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jjonassevilla · 4 years

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How to Create the Ultimate Lead Capture Page: 11 Tips for 2020

I created my first lead capture page four years ago when I started my business. Let me confess to you now: I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I wanted to advertise my services, grow my brand, build an audience, and land clients. And I thought I’d created a campaign that would do all that and more.

But I’ve learned a lot since my first campaign—and what I know for sure is that I did almost everything wrong.

So whether you’re just starting your marketing journey or trying to improve your conversion rates—aren’t we all?—here’s what I wish I knew when I created my first lead capture page. Follow these 11 tips to bring in more prospects and overachieve your campaign goals.

What’s a Lead Capture Page?

A lead capture page is a type of landing page that offers your audience something in return for their email address or other information. This means that any page with a form on it can be considered a type of lead capture page—including ebook download pages, demo request pages, or newsletter sign-up pages.

Unlike other pages on your website, a lead capture page only has one goal: exchange a lead magnet (or reward) for your visitor’s info. Get this exchange right, and you’ll be able to turn more of your fans and observers into full-fledged leads and customers.

11 Tips to Create Better Lead Capture Pages in 2020

Know Your Goal

Create a Compelling Reward

Pick the Right Form Fields

Consider Your Traffic Sources

Craft a Message-Match Headline

Use Social Proof

Keep Your Copy Short and Clear

Write an Actionable Call to Action

Apply Conversion-Centered Design Principles

Optimize Your Form

Create an Incredible Post-Conversion Experience

Tip #1 – Know Your Goal

Your lead capture page has one job to do (and it needs to do it well). So before you plan a fantastic design or write a catchy headline, decide what your page needs to accomplish. What’s your one goal?

Start creating your goal by thinking about which audience you’re building the lead capture page for. There are three main types of audiences when it comes to lead capture pages:

Leads – Leads are the new people to your audience. They don’t know you well, but they’re intrigued by what they’ve seen and would like to learn more. You’re basically strangers who have just been introduced, and it’s your job to start the conversation and become best friends.

Prospects – A prospect is somebody who’s already some interest in your product, offering, or service, but who hasn’t yet converted into a customer. They’re likely in your CRM, nurtured with emails, blog posts, and social media posts. If this were a relationship, you two have been dating, but aren’t official… yet.

Current Customers – Current customers need attention and relationship building as well. They may be in love with your product or they could be cold and considering churning. An offer created just for them could be the thing they need to pique their interest. Keeping the relationship metaphor going—you’re married, but it’s still important to go on dates to keep the romance alive.

Once you know who your lead capture page is for, you’ll want to decide what it’s going to do. Create clear and measurable targets based on previous campaigns or industry averages. Do you want to generate 50 new leads a month? Or have a 12% conversion rate? Decide what metrics you’re aiming for before you begin, and you’ll better be able to track how the lead capture page is performing.

For example, this lead capture page from Arrive does a great job of choosing one specific audience and making it very clear who this guide is for—New Canadian residents looking for help on their taxes.

Target your lead capture page with a specific audience in mind.

Tip #2 – Create a Compelling Reward

The lead capture page is all about an exchange—they give you information, and you give them content. While that sounds like a no-brainer, most people don’t trust companies on the internet. You have to make the reward or offering so enticing that visitors are willing to trust you with their personal info.

There are lots of types of rewards and each has a special appeal to a particular segment of your audience.

Ecourses – An ecourse helps you showcase your knowledge and expertise while being helpful to your audience. This type of content is so versatile any of your audience segments could find it an intriguing offer.

Reports/Whitepapers – A whitepaper is a great B2B reward for prospects and leads, with over 82% of buyers saying they rely heavily on whitepapers to make purchasing decisions.

Ebooks – An ebook or a comprehensive guide can help your leads and prospects learn more and take the step to become customers.

Webinars – 60% of webinars can take your audience from lead to prospect. Webinars provide great value and they’re another tool that helps you teach your audience while establishing authority.

Product Demos – Your product demo can be a great reward for the bottom of the funnel to help you attract interested prospects.

Free Trials – A free trial lets your prospects and leads try before they buy. Usually, they’re between seven and 30 days, depending on the product or service.

Challenges – A free challenge is another way to give short term access to your services or product. Nathalie Lussier used a free challenge to grow her list to over 55,833 subscribers in just four years.

Newsletters – Newsletters nurture your audience. Ideally, they’re sent out with some regularity and focus on a theme. Depending on the content of your newsletter, this reward would appeal to all segments of your audience. Newsletters allow your subscribers to become familiar with your brand, voice, and subject matter expertise.

Checklists – A checklist can be a simple offer to help beginners. You can quickly design a PDF page using Canva and put it out as a helpful resource for your audience.

Templates – Later created social media templates to help social media managers and small brands with their social media reports. Visitors find templates like this valuable because they help you save time.

Check out the full customer story to see how Later used landing pages like this one to capture over 100,000 leads.

Tip #3 – Pick the Right Form Fields

The form field is the first place of friction your audience will feel. This is where they’ll ask themselves, “is it worth it?” or “do I really want this?” When you ask a lot of questions (and get a lot of answers), you’ll have some well-segmented data and qualified leads to work with. But how many prospects or leads did you lose by asking too many questions?

Remember, your lead capture page has one goal, so figure out the least amount of info you need from visitors to make that goal a reality.

A few things to consider when choosing how many form fields you put on the page:

If your content only targets marketing managers from early-stage startups, do you really need to know the “Title” of the person filling out the form?

