The crow shuffled uncomfortably in the narrow space behind the eaves. She longed to be back out in the open air. The musty smell of the narrow space was stifling. Yet more than anything else she wanted to get away from the old monkey with the terrible eyes, glittering fiercely in the darkness.
She could feel his eyes on her, seeing through her, discerning everything.
The young assistant had vanished shortly after leading her here.
Quelling her rising panic she listened calmly to the monkey's unfolding instructions. After a few moments she wondered if the old simian was senile. However his bearing was as sure as it had been all those years ago when he had mended her wing and forged the unlikeliest of alliances. So she held her beak closed and looked as attentive as he clearly expected.
As she wriggled through the eaves and out into the dimming sky, her mind was racing. To rescue a true wolf! To lead the wolves from the city with the child of the Prince! At the remembrance of Maleficent's predicted fate for Magda she shivered anew and her wing beats faltered. And why is the thrice-bedamned mouse so important?
She knew Maleficent would proffer no answers. She flew on to Magda.
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OOC: Birdie I hope you didn't mind me 'borrowing' Corvu for a short time. No offense intended.
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Maleficent took several deep breaths and swung out from the eaves. He scrambled his way over the lip of the roof-tiles and scampered easily to the apex of the building. He surveyed the dusky square. The chained wolf, conversing with what appeared to be no more than an extension of the shadows from the wall. The tired and bewildered looking pachyderm on the far side. The humans still thronging around the perimeters of the sqaure but never crossing it, issued back by volleyed commands from the grim faced uniformed men.
Maleficent sighed and turned to face the other way, fearing for what he might see. His worst fears were realised. An army from the North had come. Realising, as he had predicted they would, the child's importance they had come to find him. His eyes spied Goblin raiding parties further back in the darkness. They had come seeking their invaluable and irreplaceable Wolves.
That was nothing to what Maleficent saw when he turned his eyes South. Then he wished the night would swallow him whole.
Nevertheless he had put the first movements in place that might see the Races through this crisis.
Either that or his name would be cursed through the Ages for all time.
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And all the rest is literature
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