Crow

Chapter 1

Corbin often had no choice but to dream.

Whether to dream of wondrous adventures Mother told him when he fell asleep, or of fantastical notions of light flooding his veins or hearing the language of the wrens, this was his only escape. This was the only measure he kept in trying to maintain a hopeful outlook for his future, a way to keep fueling his incessant cheerfulness or the smiles that seldom reached his eyes. And yet, most of the time, he kept dreaming of his childhood.

Not that he dreamt about his friends. He didn't have any; he had his garden and his birds, as with them he knew he could say anything. The children in town didn't like him, or how he looked. He was beautiful, incredibly so, but anyone who looked upon him knew that there was something wrong about him. They were too scared of his disparate eyes, one as blue as the coldest ice in the North and the other as green as the evergreen spring from Mother's. Fearful cutting features, molded into a sharpness that no human could achieve. Terrified of his corpse pale skin and night hair. What was beautiful and fine and soft on others, on him, was nothing more than monstrous, unnatural, alien. Every facet of his appearance was exaggerated to the furthest degree. The parents of his peers called him the work of the Devil, a scourge on the earth, the bastard child of a respectable noble and a monster. He never understood those comments, but the villager's children did, avoiding him like a walking plague and running away whenever he approached them.

Having just turned six, he had an excellent idea to approach the village kids with his new toy Mother gifted him for his birthday. It was a delicate butterfly doll, with its wings formed from rainbow crystal and body made from deep wood. Hopeful without a cause, he walked all around the village, searching for a playmate for hours on end, yet he found nobody listened. Corbin felt stares wherever he went; he heard whispers wherever he walked; and he learned to live with that, preferring to keep a smile on his face in case he ever encountered someone who showed kindness to him.

Nobody reciprocated that smile.

For years after, Corbin avoided going to the village.

He dreamt of Father, sometimes. He dreamed of gentle affable smiles and resonant, raucous laughter, of his wise sayings and ridiculous beliefs. Corbin dreamt of the times they sat around the fire in Father's study, not talking, but being in the same space, and sometimes that's all that mattered. Father's love wasn't something that he shouted from the rooftops, at least that was what Corbin assumed. Yet, in those soft, dream-like afternoons? Those perfect pockets of time where Mother was healthy and hale and Father beamed in every direction he moved? Father never looked at him with pride or joy. Father was still considerate to him, ruffling his hair and teaching him card games, yet he always held back from those affections, marking the invisible distance between them. He dreamt of picnics and hide-and-seek games and horses and elegant balls where Father no longer avoided calling him his son.

He dreamt of a world where, every time Father saw him, there was no bitter and stale disappointment in his unnerving stare.

Often, he dreamt of Mother.

When Corbin was young, he used to spend his days in the forest. Mother and he strolled between the trees and through the bushes, chasing the fireflies and picking various wildflowers, all the while trying to not tire Mother too much.

"Rosemary for remembrance," she would say, threading flowers through Corbin's unruly hair, soft hand gently pulling knots apart with a soft tug, "Bluebells for determination, and lily-of-the-valleys for joy."

Corbin turned back towards her and looked. Her vibrant green eyes giving life to her frail and almost ethereal visage, beauty shining in its last swan song.

They would listen to songbirds and play in the shadows, careful to never disturb the various circles of flowers scattered around the woods. Mother never told him why, but her smile would dampen and her eyes would darken, shadows overtaking her face. There was a certain pull to him, a siren's call made for him. It was a song of myth and decadence and destiny, but the pain in her face stopped him from coming closer. She would always brighten up, singing cheery ditties and playing games, but Mother's face would remain marred with something like regret.