If your goal is to increase your list size 10% each month, do you have to know the person’s phone number or company name?

Research by Hubspot shows that more form fields resulted in fewer conversions.

If all goes well, this won’t be your last time to learn more information about your audience. Each email and offer can help you learn more about who they are and what they need.

The Bruery, for example, has been brewing bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout for ten years and is growing a list in a straightforward way: they only ask for an email address. No need for names, phone numbers, or addresses—they know they can gather that information at checkout.

Right now, they want to capture their audience while they have a little bit of their attention. The team can nurture their prospects later on, while the next batch ages in the barrels.

One-field lead capture pages tend to see higher conversion rates.

Tip #4 – Consider Your Traffic Sources

There are multiple ways someone can discover your offer. When you create a lead capture page, think through all the best ways to attract your target audience.

Common traffic sources include…

SEO – This is a standard Google search. The people that find your page by a search engine are looking for something in particular, but they may not be aware of all of the solutions. Lead capture pages don’t typically drive a ton of organic traffic, but you may want to do some keyword research to see if there are any opportunities. Consider using a related piece of content (like a long-form blog post on the same topic) to try to rank higher in the search engine results, and then promote your lead capture page by linking from that post.

PPC (Pay Per Click) – These ads are the first results on Google or the ads you see when visiting a website. When you click on the ad, the business pays a certain amount per click. When using PPC traffic sources, your audience probably doesn’t know much about you or your offer. The rewards that will be the most helpful to an audience is usually educational, like an ebook or webinar.

Social Ads – Ads on social media will allow you to use filters and the social media platform’s demographic data to target exactly the right type of audience. But even with all of this targeting, your reward must be compelling for prospects and leads who click through.

Email – Your email list is a powerful traffic source with incredibly high conversion rates. Optinmonster found that every $1 you spend on email marketing earns around $44 in return. You might be able to leverage email as a traffic source if you’re hoping to capture more information from leads already in your CRM.

Organic Social Media – Apart from paid ads, you can (and totally should) post your lead capture page to your own social media pages. This audience follows you already and is interested in what you create, share, write, or build. Traffic from this source tends to be warmer and more likely to convert.

Tip #5 – Craft a Message-Match Headline

You’ve done the audience research and quality reward work, and now it’s time to put the lead capture page together. Your headline is the eye-catching phrase that, in a few words, will tell the audience exactly what it is they’ll be getting when they sign up.

Keep your messaging consistent across the customer journey from ads and emails to the lead capture page itself. A consistent message keeps things simple and clear for your audience. For example, this is how Taboola advertises a lead capture page for their ebook on how to launch a content discovery campaign.

And here’s the lead capture page itself. Notice how the messaging is simple, clear, and consistent.

By staying consistent, you’re signaling to visitors that yep—they’re in the right place. “This is the ebook you’re looking for.” It’s a simple but important principle that will almost always get you a higher conversion rate on your pages.

Tip #6 – Use Social Proof

Every lead capture page should use some form of social proof. Why? Because a Bright Local survey found that 91% of consumers are more likely to buy when they read positive reviews. Sharing testimonies, partner logos, or even the numbers of people who have previously signed up will show your audience that what you have to offer is valuable.

This example from Do You Yoga does a fantastic job integrating their social proof into the design of the page. Right below the “Join Free” CTA they let you know that 18,902 other people have already decided to sign up. It’s subtle—but super effective. (Because you know you’re in good company if 18,902 other people have already signed up!)

Tip #7 – Keep Your Copy Short and Clear

You want every word and phrase to have a purpose. Your copy has a short amount of time and space to convince the reader to sign up. Make sure your copy is benefits-driven, meaning you’re telling the reader exactly how signing up will benefit their life. Show precisely what they can expect after they hit the call to action button.

Pared’s headline and subhead nail it by describing the who, what, and why of their app in just a few short sentences.

Tip #8 – Write an Actionable Call to Action

The call to action is the button on the page that invites the reader to take the next step in the process. This little button’s copy may not seem important, but the right tweaks to CTA buttons can increase your CTR by up to 90%. Your CTA needs to invoke action. ‘Learn More’ might be fine, but ‘Get Your Ebook’ tells the reader exactly what clicking that button will get them. In our template gallery, we have tons of actionable CTAs for any type of campaign or lead capture type.

If your page is for a SaaS product, ‘Choose Plan’ or ‘Sign Up’ could be the best option for your CTA.

Webinars would require a different action than an ebook or checklist. Each offer should have a unique CTA that guides the reader to action.

Tip #9 – Apply Conversion-Centered Design Principles

Check out all the conversion-centered design principles to optimize your lead capture page.

Conversion-centered design means that every aspect of your funnel from the ad to the form on your lead capture page is thoughtfully placed. You want to guide the prospect toward conversion and retention.

Unbounce has a seven-principal framework that will help keep your campaigns focused and successful. The conversion-centered design framework goes deep on each principal, so if you need a more comprehensive lesson, I encourage you to check it out.

The TL;DR Conversion-Centered Design Key Takeaways

Consistent design – Make sure you’re giving your prospects all the information they need to make a decision and convert. Your messaging, design, and copy needs to flow seamlessly from pre-click (your ad, email, or social post) to post-click (the lead capture page).

Keep the design simple – Stay focused on your one goal, and you’ll see a higher conversion rate. We experienced this first-hand on one of our landing pages—by eliminating all other distractions, we increased visits to the next page in the funnel by 172.1%.

