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The familiar beating of wings coming home makes the back of her neck prickle, and Maleficent looks up to see Diaval swooping down with more broken twigs in his claws.
“Where have you been?” She says, irritated, snapping her fingers so that Diaval lands in an ungainly heap on the ground, fumbling with his twigs when the tell-tale green smoke of her magic clears. “I was calling for you since hours ago!”
“Why, mistress, if you missed me, you only had to say.” Clearing his throat, Diaval looks away shiftily, grumbling. “I was around. Had things to do. Raveny things.”
“Raveny things.” Maleficent raises an eyebrow, curling and uncurling her fingers against her elbow when she folds her arms. “I was under the impression that a servant was supposed to be at his mistress’ beck and call.”
He throws his hands up in the air, twigs cluttering to the ground. “I’ve flown great distances, been a drooling, four-legged beast and taken care of a teething blonde hatchling for you! Aurora plucked a couple of my tailfeathers out once when she was excited and thought my wings would be nice to chew on. What more do you want from me?”
“Manners, Diaval, really,” she chides, waving an elegant finger in his face, teasing out a wisp of smoke; his eyes cross as he stumbles back, pouting. “Keep this up and I’ll turn you into a proper dog, with a bit of a yelp instead of a howl. You’d be... fetching.” She congratulates herself a little for that one, especially since he has been bringing back a disproportionate number of branches, twigs and bits of metal to their corner of the Moors. Well, her corner, really, but Diaval’s been hovering around her for years now, so she’s somehow taken to referring to it as theirs. “Who’s a good boy, then?”
“Very funny, mistress,” Diaval says dryly, turning away and rolling his eyes where she thinks he can’t see him. “Did you actually need me for something, or did you just want to mess with me as is your wont?”
Maleficent lets out a long-suffering sigh. “It’s been three days, and you’ve been remiss in your duties. Your observations of the little beastie. Have the three bird-brained imbeciles finally burned down their cottage and the creature with it?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Oh, don’t be offended, even you must admit you have your moments. Like when you’re supposed to report back to me and come bringing back twigs instead of anything useful!”
“Mistress,” Diaval whinges, kicking his twigs to the small pile he’s built under the tree. Maleficent hadn’t let him put anything up in the branches because, well, there was only room for one up there where she slept and she preferred talking with Diaval in his human form before they both drifted off to their dreams at night. She’s never realised how much she misses his chatter until he flies away on one of her errands, but he’s quite insufferable as it is without having to know that. “It’s that time of the year, all right? We’re deeply intelligent, unsociable birds. Time to ourselves is essential to ponder the fleeting flickering of our lives in these strange times.”
“How is collecting twigs in any way contributing to your philosophical meanderings?”
Diaval sniffs. “Mistress, I don’t expect you to understand the meaning behind every carefully selected branch, the glint behind precious gold or the colour of the— caw!”
Maleficent blows the smoke away from her palm, smirking at the indignant raven flapping his wings before her. “I don’t want to know.” She does, a little, but she’s not going to give him the satisfaction. “Now begone, and I expect news of the vile, snot-leaking beastie once the sun rises.” Making a shooing motion, Maleficent lies back against her usual bough. “My patience is wearing thin, Diaval – if I repeat myself one more time, I’m making you go to the house on paws.”
There’s one last indignant caw from him as he circles her with a disapproving look before flying off into the moonlight. Sighing, Maleficent shakes her head, gently tugging a branch’s leaves over her to block out the bright sheen of the full moon.
She sneaks a look at the pile of leaves and twigs at the bottom of the tree out of the corner of her eye. It’s gotten bigger after just a few days; Diaval’s probably telling the truth, then, about being within the gray confines of the Moors, picking out all sorts of things for his pile: frozen starlight crystals that sometimes washed up on the river shores, pearly stones and lush golden-green leaves. How strange.
It’s not like she really wants to know, anyway.
•
“Is that our firewood?” Maleficent says the following night, eyeing his armful of sticks that he’s carrying over to his pile.
Diaval clutches them possessively to his chest with a defiant, wild-eyed look. He’d flown back by morning as she’d commanded, blurting out some gibberish about Aurora eating some spiders for supper before promptly flying away again to heaven knows where. “What of it?”
Holding up one finger, Maleficent opens her mouth, and then closes it again. “Never mind.”
•
“Diaval,” Maleficent says slowly as she walks over to him with the slow thuds of her staff on the ground. “This is getting a little out of hand, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Diaval says, avoiding her eyes as he lays down bits and pieces of what looks like shredded tapestries in the middle of the pile, which has spilled over all the roots of the tree to form some kind of bizarre fortress made of gnarled edges, even if he’s left a bit of space for Maleficent to climb her tree.
She taps her foot, narrowing her eyes.
Diaval squirms under her gaze, flushing. “I need my personal space.”
“You have the bottom of my tree all to yourself,” Maleficent says incredulously, holding up a long, magical green vine with flowers that sneeze when she accidentally touches them. She drops it immediately, wrinkling her nose. “What more personal space do you need?”
“You don’t get it!” comes his indignant reply, before he storms off.
Men. Or should she say ravens? Maleficent tilts her head, wondering briefly if she should hex him into a terrier for his insolence. He’s been in a mood, so she’ll let this slide, just once. Besides, she’s curious to know what exactly it is he’s making. Still, if Diaval thinks she’s going to give him a few days off, he’s got another thing coming.
The clouds stretch in great white streaks against a yellow sky overhead as she walks down to the creek. She has to close her eyes for the pang of longing and grief that washes over her, back aching with the phantom pain of where her stolen wings once beat, envying Diaval so fiercely so suddenly that she’s dizzy with it.
