“Wake up! Please wake up!” Desperate squeaks and scratches along her scales roused the snake from a cold, wet slumber. She opened her eyes to find the world bright and glistening, and herself coiled tightly in the mud and grass. “I can’t move!” More squeaks and scratches, and she was now awake enough to realize that they were coming from within her own coils. The previous evening’s events came back to her, and she remembered binding Ink-Talon and the squirrel with her body and hoping that their combined mass would hold against the wind. She remembered-
“Sorry! I’m awake!” She immediately loosened her coils and let her companions go, though her muscles were far slower to respond than she would have liked. If it weren’t for the warmth of the morning sun, she’d probably find it difficult to move at all. “Let’s get you out of-”
We should release the crow’s leg, the animal-voice in her head suggested, reminding her of the other thing she’d had to do to secure everyone. Vipers struck fast and with precision to bite small, moving targets. She’d been able to react to Ink-Talon leaving the ground by lashing out and grabbing one of his legs in her mouth. She was still clamped down on it, her fangs thankfully hooked around the twig-like limb rather than piercing through it. Unless you were planning on eating it? It would not be a bad idea.
“There!” She opened her mouth and fully unwound herself. “Sorry about the leg, it was the only thing I could…” The sight of the limb she had just spat out made her heart sink. It was very clearly broken, bending in one more place than it should have been, and while she hadn’t punctured it with her fangs, her other teeth had left no shortage of tiny wounds around the break. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”
“He isn’t awake.” A sad murmur from Gray finally got her to wrench her gaze away from the injury. The squirrel was crouched in the mud, its body tucked up under the unconscious Ink-Talon’s left wing for warmth. It brought to mind one of those advertisements she would see on television for pet adoption and rescue, the ones with the slow montage of dirty, trembling animals set to sad music. The kit’s damp fur making it look even smaller than usual only added to the effect.
Okay, you’re the resident survivalist here, she mentally addressed the snake-voice. Any suggestions?
We will improve our chances of survival if we leave-
Any suggestions that don’t involve callously abandoning the people who saved our lives? Or eating them?
It paused, genuinely trying to adapt the idea to its worldview and come up with an answer.
No.
It failed to do so, and all she could do was sigh and fall back on her first-aid training. This was far from the first time she’d had to stabilize a broken limb absent a medical professional. Just the first time she’d had to do it without arms.
“Gray? I’m going to need your help, okay?” She gently lowered her head to eye-level with the kit, trying desperately to be a calming presence. Its breathing slowed somewhat and it met her gaze, but it did not respond. It simply stared and shivered. “You’re the only one of us who can grab and hold things with your limbs. I can guide you and help where I can, but without you I can’t help Ink-Talon. Understand?”
“Yes.” If the squirrel hadn’t twitched when it peeped its answer, she wouldn’t have noticed it.
“Thank you.” She took a deep breath and raised her head to get a better look at what she was dealing with. Okay. We can do this. This is a real, solvable crisis. Concrete.
As opposed to what? Her serpentine headmate asked. What is keeping you from breaking and panicking like before?
This problem isn’t a fantastical, existential nightmare, she answered. This is something I am more used to. Something familiar.
Perhaps you are not as fragile as I assumed. The snake-mind said no more and simply watched, contributing nothing to the proceedings but the occasional correction when she struggled to move how she needed to. It seemed… content? Content that it did not need to constantly interject for self-preservation. Content that the woman determined to stay in the driver’s seat had developed a backbone and proper goals.
It was right, she had. She knew what she had to do, and she knew where things had to go in the short term. This was not their world, but that didn’t mean she had to roll over and accept it. And right now? She had work to do.
“Gray. I need you to open up Ink-Talon’s bag and get everything out of it. We need those materials to improvise a splint…”
----------------------------------------
“Stay calm, and try not to move,” a loud, insistent rattle was the first thing Ink-Talon heard upon regaining consciousness, and he followed the instructions instinctively as he struggled to form a coherent thought of his own. “I have no idea how much pain you are going to be in, but my guess is ‘a lot.’ You need to keep your leg as still as you can.”
Pain? The crow’s memory of the storm came back to him with nearly as much intensity as the storm itself, echoes of the searing pain in his leg that had led him to pass out drawing his attention to the damaged limb. The first thing he noticed was that he couldn’t feel it, and after narrowly keeping from panicking as his Attunement confirmed that it was still attached, he probed that awareness further to assess the damage…
“Wow. Are you a doctor?” The question left Ink-Talon’s beak before he could stop himself. He opened his eyes to find himself laying on his right side in the shade of a tree, his left leg slightly elevated by a clump of moss and grass packed between it and his other leg. The leg itself was a mess, but one that had clearly been tended to. Clamped around the swelling and rows of small wounds from the snake’s teeth was a splint made of two small bundles of sticks, bound in twine and bent wire.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“No, I’m not,” the snake answered, her tone feeling strange in a way the crow couldn’t quite place.
“You cleaned and splinted my leg, and I’m pretty sure you set the bone, since it’s not crooked. If you aren’t a doctor, then what are you?”
“I’m a street medic.” Her odd manner coalesced into a solemn seriousness, without a hint of either the uncertainty she had before or the wrongness of her other half affecting her mannerisms. “You know, patching people up at protests and stuff, where ambulances have a hard time getting in. Stabilizing injuries as much as I can with limited resources is what I do.”
“Still, this is-”
“Before you marvel at the craftsmanship, Gray did all the important parts, and the break was minor enough that it could be set with a little pressure while you were still out cold.” She slid up and examined the splint. “Hard to tell for sure, but I think your hollow bones might have helped? My bite just kinda… cracked one side rather than splitting it all the way through. No idea how well it’ll heal, though. I’m even less of a veterinarian than I am a doctor.”
