The Boy and the Bird

cw: mild ideation

“Eat these,” the spirit said.
 
He lifted his head from where it rested, pillowed on his arm. His thin, frail hand moved to take the offered raspberries with a muscle memory he didn't recognize.
 
He paused just short of passing the berries up to his own mouth. How many times had he done this already, for that to feel so natural? It had only been… No. How long had it been?
 
He had vague flashes of memory. The spirit's hiss in his ear. Berries being pressed into his hand. Water trickling down his throat. The blurring of daylight and darkness as time passed.
 
“You've been…helping me.” His voice came out a hoarse croak.
 
“Obviously.” The spirit tucked its wings in and lowered its head. One of its quick, bright eyes came level with his face, and if he'd had any real strength left, he might have flinched back from the intensity of that red stare. “You're mine now.”
 
A faint laugh rattled in his chest. “That's…the worst possible way to say that. You know that, right?”
 
“And yet.”
 
The spirit extended one wing and prodded gently at his ribs. “Look at you,” it said, and he couldn't tell if its tone was concerned, disgusted, or annoyed. “This is going to take weeks. At least you're talking now, which is an improvement over the raving.”
 
“Why?”
 
The spirit shot him an incredulous look - an impressive feat on an avian face. “You're coherent, for starters.”
 
“No, I mean…” Light, his thoughts were as thick as molasses. He struggled to pull words together in any order that made sense. “Why are you…bringing me food?”
 
“You can't exactly feed yourself.” The spirit circled the boy, nudging his frail, thin limbs with its beak. “Even if you could, you'd mess it up. Eat too much, too fast. Makes you even sicker than you were before. I've seen it happen before. It's not pretty.”
 
He let out another faint, dark laugh. Of all the things. Of all the places he could have fallen. Of all the creatures that could have stalked him through his final hazy memories of exhaustion and pain. Of all the ways the universe could have come up with to make sure they weren't his final moments at all.
 
“Tell me you didn't forge a pact with me just to nurse me back to health.”
 
The spirit flicked its wings. Irritation, he was starting to recognize. “Would you have rather I'd left you there?”
 
…there was no good answer to that question. Those glittering red eyes were a challenge, though - and when he didn’t speak, the spirit continued, its eyes growing brighter by the second.
 
“You walked into my forest, human. You laid down on my grass. And when I asked you my question, I heard your answer, even if you couldn't say it out loud. Did you think I wouldn't respond?”
 
There was no good response to that, either. He stared at the raspberries curled loose in his palm. They would be tart, mostly. A little sweet. Fresh, so fresh it would make his eyes water. If he pushed them away now, would that be it? Would this new, tentative pact of theirs end? Would this creature simply leave him here alone? Spirits were fickle things. Some of them weren't much more complicated than Horrors, themselves - creatures of bold mischief or blunt violence. Some were more…well. More intelligent. More complicated. More like people, with all the ways people could make mistakes, and all the ways people could betray you.
 
“You gave me your magic,” he croaked.
 
“And I can take it back,” it said, “so don't do anything stupid. It gave you enough strength to last while I foraged for you. Wasn't going to last forever. Your job is to eat exactly what I give you until you're strong enough to forage for yourself. We figure out the rest from there.”
 
“We?”
 
“I told you.” The spirit leaned in, its feathered bulk casting a long, black shadow over his face. “You're mine now. You already gave me your answer once, but I'm going to ask for it again and again. Every time you feel like turning me away. Every time you feel like lying down again and letting the earth claim you. Every time you tire, every time you wilt, every time you falter. And since it's starting to happen already, I'm going to ask it again now.”
 
Its beak came bare inches away from his nose, its eyes alive with a reddish-gold like the heart of a flame.
 
”Is this where you stop?”
 
His mouth went dry. Damn the heavy sludge in his own mind, and damn his traitorous mouth, too. Before he even knew he'd formed the thought, the words fell out of his throat, dropped like a stone into a pool of stagnant water. Their ripples shifted the algae, though, just a little - and for a second, his voice was clear, his own blue eyes as bright as the spirit's red ones.
 
“No.”
 
“No,” the spirit agreed, and nudged his hand with one wickedly-taloned foot. “Now eat. You still have a long road ahead, and I can only carry you so far. You're going to have to learn to do the rest yourself.”