Credibility – To be seen as a credible business, you need to show as many sources of credibility as you can. Certificates, testimonials, reviews, and privacy policies are all effective ways to convey your trustworthiness.

Tip #10 – Optimize Your Form

To optimize your lead capture page, think through each tiny detail, and ask if there is an easier way to get the same result.

Any tweak you can make that reduces the amount of work, thinking, or reaching for a wallet your prospect has to do will help increase your conversion rate. In fact, Wp Forms found that 67% of site visitors will abandon a form if they have any complications. Enabling auto-fill fields helps reduce the number of things your prospect has to do before clicking the CTA. So, do the heavy lifting for them and use auto-fill fields for name, email, and credit card number.

Multi-step forms may sound like an oxymoron to optimization, but experiments have shown that using multiple forms can increase conversions by 300%.

Multi-form best practices say:

Only ask one or two questions on a page.

Provide a visual for where the lead is in process, like a page/question count.

Don’t ask more than 10 questions in total.

Provide immediate value after they submit the form.

Tip #11 – Create an Incredible Post-Conversion Experience

Your post-conversion experience is every interaction your prospect has with your brand/company after they click the call to action. When you create an incredible experience that meets the needs of your customers, they tend to stick around longer and purchase more.

Remember our relationship metaphor? The post-conversion experience would be like going on a fun date, and then never texting or reaching out again. (Rude.) You both had a great date, and now’s the time to build a real long-term relationship.

How to Create an Incredible Post-Conversion Experience?

Set up an automated email campaign – If your lead magnet teaches new gardeners how to grow giant tomatoes, then you know that your prospect is looking to learn more about gardening. You could create an automated campaign that sends them a tip of the week. This tactic helps them and builds their trust in you at the same time.

Explain the next steps – Let your prospects and customers know what to expect next. Will they get their download in their inbox or will the reward open right after they click? Are they being subscribed to a newsletter, or will you only email them once with the reward?

Build their trust – Trust and relationships have become the cornerstone of the post-conversion experience. Your prospects want to trust you before becoming customers, so to build their trust, be reliable and honest with their information. If you say you only need an email address to send the reward, then don’t add them to every newsletter automatically.

Test and iterate – The best way to ensure your lead capture page is serving your audience is to test and improve. Think about your one goal and the metrics you wanted to meet and ask yourself, “is the page performing the way I wanted?” Where are there improvements to be made? Consider tiny details such as button color, or swapping all the “I”’s for “You.” You can even use Smart Traffic to test multiple variants at the same time and get results faster.

How to Create a Lead Capture Page Quickly

Building lead capture pages in your website can be a tedious process that puts a limit on your creativity and choices. That’s why Unbounce has a ton of high-converting templates to help you build and customize fast.

We know these tips and best practices lead to success, so we’ve baked them right into each template design. Choose the templates that serve your needs best, then filter by tool, campaign, type, or special features.

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/landing-pages/how-to-create-the-ultimate-lead-capture-page/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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serenlyss · 5 years

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Reach

(Alternatively titled: Reach (for things you thought were gone forever))

Rating: G Pairings: ritshou, very small background terumob Summary: “Are you an angel?” Shou croaks, suddenly very sure that he must be dying, because this boy is so different from the rumors he’s heard from the people in his village that there’s no way he can be a harpy. He finds himself smiling despite the realization that his death is soon approaching, and murmurs, “You’re beautiful. If this is what dying is, I don’t think I’d mind going with you.” As it would turn out, not all fairy tales are born from imagination. Crossposted to AO3: Reach

Oh my gosh it's finally done. This AU was born from a half-baked desire to write a wings au with ritshou and I've been feverishly writing it for like 5 days now. I'm really excited to share it and super proud of how it turned out, so I hope you all enjoy it too! I had a lot of fun writing in a more poetic, descriptive style. Depending on how the inspiration hits I may write more of this au in the future as well, and make it into a little series. For now though, have this 12k+ word monstrosity.

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Shou’s starting to regret not telling anyone where he’d planned on going.

His thoughts had started out innocently enough. The rumors of mythical creatures and terrifying monsters that lurked in the thick woods near his little village had always intrigued him, drawing his attention to the shadowy woods he’d been reminded from the time he could walk to never wander into.

Some of the stories are very obviously untrue, like the one that claims that a fearsome dragon sleeps within the shade of the forest’s tallest trees, guarding mountains of gold. They’re the kinds of fables meant to scare people from wandering off too far, but everyone is aware that dragons don’t exist. Even if they did exist, Shou doubts one would choose to live in a place as boring and uninteresting as this.

The other tales are slightly more believable to Shou. They’re stories that had probably sprung from a person’s real memories, stories spun with bravado and just a little extra embellishment each time they’d been told until they’d evolved into fairy tales in their own right. These are the ones that speak of monsters lurking beneath fishing boats, waiting to snap up any poor soul who happens to tumble from the safety of their ship, of human-faced animals that draw you in with sweet words only to lure you to your own inevitable death. Terrifying and malevolent creatures whose only interest in a person is to tear them apart.

Of all his people’s myths and fables, there’s only one that manages to pique Shou’s interest enough to draw him away from the safety of his town. These are the stories about the harpies, a horrifying combination of bird and man, a creature with the talons of an eagle and the face of a woman that could never be satisfied, always ravenous, searching endlessly for its next meal. They’re said to be terrifying, bloodthirsty, beautiful creatures, and Shou can’t help but want to meet one in person.

