Bleeding Heart 14 Setting Off

He could pick out Dawn's voice as by now he had learnt it quite well. But the other people he did not know well enough to manage to pick out their individual voices in the cacophony of sounds. So, he just stood near to the griffon, whom he was calling Zyph in his head, and stroked its beak. Zyph seemed to really like that, if his soft puffing was an indication. That and the way he would shove his head deeper into Raven's caresses.

Raven enjoyed the feel of the smooth beak, as he focused on the fairly calm animal. He crooned softly to Zyph as he poured his entire attention on it.

Dawn finally interrupted him, "Get up, Raven. Petting him is all well and good but we need to get going."

He gave Zyph a final pat on the beak and scrambled up to sit beside of his queen. He was not entirely sure why she was bringing him nor how useful he would be but he was glad that she trusted him enough to bring him along with her. And he promised himself that he would do his very best to make sure she succeeded, even if it cost him his life to do so.

This time Zyph stayed on the ground as the others were on horses. As Raven stroked the feathers on his neck, he felt the tense muscles as the huge winged birdcat wanted to take to the sky.

However even though it longed to be up in the air, it minded its mistress docilely. Zyph was a well-trained griffon, and Raven could sense the love it had for the woman who could easily get it to follow her. Raven was not sure how he knew how to read a griffon's body language but he did. And Zyph adored the queen who owned him. The griffon was also highly fond of Raven, but that was most likely just due to the beak rubs and crooning.

There were fourteen in their number. Raven knew that much, even though he did not know all of their names. His favorite people that he did know the names of, other than the queen, were Brilma and Colton. He found himself enjoying listening to the light banter and flirting that they were almost continuously engaged in. Hearing them made a dull ache come to his heart as if he was missing something.

Raven had suspicions that he was a romantic at heart, though without his memory whether that was something that had always been there or if it was something new was something that he debated with himself.

Whatever the case was though, it hardly mattered right now, just that as he was not directing the animal he had very little with which to occupy himself other than trying to figure his past out. Once again, his mind drifted to the two memories he had.

The teacher he could not remember the face of and the beautiful girl he knew not the name of. Would she recognize him if she saw him? He hoped so, unless she had lost her memory too or he was not actually that important to her. The thought of that made his heart squeeze painfully in his chest.

He hoped that in fact he was just from out of the kingdom of Lumna and that this girl would be searching for him and would eventually find him. That even if he was broken right now she would still want him as much as Dawn obviously longed for her husband.

He found Dawn's mourning for her husband, her desire for revenge, to be sweet. And it was because of this, perhaps even more than just because she had helped him when he needed it, that he wanted to help her.

She did not really talk about it much, but anytime the name Arrion left anyone's lips her voice took on a slight note as if she was on the verge of tears. She probably did need to have a good cry, but Raven decided not to mention that to her until she tried the therapeutic procedure of wiping out those who had caused her king's demise.