How odd were harpy courting rituals.

Corvus brings you new trinkets every day, leaving them carefully on your windowsill like a devoted pilgrim making offerings at a shrine. Thank the fates he’s stopped bringing you dead animals since you explained, as gently as possible, that you did not wish to eat them. That conversation had nearly broken him. He’d looked at you with those wide, amber eyes, wings puffed in distress, trying and failing to understand why his gifts had caused you such sorrow. But he had listened, and now, instead of lifeless creatures, you receive an odd collection of treasures: a glass bead, a chipped silver brooch, a key with no lock to match.

You don’t know what you were thinking when you patched up a stray harpy’s injured wing in the forest by Master’s greenhouse. Perhaps it was simple instinct, the same pull that had led you to gather herbs with careful fingers and grind them into tinctures under the ever-watchful gaze of your master. Perhaps it was pity, or maybe curiosity—after all, harpies were rare in this part of the kingdom, especially ones so close to human dwellings.

You hadn’t expected Corvus to follow you home.

And yet, here he is.

Master Fuldour, the wizard you were an apprentice to, had been intrigued by Corvus. Though, he had found keeping him around rather frivolous, he has allowed it.

The night air is cool as you sit on the stone ledge outside your window, legs dangling above the garden. Corvus perches beside you, his talons clicking against the stone, shifting ever so slightly whenever his wing brushes yours—whether on purpose or accident, you cannot tell. He has always been warm, warmer than a human should be, his feathers carrying the day’s heat long into the night. His arm, bare and freckled, is close enough to touch.

“I found you something,” he says, voice edged with excitement, yet quiet, as if speaking too loudly might shatter the moment. From the folds of his belt, he pulls out a tiny charm of carved bone, a bird in flight. “For you.”