He knows, rationally, that he’s as good as dead if the rumors are true, but it’s not like he has anything more to go off of, or anything better to do. He’s terribly bored of his uninteresting, lonesome daily life, where the only exciting thing to come to his front door is the salesman trying ceaselessly to sell him things he doesn’t need. So, one day he packs up a bag with his sketchbook and some art supplies and a snack in case he gets hungry and sets off into the woods without a word. He knows that if he tells his neighbors where he’s going, they’ll try to stop him, and that sounds like more of a pain than Shou’s willing to put up with, so he doesn’t tell them. It’s not like he’ll be gone for long, anyway.

---

As it turns out, Shou is very, very wrong about the length of time it’ll take to reach the thicker center of the forest, and even more wrong about being confident in his ability to read his map. By the time he’s a few hours into his walk, he can’t tell what direction he’s moving in anymore, and he’s turned the map over half a dozen times trying to reorient himself. Eventually, he gives up and crumples the map into a ball, shoving it into the pocket of his backpack in frustration. Way to go, idiot, he scolds himself, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants as he continues to trudge ever forward, you’ve screwed yourself. This stupid forest is impossible to navigate, and now you’ve gone and gotten yourself lost.

The forest is like a maze, trees so close together that it’s impossible for Shou to see more than a few hundred feet in front of him at any time. It’s huge, too; Shou swears he’s been walking in a straight line since he entered the forest hours ago, but he still hasn’t reached the other side. His feet are starting to ache from the uneven terrain beneath his shoes and his neck is slick from sweat that beads from a combination of the hot, humid weather that accompanies the transition from summer to fall and the fact that he hasn’t stopped walking since he first stepped foot in the woods. He hasn’t even brought any water with him, certain that he’d be in and out in a few hours at most.

Shou walks and walks and doesn’t let himself stop to rest, too worried that if he stops he’ll forget what direction to walk in and never find the edge of the forest. It isn’t until the sun has fallen behind the horizon and the trees in front of him are almost too deep in the shadows to make out that he finally stops to sleep, curled up in the thick grass and undergrowth with his jacket wrapped tightly around his shoulders.

After five days of waking, walking, unfolding his crumpled map and futilely attempting to find his way back to his village, the lack of food and water is really starting to get to him. He hasn’t come across anything salvageable, not even a forest stream he could drink from to stave off the dehydration that makes his limbs feel heavy and his tongue thick and dry in his mouth. His skin shimmers in an ever-present layer of sweat as the liquid slowly seeps from his pores, and he’s powerless to do anything about it. Even though the sun doesn’t touch him very often through the trees, the humidity and heat grips him strongly, their fingers digging in and wringing every last drop of water from his body until he starts to feel the telltale dizziness and nausea shutting him down from the inside out. His brain turns to fog and his legs to jelly, but still he walks, knowing that the moment he stops is the moment he gives up on living.

In the end, it’s a gangly tree root that does him in. It catches him around his toes and makes him lose his footing, and he lets out a hoarse yelp as he’s thrown swiftly and certainly to the ground. He hits it shoulder first, arms not quick enough to catch him on his hands, and the shock of it sends cramps up his arm and down his back. He winces, sure that it’ll leave a terrible bruise.

He attempts to push himself to his feet, to continue his endless walking, but his legs won’t listen to him anymore. His arms can hardly support the weight of his torso, and after a few fruitless seconds he lets himself flop uselessly onto his back. The sun is setting, spots of white appearing against dark blue as the last rays of daylight throw long shadows across the forest floor and plunge his surroundings into a thick and unyielding darkness.

He blinks slowly, eyes falling shut for a few seconds before he forces them open again. His limbs are heavy, not an ounce of energy left over to lift them with, and as he stares up at the open sky above him he finds himself unable to make out the stars anymore, vision too fuzzy to separate the white from black. He lets out a shaky breath, feeling the weak breeze stir the hair that arches away from his face. Why did I come here? he wonders to himself, regret creeping under his skin and settling there. This was so stupid… He feels a tears leak out of the corner of his eye, streaking down his face and disappearing into the creases of his ear. He hadn’t thought he’d have any water left in his body to cry with, and yet here he is. He can’t even reach up to wipe the trail of wetness away.

Behind his head, he hears the sound of tall grass rustling under soft, light footfalls. He doesn’t even try to turn to see what animal has stumbled upon him, eyes half-lidded. He knows he’s as good as dead, and whatever scavenger has happened upon him must know it, too. By morning, he'll be long gone, and the animals will pick him to pieces until there are only bones remaining. Maybe one day, he muses to himself in a delirious haze, some scientist will finally make it out here and find my skeleton. They’ll say I was killed by the harpies, and make up stories about a fantastic battle I must have been in… I’ll become the story they tell their kids to scare them away from the forest. The thought brings a bittersweet smile to his face, a brief flash of humor that quickly dies as the feather-light footsteps draw closer.

He listens as the creature approaches him, crushing grass and dry leaves underfoot, until it pauses right behind his head. Its form casts a shadow over him, and through his hazy vision he sees it bend down to look at him. He furrows his brow, fighting to focus his blurry eyes enough to make out the thing that most certainly will be eating him once he finally kicks the bucket, and finds that it’s not an animal at all.

