Kokko, komea lintu: helpless like a rifle - 1239 words

It hit him like a cop car.

 

The ground welcomed his shoulder with a painful blow, like a sneering cherry on top of a moldy birthday cake. Caspian could hear Meri calling for him, but nothing else had any resemblance of sense left in it. He could feel his own blood running down his face, branching out right on his jawbone, and dribbling down to his neck and chest. What the eternal saw of the vibrantly green world around him was blurry and dim. Everything seemed far and close at the same time. He reached out his arm, but he couldn't make sense of distances properly.

 

What even was that? The soil where Caspian had fallen was sprinkled with red from his own wounds. As his halved vision trickled back to him in sharpening shapes, he saw the trail of flattened grass. In his shock, the thing he lifted his eye to seemed only illogical to him. It was orange and big, but everything else buried itself under the blur, and beneath the sharp beats of his heart that jabbed at his whole frame.

 

The eternal felt warm hands on his arm, his name being called once more. He turned slowly and awkwardly to Meri. The girl's petite hands covered her mouth in a gasp's wake, her dark eyes cutting to his very soul with worry as their whetted weapon.

"By the fucking Thunder and Rain," she cursed, "your eye."

Caspian scoffed at her. A warm smile clung to his bloodied lips, as she leaned back to him.

"It will heal - you know it will," he stated almost matter-of-factly.

"Do I look like I care?" Meri spit at the Athos like a hissing serpent, her teeth flashing in a vexed grimace. She only received an amused huff as a reply, and she answered in kind - painting her own gesture monochrome without the nuances of mirth.

 

The girl turned her eyes away. She watched the strange creature stumble, growl, and chitter. Her gaze traced the flattened grass blades' path to and from her own position. A red trickle weaved along the mauled turf, all the way to the feathered being. Meri tightened her grip around the eternal's arm, squeezing an involuntary squeak out of him.

 

All of this blood wasn't from the light-and-dark-scaled shifter - its spread ruled out that possibility.

 

Caspian ran his eyes from Meri to the orange whatever-it-was. As his body quickly reconstructed damaged cells, his head ceased to spin at the same rate. The Athos narrowed his eyes, as his vision started clearing up.

 

He had no idea what that thing was. It was a mess of feathers and fur, broken branches, pine needles, and dirt. It had to fight itself upright. The animal was clearly in pain, considering the way it moved, and the sounds it made. Its vocalization was only a sliver louder than a gentle whisper, and lingering agony painted over those notes with its leaden brush. Even though the thing had the tree line at its disposal for a convenient escape, it didn't take the chance. Every feather and hair on its body stood on their ends, aiming to form a silhouette worth to be afraid of.

 

The being's state, however, left a lot to be desired. Caspian's sharp, recovering gaze ran over its figure. He inspected the animal with his eye and a half, his focus darting from one detail to the next, and back again.

 

Where the orange coat wasn't a total mess and covered in grime, it nearly glimmered in the sun. It was probably well cared for - whether it was by the creature itself, or by something or someone else, he didn't know. The ends of the animal's feathers sucked in light, as if the critter's wings and tail had been burned by a forest fire. Smooth, muted amber-colored patches reflected light with a sharp shine, that interrupted along the being's jittery movements every time a ray hit a jagged indent.

 

Its eyes were like smoldering embers, with a frame of keratinous blades. The beast had no intentions to trust - even despite its sorry condition.

 

It knew it needed help, but its survival instinct and reasoning skirmished behind its eyes like two mangy mutts over a meaty bone. The animal's whole body shivered in rhythm with its laborious breathing, every heave for air raspier than the one before it. It tried to hide the underlying wheeze that escaped from its lungs, but in vain. Its strength was melting from its body like wax from a raging candle - the vigor that was required for such an act of feigning, the animal didn't possess. Not anymore. The sand-colored platings across its body scraped against each other, sending blunt clicks and sandy, sporadic grinding into the being's surroundings. It was like wordless mockery, the creature's own body betraying its master.

 

At the same time, it was trapped - and it had the option to flee. Neither felt like a considerable choice. The thing narrowed its gaze ablaze so, scorn prickling around its searing aura at anything that wandered too close.

 

Navigating things for the first time was never easy - let alone as a prideful beast.

 

Yet, Caspian shared its feeling of mistrust. The eternal wanted to offer his aid, but having lost an eye to this taloned thing was like a thorn between their cautious gazes. How quickly he'd get that eye back held no significance. Being able to withstand impossible damage to his body didn't make that physical trauma enjoyable. It allowed him to do things a mere mortal would never even attempt - even to his own detriment.

 

As if those curmudgeons would ever stop staring at him like a leper. No amount of tricks could buy their acceptance.

 

But what had struck at him was only an animal - a creature scared and in pain. Likely panicking to find anything or anyone that could help it survive the ordeal it was going through. Caspian had only been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had stood right where that thing needed to land. In its urgency, it had no time or energy left to swerve to the side to avoid the collision. Approaching the ground feet first, its landing gear was equipped with force and weapons for destruction. That very weaponry didn't differentiate between a runway, and an outcast.

 

Caspian reached out his arm, slowly and shakily towards the critter.

 

It was naive of him to even so much as wish that it would've understood such a human gesture of compassion. The beast opened its maw, an ear-piercing hiss swinging its invisible cutlass at the two abnormal bipeds. Meri shook the eternal's arm gently, pulling his attention.

"I think I know someone who could help," she said firmly, and got up. She then ran.

"Stay right there!" The girl added without slowing down. She promptly disappeared behind a sienna-colored, wooden building. Caspian blinked a few times, as though his eyes were stuck on the spot he saw Meri last. He slowly turned back to the ill-tempered animal.

 

"Wanna take a walk?" he inquired, his tone rimmed with humorous notes.

 

The creature screeched at him vexedly. It lashed its flowy tail at the grass underneath its figure, as if trying to drive a hostile point across. Broken pine needles flung from its tattered tail feathers like miniature arrows, small bits of dry branches joining their unceremonious parade.

 

"That's what I thought."