Ravenspell
A girl, born under the sign of the virgin and the stubborn shade of the ox.
Years ago, a raven plucked her eyes out. She'd lost a friend too young and allowed a misplaced loneliness to swallow her best years. Blinded, she stumbled through her world with her hands out, cursing the raven for making her clumsy. With bloodied eyes, she was unable to read, and she could no longer see the green on the trees. Melancholy had come for her.
The raven had blackened her. Once blind, it was easy to feel birdlike. From her scalp sprouted feathers as dark as oil, and then a beak to peck at herself. Distressed by her slow transformation, the girl squawked the same shrill noises for as long as she was blind. Sightless, she could not see whose mouths were moving when they squawked back.
Years passed. The original raven who had blinded her had long been forgotten, and she continued to sing his song and preen his feathers as a new raven took his place. With time, the girl grew accustomed to the blood in her eyes, and she let herself become a handsome raven almost joyously. Finally, she could become what had ravaged her. She continued to squawk and thrash about until her feathers turned into wings.
The raven had gifted her wings of obsidian blades - the illusion of flight. The blade-wings kept her up on the wind in the rare moments she tried to fly, but they were heavy, and when she wanted to stay lifted, the feather-blades sliced air, and she fell. Blind, she fell in patterns.
When the blind girl fell back to earth for the final time, her wings broke. Flightless, she understood that she would not be able to fly again. She would not be able to survive as a raven. If there was any hope left for the girl, she understood that she must transform back. Broken, she needed someone skilled to repair her wings, even if she would never fly with them again. On chicken-like taloned feet, the girl brought herself to someone who could help.
'My wings are broken,' she said. 'I need your help. I'm not actually a raven.'
'I can see that,' said the helper. She inspected the raven girl. 'Ravens don't usually come to find people like me.'
The raven sat and talked to the helper for a while. She'd let helper touch her wings even she when didn't want to show the wounds, and every day when she got up to leave, she made a path with her feet to make her way in the dark. She'd rest, think about a raven, and make her way back to the helper. Many moons passed this way.
Eventually, the helper and the raven girl healed the broken wings together. The girl knew she would never fly with her patched wings, but she took the time anyway. Once her raven's body was healed, she could begin the transformation in reverse. She continued to visit the helper, but without broken wings, she didn't know how to heal herself.
'Just be,' said the helper. 'Exist in this vulnerable state. Remind yourself that your wings are not broken. Remind yourself that you are not a raven.'
The girl-raven listened and practiced reminding herself of these things. The more often she caught herself thinking of herself as a raven, the more she was reminded that she was merely a girl whose eyes had been plucked out by a raven. She had almost forgotten. The girl had felt so much pain when sightless, when becoming a raven, and when she remembered it, she made noise. She made pathetic noises, and the helper listened. She made sounds of distress until she couldn’t bear to hear herself cry, so she stopped.
One day, the helper pointed out that she had no feathers.
'I have no feathers, but I still have a beak,' lamented the girl, rubbing the smooth curve of her beak rather than the smooth, newly-formed skin of her forearms.
'You might always have a beak. Does that bother you? If you stay part raven?'
This was a good question. The girl contemplated this. She had spent so many years either becoming or being a raven that she could not consider herself without any raven. The human she was before, she envied, but she was so far from that original human. She considered the possibility of always being somewhat of a girl-raven.
'I suppose I have no choice but to live with or without it,' she answered.
Transformation was imminent. The girl's helper pointed out how much she looked like a human, and how small and brown her beak had gotten. The girl was unsure if she would ever regain her human nose, but she tried not to dwell on it. The raven had left other wounds, wounds that didn't look like feathers, or talons, or beaks, and the beak-nosed human girl spent another year working with the helper to untangle the memory of the raven.
Sometimes the girl felt phantom itchings of bugs in her feathers and broken wings. Sometimes she forgot what the helper was helping her for, and sometimes she needed a reminder that she was a girl-raven, and not a raven-girl. The helper was very helpful, of course, but there were other creatures in the forest that helped her.
Like Alice, she found smoking caterpillars and flowers to talk to. She found a neighboring garden and began collecting moments of humanity the way she collected shiny metal things when she was a bird. She would find herself smiling or hugging or kissing- and yes, she even kissed with her nubbins beak. She kissed because she had stopped trying to find reasons not to. She had survived becoming a raven and becoming human again. Like Alice, she bit into the pastry that read EAT ME.
The girl who had once worn raven feathers in her hair brought back stories to her helper to prove that she had learned how to be human again. The raven had blinded her, and she would remain blind for the rest of her life, but over time, her bloodied eyes healed enough into a black softness. The softness of her blindness made the borders of the world fuzzy, and where the sighted would have clear answers, the blind once-part-raven girl did not have that clarity.
One such clarity was this: her helper could not help her forever.
Her beak had grown small and soft enough for kisses, and her blindness didn't scare her anymore. The girl released her helper with a thank-you, good-bye and rubbed the fuzz out of her blind eyes. The helper's words lingered in her ears, and she used the echo to anchor herself to a new life. The girl maintained her friendships with the smoking caterpillars and the talking flowers, and when she felt tickled by a phantom feather, she reminded herself that she was human now. And she would always be human forevermore.
The girl had been touched by the Ravenspell, and she had made her way through. Of course, she would prefer to never have been made raven at all, to never have been blinded at all, but there are no answers for why the raven picked her. In fact, she thinks grieving gives the raven too much power- look at her now! Human again with a nubbins beak and pink human toes! No talons in sight!
When she felt discouraged that the transformation had wasted her time, she infused her darkness with gratitude. She had made it to the other side, and she was not a raven.
One day, when she wasn't particularly paying attention, the last of her beak fell off.