The creature lowers itself to its knees, half-crouched over Shou’s head. Two hands reach out and brush against his cheeks, soft and incredibly careful, but the touch is not quite human. Through his eyelashes, Shou can make out slim shoulders and a slender neck that leads to a head that is distinctly human-shaped, and he can see the shock of black hair that falls into the creature’s face and frames shining eyes with its long strands. Shou’s eyes open wider, a gasp of awe caught in his throat. Two sprawling, shimmering wings curl around the creature and shield Shou’s upper body from the outside, falling over him like a dome and blocking out what little light the half-set sun provides. Hundreds of pitch-black feathers hover over him now, like the ones from the crows he sees outside his modest house, picking at the neighbor’s garden. Something about this creature’s wings is ethereal, however, the kind of vision that can only be conceived in lucid dreams and supernatural visions. His expression swims into focus gradually, revealing an impassive, boyish face framed with those same dark feathers. There’s something melancholic about his expression, a wistful, empathetic look in his eye that makes Shou’s failing heart skip a beat in his chest.

“Are you an angel?” he croaks, suddenly very sure that he must be dying, because this boy is so different from the rumors he’s heard from the people in his village that there’s no way he can be a harpy. He finds himself smiling despite the realization that his death is soon approaching, and murmurs, “You’re beautiful. If this is what dying is, I don’t think I’d mind going with you.”

The boy doesn’t react to Shou’s words. He doesn’t even know if this mystical, ominous, alluring creature can understand his language, though he likes to believe the near-imperceptible lift of his eyebrows is an indication that maybe he can after all. If he does, he makes no effort to respond, simply slides his hands along Shou’s cheeks to gently cup his face between them. He leans over Shou’s unmoving form until his face is mere inches away, his warm breath ghosting over Shou’s skin. Shou wrinkles his nose instinctively against it, feels feathers tickling the bare skin of his arms, and then the boy closes the gap between them.

Shou feels lips press against his, warm and soft, and he draws in a shocked breath through the corners of his mouth. The kiss is careful and awkwardly angled, Shou’s head turned in the wrong direction for it to feel natural, but there’s no discomfort behind it. The dark-haired boy lets out a long sigh against his lips that fills his lungs with fuzz and butterflies, the sensation sending tremors down his spine and raising goose bumps along his arms. A numbness starts in the pit of his stomach and spreads outward, a comfortable heaviness weighing down his limbs and making his eyelids droop as though he’s about to fall asleep. So this is what dying feels like, he thinks, the last thought his brain can manage before his eyes fall closed and he succumbs to the darkness pulling at his mind for good.

---

Shou regains consciousness in phases. The first thing to return to him is his sense of touch, poking at the edges of his foggy mind in the form of a weight that pushes him down into something soft. He feels pleasantly warm and cozy, his head cushioned by a material that reminds him of the soft wool he sheers off of the sheep in his village every summer. His fingers twitch when he realizes he can feel them again, but he doesn’t dare move lest he ruin the comfort of the moment too quickly.

The next thing to return to him is his hearing. He registers, faintly, the sound of movement not far from where he’s laying, the clang of metal on metal or the shifting of fabric nearby. At one point he hears the sound of someone humming in a voice he doesn’t recognize, a melody that comes across only slightly out of tune. The humming is incredibly alluring, and the more he listens, the more he’s desperate to find the source of the voice so he can tell them how mundanely beautiful it is.

It’s this desire that prompts Shou to open his eyes at last. He blinks a few times, letting his eyes adjust to the light that filters into the room from the skylight overhead. He wiggles his feet experimentally, legs shifting beneath a thin blanket that’s been tucked around him securely. He takes a deep breath, then rolls onto his side with little difficulty, propping himself up on one elbow so he can orient himself in his new surroundings.

It doesn’t take him long to realize that he’s not dead after all, the pains in his head and soreness in his shoulder from when he’d fallen an indicator that this isn’t the afterlife. He lifts one hand sluggishly to rub his eyes before glancing around, taking in the humble room he’s found himself in.

He’s laying on a bed atop a mattress stuffed with sheep’s wool and feathers, it’s edges carefully shaped to allow for a flat, comfortable surface to rest on. The afghan now bunched around his waist is also made of wool, dyed and knit by hand from the looks of it, and Shou takes a moment to run his fingers over the surface of it admiringly before he slides his sluggish legs out from under it. If it isn’t for the ache in his head and shoulder he might think he’s dreaming, with the way his fuzzy mind doesn’t quite grasp reality and the soft but constant hummed tune tries to lull him back to bed. He feels like he’s crossed over into another world, bare feet sinking into the coarse fur of the elk pelt that covers a portion of the house’s wooden floor.

The whole house appears to be one single room. The bed Shou is sitting on is set up against the wall furthest from the front door, nestled comfortably in the corner under a window. A shelf housing rows of neatly-folded clothes sits beside an identical empty one, and on the other side of that he can see a second bed, a matching knit afghan neatly tucked around it. It looks like it’s been tucked in very carefully and deliberately.

Gripping the shelf at his side, Shou hauls himself uncertainly to his feet. He sways slightly, reaching his other hand up to his face for a moment as a wave of dizziness washes over him. It passes, though, the dark spots clearing after a few seconds. He releases his hold on the shelf, taking a shaky breath to steady himself before he continues to explore the little cottage.

A neat kitchenette is set up against one wall, a large wood stove and oven taking up most of the space. A stone chimney rises from it to vent the smoke, disappearing through the sturdy roof of the house. Wooden countertops line the rest of the wall, held up by thin, hand-carved beams slotted into holes in the floor, and on top of them lay bowls of fruit and jars of various spices, filling the house with a mixture of aromas that make Shou’s nose tingle. Above the countertops, rows of shelves hold bowls, pans, pots, plates, and even some utensils. Large spoons and spatulas hang in rows from hooks underneath them, each one just a little different from the others.

