“Gray, what do you think about her?” Ink-Talon stared down at the kit as he asked about the snake, a keen curiosity in his tone that he’d missed feeling recently.

“She is...” The kit clearly lacked the context to explain exactly what they perceived, but it did its best anyway. “She says two things at once. Both true.”

“As in, two different ideas?”

“No. Emotions. There’s always two.” Gray paused for a moment before giving the crow what was perhaps the saddest look it ever had. “One hates the other. The other is just sad.”

No wonder I couldn’t quite tell what was wrong. Ink-Talon sighed, glancing over to where the snake had coiled up in the sun. What am I supposed to do here? Giving emotional support is one thing, but this needs more practical advice than I think I’m capable of. And how are we going to travel? We’ve gone a fair distance in the last day, about as far as Deep’s End was from Darksoil if those ‘typical flight’ estimates were anything to go by, but now we have to travel by ground.

“What about the path?” Gray peeped, interrupting the crow’s train of thought.

“What?”

“You think outward a lot.” The kit growled, seemingly annoyed by its own ability to comprehend Ink-Talon’s accidental expressions. “But we saw a path. From the sky.”

The kit was right. He had spotted a packed-dirt road leading away from Darksoil during the previous day’s flight. It was going in the same general direction that they were, but between not knowing where exactly it led and traveling along the road making them much more likely to be spotted by those searching for them, he decided to give it a wide berth. If they were going to be traveling by foot for a considerable distance, getting back onto it was the only real means they had of navigating that didn’t involve him taking wing repeatedly to survey the area as they traveled. He still wasn’t used to frequent, strenuous flight, and taking off or landing ate up a lot of stamina on their own.

“Good thinking, Gray.” Ink-Talon did his best beak-smile and gently brushed his wingtip across the squirrel’s back. He couldn’t really do any of the things Quiet-Dream would do to show care and affection, but this seemed to be a decent approximation. Or at least the kit didn’t outright reject it. He couldn't really tell. “You just saved us all a lot of hassle.”

“I avoid thinking too much,” the kit murmured. “It’s distracting and it hurts. Makes it easy to remember important things.”

“Oh.” The crow’s heart sank as Gray shifted its gaze to the ground. The entire reason either of them were out here in the first place was because the little squirrel was having something of an identity crisis that led to its escape attempt, one of an entirely different nature than his own, or any of the other ex-humans for that matter. They hadn’t talked about it at all, and Ink-Talon honestly didn’t know what he could even say to the poor thing. It was probably even farther beyond his expertise than the snake’s issues. “If you ever want to talk to me about anything, just let me know, okay? I’m here for you.”

“Okay.” The kit wandered off and sat down next to the small number of seeds it had foraged for a meal and began to eat.

“I’m going to see if I can spot that road, so we can plan which way we’re heading tomorrow,” Ink-Talon squawked out a hurried plan to Gray, eager to give it some space and escape that awkward anxiety gnawing at his guts. He immediately launched himself skyward when the squirrel acknowledged him with a simple nod, immediately regretting not taking the time to moderate his climb as he only narrowly avoided spinning out from the sudden rush of vertigo.

Even after weeks as a bird, sudden, large changes in altitude still messed with his head. It seemed to be hard-wired into his human reflexes, and no amount of acceptance of his body would shortcut the conditioning needed to overcome it. If the encounter with the owl and nightjar back in the city hadn’t been a largely horizontal one, mostly taking place below the rooftops, then he would either be dead or captured right now. Below him, Gray dwindled to a barely perceptible dot, while the lounging form of the snake remained quite visible as she lay coiled in a loose spiral in the sun. The road, however, was nowhere to be seen. He had veered to the left when he’d spotted it before, so keeping his general eastern bearing it would be somewhere to the right.

He found it after about a few minutes of sustained flight, though he had trouble telling exactly how much. He missed the bat being a living timepiece for things like this, though he was sure the poor kid would resent being thought of like that.

They probably resent me for running away, too. All of them probably do. Ink-Talon shoved the horrid thought to the back of his head. He’d made a snap decision under pressure to maximize the chances of Verdant-Trail’s message being delivered. Even if he was never forgiven for that, he hoped the others could understand why he did it.

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“So you just picked a heading arbitrarily?” The accusation of the snake was the next thing to pop into his head. Not because he thought that this situation being predestined was worth considering, but because she was right about just how… arbitrary his decisions had been up to this point. He could tell himself all he wanted that he was under pressure and needed to act, but that didn’t change the fact that most of his decisions had been made with so little information that he might as well not be making them at all.

