Casum ex Arbore PV Draven Mirador

Draven's mind wandered.

He was rarely fully present anymore, thoughts dissolving in his head like smoke.

The grounds were a simpler place to be. Trees didn't expect him to think, or talk, or make sense at all. They were content with just being.

Bark ripped at the pads of his fingers. He'd been trailing a hand across trunks for balance, enjoying the smell of pine needles and freshly fallen snow. The ground underneath his feet was frozen, some patches of ice hiding underneath a light powder. He hadn't stopped moving in a while, seeking somewhere else, away from the hustle and bustle of students. He was starting to miss the woods. The calm of camping, waking up beside a fresh spring with birds singing in the trees.

Draven's chest hurt. A familiar vertigo was starting back up, crawling up his throat and sitting on his tongue. Trembling hands reached for his cure. He was starting to feel sick now, the longer he went without smoking. It was a bit horrifying to think about. But he didn't have the energy to do anything about it yet. Plus, it kept the hunger at bay.

He was far enough from campus now. He supposed the grounds still counted, but there would be no one to disturb him or complain about the smoke.

Making his way across a tiny clearing, Draven found a nice tree to sit under. Because of the underground root networks emanating heat, a patch under trees was always a little drier than the surroundings. A little more sheltered from the wind. Draven fished for his lighter, digging into his coat pocket. LP was written across the front in a stylized font. He wasn't sure what it stood for. But the lighter worked, and that was all that mattered.

A cigarette followed, slid between his lips. Flames flickered between his cupped fingers. He curved inward, sheltering his bone from the wind.

And then the vertigo began to subside. He breathed a sigh of relief, sinking against the tree. He was up to date with nearly everything. An afternoon off wouldn't do him harm.

Pine needles stabbed at him through his sweatpants. Draven cringed, shifting around. Some bird was making a great deal of noise, an unpleasant croaking echoing above his head. Draven's face screwed up as he peered upwards, trying to spot it through the branches. At least it hadn't decided to 'bless' him yet.

Except that wasn't a bird, Draven realized. Or rather, it was too big, too loud, and too lumpy to be a bird. He wasn't sure WHAT it was.

Taking a step back, the boy squinted at the source of noise, watching as the top of the tree wobbled dangerously. Some sort of- magical creature? Were those shoes?

Well, it looked like he was about to find out either way, judging by the noise. Branches snapped under the creature's weight; birds flew away screeching. What had been a rather peaceful moment was about to end abruptly.

Draven stood frozen, his body locking into place for a couple horrible seconds.

The strange bird- creature- thing- came crashing down, landing flat on its back like a ragdoll puppet dropped from a balcony. It was with an unpleasant shock he realized he'd seen this creature before.

Not some strange green bird, nor a kid he could pretend he didn't see and walk away.

"Starling!" Draven gaped, fumbling for his wand. "Merlin- fuck."

She was dead. She was dead, she was dead, she was dea- oh. Her chest moved.

Draven shuddered, not daring to move her. Floating spell to the nursery? Healing spell? Did he KNOW any healing spells? Did he know anything?

Merlin, was she bleeding?

Crouching beside her, Draven tapped the ground beside the girl's head. "Hey can you hear this?" his fingers fluttered erratically over her face. "Can you see this?" he tapped her arm. "Can you feel this?"

"Starling, please don't be dead."

The world came to with fireworks and a voice that her subconscious labeled as a boy’s (or a man’s?). Upon opening her bleary eyes, Cori was greeted by two boys with faces so pale that they seemed to accentuate all their darker parts—the wideness of their eyes, the blurry gray of their eyebags, the matted black of their hair. With another blink, she realized the twins had begun to merge into just one lanky boy—one she knew.

There was a difference between recognizing and knowing, and in a baffling turn of events, this boy—Draven, her mind supplied—fell in the latter category. His mouth was moving. What was he saying?

"Can you see this? Can you feel this? Starling, please don't be dead."