In the center of the room is a modest kitchen table, made from smooth wood and accompanied by four matching chairs. In the center of it, a woven doily cushions a tall, thin glass vase, inside of which are resting a handful of sunflowers. A few brown, dry petals have fallen from them, but they look otherwise healthy and alive, their clipped ends half-submerged in clear water. Shou smooths his hand over the natural wood, feeling the veins and notches beneath his fingertips. The table is finished with a lacquer that gives off a pleasant floral scent, like lavender. Shou’s never seen a table this nice before, not even in the huge houses of the richest people in his town. He can’t help but marvel at all the personal touches he sees all over the place, each and every item in the house handmade with a skill and precision that he’s only seen from the master carpenters that come to sell their wares in his tiny village.

The house’s third wall is lined from floor to ceiling with shelves. Some of them contain little trinkets - shiny rocks, wooden carvings, stuffed dolls with embroidered eyes and patchwork limbs, beaded necklaces and polished rings - while others are filled entirely with books. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, brightly colored spines propped up next to black ones. Some of them look like they’ve been bound in a factory, their pages perfectly even and titles printed on, while others are bound with string and leather and are labeled by hand with dark ink. Shou can tell their owner has organized them very intentionally, but he can’t quite figure out how. Fiction novels sit beside textbooks on physics and mathematics, historical journals lay propped between children’s picture books, and in one corner he even manages to find a few books in a different language, all of them written by hand.

He pulls one out and thumbs through it briefly, and finds it filled with still-life drawings between lines of text he can’t read. There are illustrations of mountain scenery, of lakeshores sprouting cattail reeds and waterfalls careening over jagged cliffs. There are sketches of fruits and flowers, animals and cloudy skies, each of them incredibly detailed and true to life. He has to resist the urge to touch them, a habit he might indulge with the paintings and photographs in his home, but he really doesn’t want to smudge art like this.

He turns the page once more and finds himself in awe all over again. Staring back at him is a beautiful sketch of a boy, sitting in a grassy field with his legs drawn up to his chest. His back is facing Shou, his head tilted up to stare at the sky above, and stretched out from his back are two massive, gorgeous wings. They dwarf the boy with their sheer size, and yet they seem to fit him perfectly, arching up over his head and sloping back down until the ends of them just barely brush the grass behind him. On the boy’s face is a serene smile, eyes soft with fondness and bright with innocent admiration. His hair is carefully shaped, blunt bangs brushing his ears and forming a ring around his head, and Shou has the fleeting thought that his haircut would look incredibly stupid on anyone else but him. Instead, the subject of the drawing manages to make it look charming, in a plain sort of way, and Shou can’t help but wonder how accurate the drawing is to how this person must really look, if he exists at all.

Shou closes the book and replaces it as though he’d never touched it at all, and finally wanders toward the open front door of the house. The closer he gets to it, the louder and more clear the humming becomes, the soft sound quickly swallowed by the noise of the empty fields around them. Shou leans against the door frame and peeks around the corner, breathing stalling when he lays eyes on the source of the noise. He recognizes him instantly.

The boy is young, that much is clear to see. In fact, he looked to be around Shou’s age, or maybe a little older. He’s taller than Shou is, though not by much, but his build is much slimmer, a lightness to his stature that Shou doubts he can replicate. Everything about him is long, from his legs to his arms to the fingers loosely holding the handle of the broom that he sweeps in gentle arcs, chasing fallen leaves from the porch’s wooden floor. His skin is sun-dark, turned a muted copper as a result of long hours outdoors, and his back and shoulders are nearly entirely bared by the backless halterneck top he wears. Shou finds his eyes drawn immediately to the soft edges of his shoulders and the gentle curves of his arms, slim but toned, like a runner’s, and to the divot in the small of his back where his spine curves and disappears into the waistband of his pants. His thin feet are protected by a pair of sturdy-looking leather sandals, held unmoving by the fitted leather straps that secure them.

The most amazing part about him, however, is the pair of pitch-black wings that sprout from his shoulder blades, framed by the seams of his backless shirt. Their feathers shimmer in iridescent hues, sometimes appearing more blue or purple or red depending on what angle the light hits them from. Even half-folded, they take up a great deal of space, even more so than the boy himself does: they’re easily almost as tall as he is, the tops of them level with his head and the ends of his flight feathers hovering at the curve of his calves. They’re beautiful, like something from a fairy tale or a fable, and Shou has to stop himself from rushing over and impulsively threading his fingers into the downy feathers that poke out from between the boy’s shoulders just to see if they’re as soft as they look.

Shou isn’t sure how many seconds he stares before the boy notices his presence, instinctively turning his head to look at him with eyes that are wide with surprise. His humming stops abruptly, as does his sweeping, and he stumbles over his own movements just a bit as he straightens himself up and holds the broomstick to his chest in a distinctly protective manner. “You’re awake,” he says, then winces at his own obvious observation.

Shou can’t help the grin that comes to his face. “Nah, I’m just sleepwalking,” he replies teasingly, shifting his weight off the doorframe to just stand on the threshold of the house. Now that he’s not staring at the floor, Shou can get a good luck at the boy’s face, and he takes advantage of it to give him another once-over. His tan face is all soft curves, and his cheeks still hold just a hint of leftover fat from his childhood years, giving it a rounded look. His hair is short on the sides and longer on top, and it spikes out wildly in every direction. Shou can’t tell if it’s intentional or not, but he can’t help but find it charming anyway. Some of the untamed hair falls into his forehead, framing eyes that aren’t quite humanesque. It takes him a few seconds to realize that the boy’s eyes are pale yellow where a normal man’s would be white, and his irises are all black, not a sliver of color coming to them. They flit over him restlessly, taking in his appearance the same way Shou is taking in his. Now that he’s getting a closer look, he can see the small, dark feathers that sprout in odd places, like the strips of skin between the corners of his eyes and his ears, or along the curve of his shoulders. It’s simultaneously fascinating and just a little bit unnerving, seeing someone who looks so much like him but still so different.

