Tavrin
She was asleep.
She didn’t know I was doing this.
I dragged another fur across the library floor, claws catching on the stone, and tried to remember why I’d started. There had been a reason. There must have been a reason. But the thoughts kept slipping away, replaced by the screaming in my head that said MAKE IT SAFE. MAKE IT SOFT. MAKE IT HERS.
I couldn’t sleep. Not after what happened. Not after she touched my feathers and I kissed her and then ran like a coward.
So I was here. Hauling cushions from rooms I’d forgotten I had. Pulling books from shelves. Her books, the ones she’d touched, the ones that smelled like her ink-stained fingers, stacking them into walls around this corner.
I didn’t understand what I was building.
No. That wasn’t true. I understood exactly what I was building. I just couldn’t make myself stop.
A nest. I was building a nest. For her. Around her. A space where she would be warm and protected and surrounded by soft things, where nothing could reach her, where she would be MINE.
The word pulsed through me, hot and demanding. Mine. Mine. Mine.
I pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw sparks. This wasn’t me. This compulsion, this desperate need to provide and protect and possess, this was the transformation. The beast rising. The man being swallowed by something older.
But when I lowered my hands and looked at what I’d made, I couldn’t bring myself to tear it down.
The furs were arranged by softness. The cushions by color, deep blues and silvers, the shades she’d lingered on when she passed through the sitting room.
The books formed a wall at waist height, spines facing inward so she could read the titles.
Poetry near where her head would rest. Astronomy where the morning light would fall.
The philosophy texts she’d mentioned once, in passing, as though mentioning them meant nothing.
I remembered everything. Every preference. Every offhand comment. Every flicker of interest that crossed her face.
The beast remembered. The beast was cataloging her, building a map of her wants, preparing to give her everything she’d ever desired if she would only STAY.
If she found out, she would think I was mad.
I was mad.
I adjusted a cushion. Smoothed a fur. Checked that the astronomy text was angled correctly toward the window.
She had touched my feathers. She had kissed me back.
She didn’t know what I was becoming for her.
I wasn’t sure I knew either.