Cori groaned. “I’m not dead.” (This, she felt, was the most important question to answer and also, conveniently, the latest one.) “I can feel everything, unfortunately.”

Her tailbone ached, along with what seemed like every other part of her body in array of sure-to-be bruises. Her elbows stung, but when she brought them around to check, they only seemed scraped. Thank goodness for the grass (and the extra durability that came with being a witch). It was borderline a miracle that she hadn’t broken anything and had squeezed by with just scrapes and bruises.

Now that she had taken a cursory examination of her body—so small and lithe, what a scare it must’ve been to see her come tumbling down—she sat up gingerly and turned to the next most important matters.

“Why are you calling me Starling? Just Cori, please and thank you,” she said with a huff. Just because they hadn’t seen each other for a few months, and he started calling her by her last name!

Then, of course, she had to address the other issue. “That looks like a fire hazard.” She pointed to the half-burned cigarette that Draven must have dropped in his hurry to ensure Cori was alive. It was smoking against the cold ground, little embers of orange flickering amidst curling gray tendrils and hoary-green grass. As she wrinkled her nose against the smell, irritation flashed hot through her. “That's a disgusting smell, and I wouldn’t have fallen if that thing hadn’t ambushed me while I was up there.” The latter half came out in a mutter, audible but restrained.

Pulling her knees up just enough to lean against and fold her arms over, Cori looked up at Draven. A quiet corner of her mind let out a sigh at the friendly sight—the first friend-like person she had seen here in a while, if she was honest with herself (which was always much harder than her usual brand of honesty).

“So what is that thing? And what are you doing all the way out here?”

The knot in Draven's stomach slightly loosened at a peeved responding groan. Lying there, Starling looked so small. Frail, like a baby bird who'd slipped out of its nest and smashed into the ground.

No blood oozed from underneath the young witch. Her bones all seemed generally together, joints all pointing in the right direction. Draven cringed as she sat up. The beginning of a bruise was starting to blossom across her back, a brief flash of darkening skin visible as the girl moved. It was pure luck she hadn't fractured her spine.

"I just think Starling sounds better," Draven said absentmindedly, patting himself down for his wand. He didn't know many healing spells, nor was he particularly good at the ones he could remember. Before his eyes flashed the square black font of his Charms textbook. Do not attempt a healing spell on a living subject if you are not confident in your abilities. You may cause further injury.

Draven stopped looking for his wand.

Instead, his attention returned to the smoldering cigarette lying at his feet. It had come in contact with a couple of flattened leaves; rather than catching ablaze, they released an acrid smoke. Noxious fumes rose up, a sickly yellow curling through the tree branches. Draven's face scrunched inward, his boot coming down atop the offending mess. The smoke stopped a few seconds later, whatever inkling of flames had begun to slither by dying out.

"That was, in fact, a fire hazard," Draven said, picking up the extinguished roach. He wrapped it in a piece of tissue before dropping it in his pocket. It was easier to focus on that task than to look at the girl. Cori's words were sharp, her tone reproachful.

"I'm so sorry for making you fall." A vicious barrage of insults directed at yours truly welled up inside Draven. He pushed them away. Not the time. Crouching beside Cori once more, Draven plucked a stray needle out of her hair. Several more needles and branches were sticking out of the girl. Tentatively, Draven began helping clear them away. "It's a horrible habit," he sighed. "I'm out here hiding from the prefects. And uhh..." he made a vague jazz hands motion. "Exercise. It's good for the mind, or whatever."

She looked- rough. But alive. Alive enough to snap at him, so he supposed the important bases were covered. "I can Leviosa you to the nurse if you'd like? Provided, you know," he snickered, "...you pinky promise not to tell."

Not that Hogwarts professors ever had a punishment for them anyway. A small part of him wanted to start breaking rule after rule after rule to see what would happen. But no. He'd gotten this far without getting expelled.

"Why were you in a tree in the first place?"