The boy’s brow furrows at Shou’s unwithheld snark, lips pursing in a minute frown that Shou finds surprisingly endearing. “Right…” he murmurs uncertainly, moving to balance his broom against the rail that surrounds the porch. He clears his throat into his closed hand, clearly uncomfortable, then adds, “How do you feel?”

Shou hums, grin softening into something a little more genuine in response to the boy’s concern. “Well, I’m not dead, so that’s good,” he answers. “Thanks for taking care of me, by the way. I was, uh, pretty sure I was gonna die back there, before you showed up out of nowhere.”

The boy nods. “Yes, you mistook me for some sort of angel,” he confirms. Shou sees the corner of his mouth twitch, like he wants to smile but has stopped himself before he can. “There’s no need to mention it. You’re lucky it was me, though, and not another human, otherwise there would have been nothing they could have done.”

Well, if that isn’t ominous, Shou doesn’t know the meaning of the word. “I was that far gone, huh?” he sighs, raising a hand to push a few loose strands of hair back into place, slicked away from his forehead. “How did you manage to bring me back from the brink, anyway? I remember that you kissed me, which was… well, it was weird, I guess, and then I totally passed out.” From the time he’d lost consciousness on the forest floor until now he has no memories, no way to know how much time has passed since then.

“Kissed you?” the boy echoes, looking confused for a moment before he seems to realize what Ritsu’s talking about. “Oh, you mean when I lent you my breath? That was just a spell. I put you into a coma, essentially, to conserve your energy output before you starved to death.”

“You can do magic?” Shou breathes, eyes wide with awe. “That’s amazing! No one in my village can do magic, they don’t have the genes for it. Human characteristic, apparently, but I’ve always thought it would be cool to learn. What other kinds of magic can you do?” The words tumble from his lips without much forethought, even as the boy shifts uncomfortably on his feet in front of him.

The boy lifts a hand to absentmindedly rub at his opposite arm, glancing away. “Why don’t we sit down?” he suggests after a moment of silence, gesturing toward the table sitting, lonesome, in the middle of the one-room house. “I think there’s probably some stuff we should talk about, and you should really get something to eat if you want to get your strength back.” That said, he moves into the open front door, not bothering to wait and see if Shou’s following. The wings on his back rustle quietly as he walks, and Shou has to keep himself from falling into another speechless stupor as he watches the way the light touches them.

The growl of his stomach is what saves him this time, and he stifles a laugh at its fantastic comedic timing. “Yeah, food sounds pretty sweet right now,” he agrees. Before he goes inside, though, he drifts over to the rail and peeks out at the scenery that surrounds them. The house is set up on the bank of a river that rushes down from a tall mountain behind them and disappears into the thick forest on the house’s other side. Shou doesn’t recognize the scenery at all, but he can’t bring himself to worry too much when this new change of location is so pretty.

After a few seconds he moves back into the house, spotting the black-winged boy sorting through the bowl of fruit on his countertop. He pulls a few pieces out and moves them into another, smaller bowl, alongside a small loaf of sweet-smelling bread. He looks nervous, Shou notes, and when the boy glances sideways to meet his eyes he’s quick to avert his gaze again. Shou wonders if he looks as strange to the boy as the boy does to him, if they’re both anomalies of their separate civilizations. Judging by the empty scenery all around the little cottage, though, the boy doesn’t have much of a civilization to fall back on, so maybe he’s just nervous to meet another person at all.

“What’s your name?” Shou asks, sliding into one of the four sturdy chairs. It doesn’t even rock under his weight, each of its four legs the perfect length to sit level on the floor. He can’t help but feel another surge of amazement that nearly everything in this house has been crafted by hand.

The boy turns and slides the fruit and bread onto the table between them, hesitating for just a second before taking a seat across the table from Shou. “It’s Ritsu,” he replies, tone soft and uncertain. “What’s yours?”

Ritsu. The name is surprisingly mundane, the kind of name that, if Shou heard it called in his own village on any given day, would blend right in with the rest of the locals. “Call me Shou,” he says, leaning one elbow on the table in front of him and propping his chin up in his hand. “Where is this place? I’ve never been to this side of the forest before. Seems peaceful,” he continues, conjuring up a map of the area surrounding his village in his head. He wonders how far he’d managed to walk before passing out, and his much farther Ritsu had carried him in order to end up here.

Ritsu nods his head, letting one hand rest on top of the natural wood table while the other reaches for a slice of the bread between them. He tears a piece off of it to eat, and it’s then that Ritsu notices his hands. They’re flecked with tiny feathers that sprout from his wrists and shift when he moves, and they’re tipped with talons that look much sharper than Shou’s blunted nails. They remind him a bit of the unnecessarily long nails that the rich women in his town wear, painted in gaudy colors and long enough that it makes it difficult for them to do something as simple as holding a pencil properly. Ritsu seems undeterred by them, however, pulling apart the bread with coordinated hands that are simultaneously gentle and precise. “Not too far from where I found you. I would tell you what I call it, but it won’t mean anything to anyone other than me,” he replies in a very unhelpful way. After a moment, he reaches out and picks up a second slice of bread, holding it out to Shou.

