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moorishflower · 1 year

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a fic I'm reading in a different fandom references the Chinese fable of the Magpie Bridge a lot, and while reading, I couldn't help but think, okay, but this could also be a great concept for a Dreamling fic 🤔

Two lovers, one a goddess, one human, so their love is forbidden. Separated by the Milky Way, they can only meet once a year when a flock of magpies form a bridge across for them.

Swap in 100 years for 1 year and ravens for magpies and there you have it!

oh this is a GOOD one

there are so many good bird-related fables and folk tales! I've been tooling around with the idea of a Dreamling AU of the Crane Wife story, especially because it's one of my favorite songs/series of songs by The Decemberists.

Like, imagine Hob, poor, humble, a mercenary in a time of peace, laid down his sword, and he's glad of it, he's SO glad, but his sword was what brought him coin, and now he has nothing. He has a little house that was gifted to him, and a little copse of woods in which he can hunt and cut wood, but winter is coming on, and the house wants for repairs, and he has no money to purchase supplies. He's doing the best he can and winter is so cold.

The stars fall like streaks of rain on glass, the twilight sky a scattering of silver and bruisy blue, and it is December 1st, and Hob Gadling chops wood for the fire. Stupid, to let the embers dwindle, and he with no logs to feed it, and the sun sinking deep below the horizon. It's bitter cold in daylight, and already the chill bites into his fingers, and numbs his hold on the axe.

Dangerous, to chop wood at night, in the dark, in the cold. Dangerous, too, to fall asleep in a cottage that's more holes than thatch, where the wind whistles at him through the timbers, with a dead hearth and thin blankets.

So Hob chops wood, and tells himself he's grateful for the chance the king has given him. For services rendered to the crown, a home and a plot of land in times of peace. A princely gift indeed. And perhaps, when winter thaws, they will find his body curled upon the bed, frozen stiff, with a dead hearth and empty pockets. Firewood, he thinks, does not buy food. A run-down cottage does not put clothes upon your back.

He sets the axe down to blow into his hands, and the stars blow like milk across the sky, a beautiful line of white that he tracks with his eyes, as though he could navigate by that curling stream. The temptation to return to his cottage, to bundle up beneath his few blankets and await the dawning, is sorely tempting.

The winter is bitter cold, and Hob reaches for the axe again.

The third sapling is not yet even half-felled before he's interrupted by a shout. Hunters come, sometimes, to his little copse, to flush out partridges and hares, and sometimes he is too heartsick for company to deny them, but tonight he is freezing, and his chest is heavy with anger. He swings the axe upon his shoulder and goes towards the noise, wading through the underbrush, following the bay of a hound, and the sharp whistle of its master.

"Oy!" he calls out, and hears the noises stop. "These are my woods, mine by gift of the King, and if you've felled some hart or hare I'll take my share of it!"

"Fuck off!" comes the answering call, and laughter, and the retreating sound of footsteps. The panting of a dog, disappearing into the brush.

He wants to return to the cottage, where at least he has the illusion of warmth. But he heard the crush of the branches, and the hound's eager signal. The hunter had found something, and he needn't even fully butcher it tonight. The cold will keep it well so long as he bleeds it and takes out the entrails, and, heartened by the thought of a warm meal come morning, Hob pushes through the darkening woods, following broken twigs by the light of the rising moon.

When he comes upon the clearing, the silver gleam of the tumbling stars casts it all in shades of cream and starkly alarming shadow, but even in the dimness he can make out the small body in the center, and smell the hot tang of blood.

"Oh," he says softly, and lets the axe fall from his hand. No hart, nor hare, nor even a fat partridge. Only a raven, glossy and nacred black, thrashing weakly in the rotting leaves of winter. An arrow through its wing. "Poor thing. Sweet little thing. It's all right."

He could snap its neck, he thinks. The meat would be gamey and thin, but even leather, boiled long enough, will make a tolerable soup. And surely it would be a blessing, to put it from its misery. A raven with a single wing cannot fly. A raven that cannot fly is not a raven.

Still, when he goes to it, and kneels beside it in the dark, he reaches not for its neck, but for its tiny, heaving breast. "Hush," he croons, and strokes a finger through its downy feathers. "It's all right. Let's get that out of you."