It was apparently mid-afternoon, and neither of them had much desire to talk about what came next when staying put was currently the only thing they could do, so they just went over the essentials of the situation.
According to his Attunement, the only thing keeping him from being in all sorts of agonizing pain at the moment was the fact that the wounds on his leg had basically marinated overnight in the tiny amount of rattlesnake venom that had leaked from the snake’s fangs as she clenched her jaw, numbing and paralyzing the limb for the time being. It might have caused permanent nerve and tissue damage, too, but he wasn’t about to bring that up.
Gray had learned to tie a crude overhand knot in order to make the splint, and had been spending most of the day repeating it with blades of grass to pass the time. Thankfully, the spot they were currently sheltering in had several berry bushes that could serve to feed the kit, so it hadn’t needed to spend its day foraging again. They could also feed Ink-Talon himself in a pinch, but the bushes had already been partially picked through before they arrived and they would go through the whole supply very quickly with his appetite. To avoid that, the snake proposed an alternative.
“I figured that since crows are omnivores and can eat carrion just fine, I could hunt a few things for you. Pay back that first mouse with a mole or three.”
Ink-Talon stared at the bloody rodent carcass in front of him. It hadn’t been a clean kill, since she had to refrain from using venom, but that didn’t change the facts. He could eat this. In fact, it would be healthier for him to eat this than foraged plants. He would also be a massive hypocrite if he balked at eating this after encouraging the snake to do the same the day before. So he forced himself to do it, even as the sight of his own beak tearing off tiny chunks of flesh constantly reminded him of other acts of violence he’d discovered himself to be capable of. The fact that he got a similar amount of satisfaction from fresh meat as he did from the beetles he loved back in Darksoil did not help matters.
“Thanks,” he croaked after finishing the meal, slumping back onto the improvised pile of moss and leaves he’d been using to keep himself from laying flat on his back. “I think we can safely consider ourselves even.”
“I try not to keep score, personally.”
“What, afraid that you’ll lose?” The bird made a rare sound to signify his joke, one of those goofy gwaa noises that he remembered crows making from various “cute animal” compilations over the years. His dignity had already hit rock bottom, he could afford to be a bit silly.
“No, I’m afraid that I’ll make you feel inadequate,” the snake hissed as she coiled back on herself in a loop to become her own pillow. Between his Attunement and the utter lack of human body language for the snake to work with, it was impossible to tell if she was participating in the joke or unaware of it. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“Possibly, but then I’d need to introduce you to Quiet-Dream and Chase. Those two have been competing to be the Self-Sacrifice Champion of the World since we got here. Neither of us stand a chance against that kind of power.” Ink-Talon sighed. For the first time since arriving in this world, he was feeling properly homesick. Not for Earth, he’d had so little going on in his life that he wasn’t even sure if anyone would notice that he’d gone missing. Darksoil certainly wasn’t “home,” either. But being with Quiet-Dream, Maggie, and the others had felt more like home to him than any physical location ever had been.
“Hey, can I ask you a personal question?” A gentle rattle of the snake’s tail interrupted Ink-Talon’s rumination.
“Go ahead.”
“What are you hoping to accomplish out here?”
“What?” The crow chirped, confused. “I’m trying to get help for my friends. I could have sworn I’d said that…”
“You did, but what does that mean? What does ‘help’ look like, in an ideal scenario?”
“It’s… whatever I can get, I guess? Find a sympathetic ear? Someone who knows the right people to pressure the Guardians in Darksoil?”
“I said an ideal scenario. If everything could go as well as it possibly could, if you got exactly what you wanted with no downsides, what would you achieve?”
“Why does that matter? It’s unrealistic, so it’s not worth wasting effort on.”
“Do you remember the saying ‘change yourself how you want to change the world?’” The snake hissed in annoyance as all of the metaphor was unceremoniously stripped from the expression. “If we want to change things, if we’re unsatisfied with the status quo, we have to know what we want. We have to have ideals and goals. We have to demonstrate them within ourselves and push for them in their entirety. Even if it’s unrealistic, if you try to achieve it and only succeed in a small part of it, then you have still made a positive difference in the world.”
“I… don’t know, then. I just want everyone to be free and safe.” Ink-Talon stared up into the treetops. “Not once since waking up in this world have I had any idea what I’m doing. I only recently started taking things seriously, and the moment I did I just made mistake after mistake. If I try to be ambitious, I’m going to make things worse.”
“Then I think you should spend your rest thinking about what you want.” The rattlesnake turned her head so that only one eye was looking at him. “Because I’ve figured out what I’m going to do, and it’s not going to be passively trying to survive. You should strive for more than the minimum, too.” And with that, she uncoiled and slithered off, going to check on Grey on the opposite side of the clearing.
It’s like she’s an entirely different person. What happened? Ink-Talon wondered before realizing his mistake. No, she was a medic at protests that often turned violent. She was an activist. If she’s different, it’s likely because she’s recovered from the shock of all of this and remembered who she was.
So who am I, then?
He repeated the question over and over in his head. He’d been worrying so much about not being “himself” anymore, but he’d never really defined who that was. And he didn’t know. Everything he was doing, he was doing on someone else’s behalf. Get Quiet-Dream his freedom, keep Gray safe, search for answers to the real Ink-Talon’s questions. Everything he thought was his own desires and needs were just reflections of someone else’s. But he wasn’t them.
He was Ink-Talon, a crow with human perspectives. He was something new. He needed to figure out what that meant, for his own sake and everyone else’s.