her soul. She smiled and bled, and he smiled and sauntered off with a song on his lips.

And he had never understood. He still didn't; not to this day.

She had learned to accept that, and had forgiven him for not knowing and herself for her own ignorance. But she had vowed it would not happen again and had never opened herself to another creature that deeply, never under any other circumstances, until this moment. But nothing less would do now, but to give everything of herself, for nothing less would begin the healing T'fyrr needed so desperately.

She did not know, could not know, what would come of this. Perhaps an ending like the end of her love affair with Raven, and pain that would live in her forever, a place inside her spirit wounded and scarred and never the same again.