The arrow is black-fletched, perhaps the reason a hunter would bother to shoot a raven in the first place. Needless fancy, when goose feathers fly straight and true, and afterwards one can eat the goose besides. But the shaft of the arrow is wood, the same as any other, and easily snapped. The raven writhes and croaks, miserable, pained, and blood dampens Hob's hands as he pulls the broken arrow from its seat. He can see the white flash of bone, and the blood that slicks the ground turns dark as the loam of the earth under the rising moon.

"Christ's nails," he says, and the raven turns its head, its eye a perfect, black little button, its mouth open and panting. It makes no attempt to flee, not by wing and not by foot. The ravens in London are uncommonly clever, he thinks -- perhaps this is one of them, blown far off course. Perhaps it senses that he tries to help.

He has no healing salves, nor needle and thread to try and stitch the wound closed, and no knowledge of birds' wings, besides. But he has his tunic, worn but clean. Hob takes up his knife from his hip, and begins to cut long strips from the bottom of his tunic, until he has a loose coil of woolen cloth, and a hole that bares his belly to winter's bite. Gooseflesh raises on every inch of his arms, and he shivers.

"This is my only tunic," he tells the raven. "I hope it brings you some comfort." He puts back his knife, and peels the raven's wing apart from its body, stretching out the pinions full and beautiful, long and slender as fingers. Blood oozes sluggishly from the wound and, one-handed, Hob begins to wind the strip of wool around the shape of the raven's wing, tight as he dares, until red spots it through, but, at least, no longer waters the barren earth.

When he ties off the cloth, the raven yanks its wing back, and tilts its head at Hob. Birds cannot have expressions, but if he were to label it so, he would say the thing was confused. Alarmed. Considering.

Then it shakes its sleek little head, the ruffed beard at its throat puffing out. When it croaks, it almost sounds like a word.

Name, the raven rasps. Name, name, and Hob laughs.

"Funny little thing," he says. "You've spent much time around humans, then. Maybe you are one of London's ravens. Hob Gadling is my name, for what good it does me. If the winter gets much colder, it will accompany me to my grave. No coin for food, nor clothes, nor nails to patch the king's cottage." His laughter turns bitter in his mouth, and he cuts it off before it can become a scream, or worse, a sob. "But I can help a raven. If I do nothing else in this life, I can do a few kindnesses before I go. To make up for all the men I've killed."

The raven tilts its head, back and forth, and back and forth. It fluffs out its feathers, and rights itself upon the ground. It's a fine-looking bird, he thinks. Thin, but so beautifully feathered that one can hardly tell at first glance. The down of its chest and wing had been softer than a woman's breast, and Hob thinks of his straw mattress, and his cold, thin blanket, and wonders if the raven will make it through the night.

"I'd keep you, if you'd let me," he offers, feeling foolish for speaking so candidly to a wild bird. The raven blinks its liquid eyes at him. "The nights are longer and lonelier than ever, and I've no wife to warm me at home. But a raven is a fine companion. And I've got some bread and salt beef left that I can share." He offers it his wrist, expecting nothing.

When the bird steps lightly up, spreading out its wings to balance, he feels some small ember kindle in his breast.

"All right," he says, and dares to try and stroke the raven's throat with his finger. It tolerates him for a moment, seeming as surprised as Hob, and then snips at him with its beak. "Cheeky thing. Pretty thing. Will you be mine, then?"

The raven tilts its dear little head. Blood has oozed through the bandage around its wing, a startling red exclamation against off-white wool.

Mine, it croaks. Mine.

And Hob laughs, and tucks the little thing against his chest to shield it from the wind. His axe he leaves buried to its haft in cold soil. He will return come morning to fetch it. For now, he will make do with the wood he's chopped, and hope it burns the night through. If not for his sake, then for the raven.

And if he passes in the night from cold, well. He hopes the raven makes use of him then, too. It would only be fitting.

The stars are falling still, when Hob trudges through the darkened woods towards his cottage. They gleam like specks of dew on morning grass; they fall like snowflakes in the depths of winter, and in the raven's eyes they reflect in silver splendor, a dozen times refracted into an endless night-blooming sky.

#dreamling #the crane wife #hob gadling #dream of the endless #ask response #the sandman #fanfic

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