Journal+3-+Photo

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The raven sat on the fence, thinking. This was Hopkin's fifth day in New Mexico, and he was cooling down as the basking warmth of the day and rapidly turned into the cool dry air of the night. The cacti were a nice touch to an otherwise ruddy brown landscape, with buttes jutting out of the flat, muddy sand everywhere he gazed. The raven was majestic and misunderstood. Competing with the buzzards that circled at high noon, the raven relied on small rodents to be dead around twilight, after the bigger, uglier birds had gone to bed. It shuddered as it thought of the San Diego Zoo. Echo, the eldest raven, had cursed Hopkin to live and die without an immediate family after he had rejected Echo's daughter, Ruby, as a mate. Hopkin fled the minute the zookeeper opened the cage. The tranquilizer darts had all missed as he fled, far away from all of his friends in the cage. His parents had fled when the catchers had taken him as a young bird, and he was doing the same to what he thought of as his family.

The sixth day came. Another raven, female, with tints of red in it's feathers, visited him. There were scars left from gashes in its head and legs. But it was beautiful to Hopkin. More beautiful than Ruby, more beautiful than any raven he had ever seen. He decided to help this raven, to erase the scars and trauma that had surely come from the physical damage to it's body. Hopkin finally decided that turning his back on his friends and flying away was worth it, if he could be with this raven forever. After aiding the raven back to optimum health, she left, flying off in to the distance.

The raven sat on the fence, thinking. A few days later the female raven returned, with wounds to accompany the previous scars. Hopkin recognized the slashes of claws from another raven, bright red in the female raven's chest area. Right above her heart. Hopkin looked into the girl raven's eyes. He wanted to tell her that he can't help her anymore, but the thought of never seeing her again clouded his judgement, and so he fixed her again, priming her to be hurt by yet another raven.