Even the few educated guesses he’d made had gone wildly wrong. He’d assumed that giving the Guardians a little runaround before getting captured would be relatively safe and act as a distraction from Swift-Paw. But it turned out that they were out for blood, and he didn’t even know if Swift-Paw was able to keep the letter hidden. Hell, he probably could have surrendered to the owl once they were both grounded, but he’d decided not to believe the offer and fight. And in the fight…

Well, at least I did one thing that night that wasn't a wild guess. No, he’d been so certain of what he had to do to win that the reality of what he was actually doing didn’t cross his mind until it was over. Physician Able-Heart had been extremely correct about his Attunement being goal-oriented, and doing anything other than completely crippling his opponent would have been antithetical to ensuring his escape. Long-term planning, worry, kindness, empathy. All of them would have gotten in the way, so all of them were sacrificed to raw, calculated tactics and precision violence.

It was the same with that mouse that morning. He decided that he needed to hunt something for the snake despite not being a bird of prey, and he did so with ruthless efficiency, pouncing on and breaking the rodent’s neck without any remorse until after the snake had asked him how he managed to do it. Even right now, as he was thinking about it, he was consciously stopping himself from letting those feelings of disgust and regret be suppressed in the name of flying back more efficiently. He had to feel them. He had to remain himself, and that was as important of a goal as anything. He couldn’t take the easy way out and let morality and empathy become secondary concerns.

There was only one way that would end.

However the sight he returned to at “camp” immediately pushed all of his concerns to the side. The snake was no longer coiled up and was instead staring at Gray, who had apparently stopped eating and approached. The feral half of the snake wouldn’t be able to use its fangs with the makeshift muzzle still around its mouth, but it sure as hell could still bite and constrict and swallow the tiny squirrel if it tried. He needed to get down there and stand guard.

“Gray!” Ink-Talon touched down with a concerned squawk, drawing the attention of both of the other creatures. “Is everything okay? What’s going on?”

“The forbidden prey wished to have a conversation with me,” the snake explained with a swish of its body, locking eyes with the crow. These were not the mannerisms of the human woman he had previously spoken with, and they carried none of their sense of “wrongness.” He was speaking with the snake itself, who was apparently not quite feral. “I agreed, under the condition that the Other would only interfere if I tried to feed. Even now, it is vigilant, prepared to force another stalemate in an instant.”

“Is this true?” Ink-Talon turned to Gray, who nodded.

“Yes. We’re similar.”

“Similar how?”

“This prey wants my perspective. We both recently had awareness forced upon us,” the snake answered with a maturity that either came from its actual age or the human “Other.” There was no way of telling. “I am not taking well to it, as complex thought and ‘moral’ obligations are distracting and unwanted. They stand in the way of efficient survival. They would have led to my death if you had not intervened.”

“I see.” He barely kept himself from shuddering as the sentiment echoed the logic of his own Attunement in a way that sent a shiver from his beak to his tail feathers. “I appreciate the civility, nonetheless.”

“Unless I can somehow be separated from the Other and the Original entirely, it is necessary for my own survival. Nothing more.”

“Still, I thank those whose actions deserve it.”

“Do what you will.” The snake coiled back and looked at Gray once more. “Is there more you wish to discuss, prey?”

“Maybe?” Gray murmured the answer, unable to meet the snake’s gaze. “But not now.”

“Good. I will return to digesting your gifted meal while you do the same with your thoughts.” Having tightly curled up once again, the snake rattled its tail with both an announcement and a warning. “The Other and I will hunt this evening. Do not interfere.”

Immediately after the rattle, the snake nodded twice to Ink-Talon, expressing a simple “I’m okay” and “sorry” from their human half. It was a relief to know that she was fine and was working out some kind of agreement with the formerly-feral snake-mind, but there was no way of knowing if the arrangement was remotely sustainable. Only time would tell.

“Gray?” the crow once more turned back to his charge and chirped, tilting his head in concern. “Don’t forget, you can talk to me about any of this any time.”

“I know.” Once more, his attempt at bridging the gap between them was rebuffed, and the kit returned to its foraged meal to pick through the remains.

With nothing else requiring his attention and both of his new companions needing time and space to process things, he decided to go browsing the grasses and nearby bushes for something to eat himself. They had a long road ahead of them, and the only thing there was to do was take things one step at a time.

Ink-Talon could only hope he wasn’t leading a doomed march.