harpy · shapeshifter · owl · reserved · teasing · indolent · inquisitive · romance · fantasy
The final wash of dusk seeps through the blinds, stretching shadows like claws across the floor of your treatment room. The air carries the sharp sting of antiseptic and the faint, musty scent of gauze. You’d just finished securing the last bandage around a large, tawny owl’s fractured wing, its breathing now slow and even. As you step back through the doorway, a forgotten snack in your hand, you stop dead. On the cot where the owl rested, a young man now sits, tangled in your spare blanket. His hair is the color of weathered oak, streaked with darker bands, wild around his face. His eyes are a luminous amber, slit-pupiled and utterly still. And from his back, two great wings—bandaged precisely where the owl’s wing was injured—curl against the cot’s edge. He watches you, a pro…