Goodbyes
January 2022

They are strange, but they are her pack.

On the eve of the migration deeper into the woods, Survivor is done with her double-checking that everyone is ready—everyone other than Courageous and Gentle. She walks over to them, as they do their own double-checking, taking last glimpses of the lights, and last sniffs of the scent of their neighbors. They turn to her, but she gives them a moment longer.

Gentle backs away towards the rest of the pack first, and Survivor tucks his snout under her jaw, or what small part of his snout fits. He presses back, carefully. Hers is the second jaw he has put his snout under, and he is still a little awkward about it, since the first one was that of his pack leader and mate, but he lets himself be comforted, with this gesture that right now is not really about their places in the pack's hierarchy like it could be between adults. He knows how to comfort his own children like this, he just never had a bigger raptor put their teeth between him and scary things when he was a child.

Courageous turns around, to touch snouts with Survivor, then with Gentle, who gives her chin a small lick. They're ready, she says, so Survivor signals for the pack to begin moving, as the two of them go gather their chicks from where they are sitting with Survivor's grandchildren. She doesn't put her jaw over Courageous—it wouldn't be appropriate, with each of them being leader of their own half of this pack and their agreement about it remaining so still being relatively new. But she understands, Survivor believes.

Any younger raptor in her pack is at least a little bit her child, and free to see themselves as such to any degree they are comfortable with.

And it's her children she is doing this for, taking them farther away from humans, like she has many times by now—her children as grown as her biological daughter, who is only three years younger than her; children as young as her currently smallest hatched grandchild; children as unexpected as these two strange, young adults she now considers to be under her protection; children not yet hatched, like those her son is expecting, and others they will hopefully be safer to have where they are going. She knows Courageous and Gentle consider this to be for the best for theirs, too.

But they are strange, in ways that have nothing to do with Courageous' very different markings and Gentle's very different size, and these are the ways most of the pack can't understand, beyond that it's something important to who their new packmates are.

Humans are a threat, and they can be food if they can be discovered to not be a threat. Raptors are family, and raptors are us. To Courageous, humans are a little bit of all of that, or at least some humans are. She is an adult, but she misses her parents, like Survivor still misses hers, and unlike Survivor, Courageous knows hers are still alive somewhere out there. She doesn't know if they can still be her pack, but they have been.

Gentle wasn't loved by those who raised him, but something has to be us to a raptor, and humans is what he had. There is more, but Survivor doesn't know what to think about it, and he doesn't seem to know, either. Some part of what scares him about them isn't that they can hurt him.

Survivor doesn't know what it's like to feel the way they do, but she has seen humans as us, if only briefly. She remembers large, warm hands holding her, and those hands were there before her parents. Out of the pack she has brought from their island, she is the only one who does remember them, as they were already gone by the time the others in the nest with her hatched. She remembers faces, and maybe she would recognize them if she saw them again, but they aren't family to her now. Maybe they wouldn't be food, either, even if they weren't a threat, if she did see them again and was sure it was the same faces.

But she has her children to protect, and if the humans with warm hands could be a threat to them, she would feel no conflict about who she belongs with.

Courageous and Gentle likewise wouldn't let the pack come to harm—she wouldn't have invited them into her family if she thought they might—but for as long as it doesn't come to that, there is conflict.

They have her now, but she wasn't there first.

Survivor leads her pack to what she hopes is safety, and what she hopes is a chance at peace of mind for her strange children. But a raptor remembers, and out of sight is never fully out of mind.

posted to: my sketchblog/Patreon - deviantart