The harpy that became a mother

There, by Tainaron, a harpy descended into the raven's nest. She killed the mother in flight because that was how things were done back then. Carefully, she tore off the skin and pulled it over her face; with the dead one's beak, she called out.

The chicks, blind, saw their mother silhouetted against the sky. They opened their mouths. The harpy slipped in her soft talons, not to kill, but to hold. She breathed into them her storm breath, the darkness she carried within her gut.

And while she held them, she felt something in her chest that was not her usual hunger. It was a clumsy tenderness, newborn. No one had ever loved her to teach her, and yet there it was: one of those things that arrive without warning and make no distinction between what is one's own and what is stolen.