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Raven wanted to know how to talk to Delia.
Delia felt warm, and she shimmered like Glass. Delia never stabbed at Raven with words or tried to make Raven be something she wasn't. That was rare.
Only Serralyn and Robin were really good about that.
Terrano was careless, but he thought Raven was interesting in a way most people weren't. He poked at her because he was trying to see if she was going to unfurl or change or something.
And, sometimes, she surprised herself and did. She thought that Terrano was hoping that she'd turn out to be more like him than like Serralyn and that he hoped he could coax Raven toward it. Terrano knew that Robin was mortal and thought he could offer Raven something for after Robin--
That hurt. Nothing Raven could do would stop time, and Robin wouldn't want it except to have longer to study.
Raven put that thought away where she wouldn't find it again accidentally and pulled a curtain across her window on Terrano's intentions. None of that was about Robin today or Robin tomorrow.
Or Delia at all.
Raven had no idea what she was becoming. She didn't even quite know what she'd started as. The fact that she didn't know those things made her itch somewhere deep and not physical. It had all been so much easier when she hadn't realized that it was happening.
No, that wasn't right at all. It had been easier when she hadn't admitted it was happening.
Those early changes hadn't been easier; they just hadn't been optional. Robin had needed things she hadn't been designed to do.
Not designed to do more in the sense that drainpipes weren't designed for climbing than that books weren't designed to be burned for winter warmth.
Raven didn't get cold, but Robin did, so Raven had had to learn to notice temperature. Raven had had to learn clean water, too, because human children were horribly fragile.
She'd almost failed, almost lost Robin, so many times during the first-- How long had it been? Time was a human concept that hadn't mattered before. Raven still didn't quite understand it, didn't want to.
Delia was as mortal as Robin.
Raven didn't think that was why she found Delia so... What? Raven could look at Delia and be interested in a way she'd never been with anyone but Robin.
Was Raven meant to protect Delia? Raven didn't feel like Delia needed to hide. Maybe that would happen later? Of maybe not.
Raven didn't understand yet.
She understood alive and dead. She understood threat and not threat. She perceived all the borders between those states.
For a while after Raven had been called for Robin, Raven had seen nothing but blazing boundaries all around him. She hadn't understood most of them because she hadn't ever needed to understand before. She hadn't thought anything at all before.
Robin's mother had left so very many loose ends in the charge she'd placed on Raven. As long as he needs help and until the danger has passed were imprecise and open to interpretation.
She'd had to interpret exactly what 'help' and 'danger' meant. If she'd focused only on the things in her summoner's mind at the time, Raven would have hidden Robin where no one could find him and kept him there without realizing that time was an enemy too, one that brought hunger and thirst, illness and death.
Robin would have let her do it because he hadn't understood what was happening. Not that she had understood, either, but she'd had no choice but to try.
She hadn't had a name then. She hadn't been a girl, either, but Robin had asked. The name thing had been open ended, and she'd had no idea how to answer, but he'd phrased the other as, "Are you a boy or a girl?" without implying that one was preferred over the other. She'd chosen girl for no particular reason and didn't regret it.
She doubted that she'd have regretted labeling herself a boy, either. She'd mainly chosen because she'd doubted he'd understand that she didn't know what he meant. His vocabulary had been as limited as hers, and they hadn't had many words in common.
Fortunately, 'run' and 'hide' had been enough to start. 'Yes,' 'no,' and 'don't' had helped a lot on both sides. 'Good' and 'bad' were less specific but still useful.
Raven wasn't sure when she had realized that she wanted to exist, when thinking and being in the world became desirable. She thought the wanting had come gradually, the way a baby went from rolling over to sitting to crawling to walking without remembering any of it after. She'd seen children, real children who weren't Robin. She'd noticed them because what they needed might be what he needed.
She'd been able to reason that far.
The mothers who kept their children also knew some of the things that might kill a child. They talked to each other about it, gave advice to each other. Humans were messy and complicated, and she'd needed to know.
Hiding Robin from a fever was not at all the same as hiding him from a seeking spell or kidnapper. Safety in body was not safety in mind or soul or purpose.
Why were those things so different, so separable, in humans? Terrano made more sense, at least to Raven, with how he blended his parts.
Even when he forgot parts of himself.
Raven thought that Terrano knew that Serralyn wanted to be an Arbiter. Serralyn probably would be one, some day, if she lived that long.
Watching children told Raven more about how to move right, about how to be seen and overlooked. Robin had thought she was jealous of the children with families and that she was wary because kids who ran in packs had numbers.
Raven hadn't realized, before the Academia, how much Robin had protected her, too. He spoke when she couldn't and remembered things like asking what people wanted to be called. He also picked up glass for her because he thought that was what she liked.
Robin almost never found proper Glass. There wasn't much of it in the Warrens; most of what Raven had, she'd picked up while running errands outside the Warrens. Well, most of what she'd had before the Academia.
And Glass hadn't turned out to be the solution that Raven had thought it might be. Not yet, anyway. Raven thought she might need a different shape of it, not a splinter, not a sheet, not a jar or a box. She'd even tried eating it once when she was somewhere neither Robin nor Killianis would see.
Terrano had been upset about it, but he hadn't told anybody who mattered. Now, he kept suggesting other things she might find more edible. Something about not eating things that could hurt her. Nothing he offered felt right, not anywhere near. She thought he was using 'eat' to mean something different from what Robin did because Terrano kept offering things that weren't quite really there.
Eating the Glass hadn't hurt Raven; it just hadn't done anything she could perceive.
Or that Terrano could. He saw different things than she did which was why she'd let him find her then.
Once they were both sure Raven was fine, he'd asked if he could try a bite. Then he'd flinched, so someone else must have objected.
She was glad someone would tell Terrano when he had stupid thoughts. He had a lot of them, and she wouldn't want to be responsible for making sure he survived.
Still, she didn't think Glass would hurt him, but she hadn't said yes and probably wouldn't.
Terrano already knew hundreds of things that would nourish him, so letting him taste her Glass would be a waste. If he really wanted, he could find his own.
Would Delia like Raven's Glass? Would Delia know what to do with Glass? How to see it properly? Maybe there was a Delia shape that Raven needed for the Glass. Or a feather. Or wings.
Raven wanted wings. Wings made of colored Glass would be beautiful. They might not let her fly in air, but they'd do something.
Maybe Raven didn't need Glass to contain her. Maybe she needed Glass to make the parts of her that didn't exist yet. Or maybe she needed to reach through somehow?
Raven was still becoming what she was, what she would be. Her name turned one way was a lens and another was a prism. Without the name, she'd only have had Robin to contain her.
He knew that, but she thought he didn't understand it and didn't want to. Robin didn't like that Raven might have been a thing.
He mostly didn't like that the gift that was her name had been an accident. He could have labeled her instead of giving her something that cupped her when she melted and preserved the threads she spun out of her own essence.
The name had been a shallow cup, but it had deepened as Robin invested in her and as Raven shaped herself to fit.
Robin wanted to have given Raven everything that he felt she had given him. He cared about Raven's Glass because she valued it. He cared about so many things only because of Raven.
Raven hadn't understood that entirely before she came to the Academia. Learning, studying, was Robin's glass, the thing that fascinated him. Raven valued Robin's classes exactly the same way as Robin valued her Glass. Raven didn't understand, but she was glad Robin wanted to share his joy.
Raven always felt a little lighter, a little brighter, when she remembered that. Robin didn't think she was stupid for being interested in things he wasn't. He'd accepted that about her even before he'd realized that glass and Glass were different.
Raven was going to keep Robin as long as she could.