Page 19 of We Live Here Now

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His mate is dead. The raven knows that.

But still, he picked up her desiccated corpse from the edge of the house, so light he could lift her by her scarred wing as if she were a winter twig, and carried her up to the tree by the wall, forcing her husk between the trunk and the branches so she wouldn’t fall. He sleeps close to her, plumping his feathers for both of them, keeping out the cold.

In daylight, he leaves her and scavenges for food, picking at the carcass of a dead rabbit on the road before the foxes claim it. Taking the eyes of a dead sheep far across the moor that the farmer hadn’t yet found. He brings back morsels for her even though he knows she can’t eat. She’s dead. He left her to die, panicking in that dark void, as he raced back toward the sky. Perhaps that’s why he can’t let her go. He should leave and roost at night with the others, but instead he stays in the branches of the old tree, watching the house, now with light in the windows and warmth coming through the walls.

The air is getting colder, not only at night. He can feel the threat of more snow and ice hanging in it, sharp and friendless. He wonders if perhaps he should move her and roost on the roof near the chimneys for warmth. Perhaps he will not fear the house so much now that there is life and heat in it.

He looks to his mate for answers, but her eye sockets are dull and empty of anything but reproach.