What wouldn’t she do for another chance to spread them again, to recall how the wind feels against her feathers as she soars towards the sun? Even if Diaval considers his services to Maleficent his repayment for her saving his life, he has no idea at all how lucky it is to still be able to fly – taking his wings, his very being for granted. To be that ignorant again, she muses, a little bitterly. To think that no misfortune so grave could befall you.
Still, when there’s a rustle down the other side of the clearing and Diaval’s stumbling through a bush gracelessly with a huge log under one arm and a small pot in another, she can’t bring himself to wish even the thought of it upon him. Bah. She’s grown soft. “Why do you have a pot?”
“What pot?” Diaval looks down, sweat trickling down his grime-covered skin as he hold it up. “Oh. Dragon scales. They were really nice. Look.” He upends the pot, and an array of gleaming, iridescent scales fall onto the branches, catching the sunlight with a murmur of magic. They’re green from certain angles and gold from others – they look quite lovely against the leaves of Diaval’s branches, the bits of tapestry and crystals and things.
“Right.” Maleficent kicks out her dress, making herself comfortable on a stump that grows inward to accommodate her like a small throne. “And you’re not done with this.”
Diaval looks almost scandalised at the suggestion. “This? This, a finished – no, perish the thought! I’ve yet to put the finishing touches, please don’t insult my worksmanship.”
He stalks off again, and Maleficent has to massage her temples in exasperation. There’s something about the pile that seems strangely familiar to her, and it isn’t until she’s back from tending to more tree-folk’s wounds that it occurs to her that there’s some kind of recurring theme to this thing Diaval is building.
Still, the shades of green and amber and gold don’t make sense until she remembers, vaguely, that they’re the colour of her eyes.
•
“You’re making a nest,” Maleficent says flatly, when she’s finally wrung it out of him. Diaval had started fluffing out the cloth and feathers around the jagged bits and cooing at dead twigs, so Maleficent had finally decided enough was enough. “And it didn’t occur for you to make it in a tree?”
Diaval sputters, turning red where he’s sitting cross-legged in the middle of his mess. “You didn’t let me, mistress!”
That actually takes her a moment. “That’s my tree!”
“Ours,” he mumbles, knitting his eyebrows together. “All right, all right, I know, you’re the one giving orders around here, but I wanted to build one and you wouldn’t let me do it up there, so I had to make a nest near the roots. And now I’m half-human and half-bird, really, it gets a bit confusing size-wise. You can hardly blame me.”
“What on earth for?” She leans back against the trunk, gesturing absently at, well, everything. “You didn’t tell me it was nesting season, or that you found a mate.” Servant or not, it stings a little that Diaval didn’t tell her. How’d he even find the time to go around looking for she-ravens, anyway? Or women? And now she’s catching his particular brand of ridiculous, too. Maybe it’s just a thing with magic-addled ravens.
If she’s to be honest with herself, it stings that she’s forgotten that of course, he can have another woman in his life other than his mistress. Not that she has any claim on him otherwise.
“Er.” Diaval keeps his hands behind his back, kicking a pebble out of the way. “I did tell you I had raveny things to do. I thought you knew what I meant.”
“I’m a fairy,” Maleficent says, punctuating each word. “Who just happened to have wings in the past, and no, I’m still not telling you that story, stop pestering me.”
“What kind of ruler and guardian of a land with magical creatures is blind to nesting seasons?” Diaval objects.
“Contrary to what you may think, I hardly have the time to attend to whether my general feathered populace are laying a requisite number of eggs per year,” Maleficent says, covering her face with a palm. “Are you going to tell me what this is about or not?”
Diaval lowers his head, dark hair getting in his face when he mumbles, “I was lonely, and the other ravens are setting up their nice little abodes for their equally nice families, and here I am with an empty nest. You can’t blame a raven for feeling a bit down about it.”
Maleficent shrugs, feeling annoyed despite herself. “Well, now you have your nest. Plenty of space for one she-raven and more to spare, if you’re more open about that sort of thing.”
“What? No!” Diaval gets up, dusting himself off. “I made it for us. I just — mistress, I belong to you,” he says, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, and Maleficent stares at him for a moment with her mouth open. “And we don’t need eggs or anything. I mean, we already all but have a hatchling – Aurora’s a handful as it is.” Scratching the back of his neck, Diaval coughs. “I didn’t know what kind of nest you might like, though, so I thought I’d make it official. Just wing it.”
“Your puns are atrocious,” Maleficent says, even if she’s smiling and finding herself walking over to him. “Foolish raven.”
“So you keep telling me.” He smiles his usual hesitant, boyish smile. “It’s a nice nest, though, isn’t it? Far be it from me to presume myself worthy, mistress, but I’ve spent quite a bit of effort on this, and—”
She wraps her arms around his shoulder, tucking her chin into the crook of his neck. “You’re daft,” Maleficent says softly. “But it is a nice nest.”
“Is that a yes?” Diaval’s voice quivers, even as he pulls her closer. “Ravens mate for life, mistress. My heart is a fragile, fragile thing.”
“Oh, stop it, you're not that much of a wilting flower. The colour scheme is a nice touch,” Maleficent admits, chuckling, before pulling back. Her own cheeks must be a little flushed now, too, and she’s forgotten she could feel like this – lightheaded, a little breathless, all for an emotion she’s yet to put a name to. “I... you’re already bound to me ‘till the end of your days, that’s not going to change.”
Diaval beams. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“One would almost think you’re keen on servitude.”
He takes her hand, pressing it to his lips, a wicked glint in his eye.
“With you, who wouldn’t?”