Shou blinks, meeting Ritsu’s expectant gaze across the table, and accepts the bread from his outstretched hand. He tries to ignore the way their fingers brush against each other as he does, tries not to shiver when he feels the little feathers at his wrist tickle his fingertips. “Thanks,” he sighs, bringing it to his mouth and taking a bite of it without bothering to pick it to pieces like Ritsu is.

“So… what’s it like being a harpy?” Shou asks after another moment of tense silence. “You’re so mysterious out here, living by yourself. The stories say harpies thirst for their next kill and are never satisfied, but you don’t seem so bloodthirsty to me.”

Ritsu looks up at him with an expression that Shou can only place as offended, eyes narrowed and brows knit together. Then he scoffs, face screwing up in unhidden condemnation. “Humans will come up with any excuse to rile each other up, won’t they?” he replies contemptuously. “And I’m not a harpy, don’t compare me to those folk tales. Harpies don’t exist, that’s just the name the humans gave to my people after finding traces of us. We’ve never hunted humans.”

Shou tilts his head, leaning a little further forward in his seat. “Then what should I call you?” he asks.

Ritsu huffs out a breath, tearing another piece of bread from his slice. “You can call me by my name. It’s not like you’ll ever meet another one of me again,” he answers quietly, and the bitterness in his words is palpable.

Shou purses his lips, a bit unnerved at the sudden tenseness in the air, and casts a glance at the untouched bed, nestled in the corner beside the empty shelf. “What about the extra bed? It belongs to someone, doesn’t it?” he asks, watching Ritsu’s face carefully to gauge his response.

Ritsu stands up and turns his back to Shou, moving over to the counter and filling two glasses with water from a pitcher. “It used to be my brother’s,” he answers after a quiet moment, “but he’s not around to use it anymore.”

Curious as he is, Shou’s not so confident he should parse this particular subject. He can practically see the muscles in Ritsu’s back tense up as he speaks, his shoulders hunching up a little closer to his ears and his head purposefully turned away. “I see,” he just says instead. By now, his bread is long gone.

Ritsu returns to the table after another minute or so, sliding a glass of water in his direction. “You need to drink lots of fluids to replenish the ones you lost,” he instructs. “It was the dehydration that got to you first. How long were you in the woods for, anyway?”

Shou cups his hands around the glass and sighs. “Five days. It was stupid of me to think I could make it through the forest,” he grumbles, feeling his regrets from his days of walking catching up to him now.

Ritsu just nods, face carefully impassive. “In the late summer heat, it’s no wonder you got so weak so fast. You probably sweated out most of your body fluids in the first couple of days,” he explains. “Speaking of which, you should really change out of those sweaty clothes, they reek.”

Shou jumps, feeling a rush of mortification as he looks down at his bedraggled appearance. Now that Ritsu brings it up, he can definitely smell his own body odor clinging to his shirt, and he’s certain he must be covered in dirt and grass stains. He screws up his face in disgust, nodding his agreement. “Ugh, you’re right, how did I not notice before?” he sighs. He downs the rest of the glass of water as Ritsu moves over to the shelf where all his clothes are carefully arranged, then stands up to follow him, hovering a foot or so away as Ritsu peruses his wardrobe.

Ritsu turns to face Shou for a moment, looking him up and down, and Shou does his best not to squirm under his sharp, meticulous gaze until the winged boy turns away again and begins thumbing through a pile of shirts on one of the middle shelves. At least, Shou assumes they’re shirts, but they look nothing like the tee-shirts and button-ups Shou usually wears. When Ritsu pulls one out of the pile and holds it in front of him, his suspicions are confirmed.

“Wear these,” Ritsu instructs, pushing the top into his hands alongside a pair of loose-fitting cloth pants. “They’re thin and have good ventilation, so you won’t overheat as easily.”

“Uh, thanks,” Shou responds awkwardly, laying the fresh clothes on the bed. He changes his pants first, which is easy enough, then reaches over his head and grabs his shirt by the collar, pulling it up and over his head in a smooth, well-practiced motion. Then he reaches for Ritsu’s lent top, and pauses when he sees that it’s less of a shirt and more of a flat piece of fabric. Backless, like Ritsu’s current top is. “Um, not to sound ungrateful, but how the hell am I supposed to wear this?” he asks, incredulous. “It’s got no back on it!”

Ritsu casts him a confused glance, tilting his head. “Of course not, it’s kind of hard to wear a shirt with a back on it when you have these,” he points out, gesturing to the sprawling wings that sprout from his shoulders. “It’s not totally backless, anyway, it has hooks at the bottom that clasps in the back.”

“This is super weird,” Shou mumbles, mostly to himself, but Ritsu’s indignant snort says that he’s heard as well. Still, it’s better than nothing, so he slips the halter neck of the shirt over his head and fiddles with it until it lays somewhat comfortably against the back of his neck. It rides high in the front, brushing the bottom of his throat, then swoops down below his arms to hug him around his waist. He moves his hands to clasp the back of it like Ritsu had described, his fingers finding the little copper hooks, but as much as he tries, he can’t get the pieces to fit together. “This thing is so complicated,” he curses.

Ritsu lets out a sigh that’s probably meant to be annoyed, and he takes the hooks from Shou’s fingers. “Let me,” he says, more of a demand than an offer to help, and deftly fits the little metal hooks together so the shirt is snug around his waist. The pants are high-waisted, riding up past his belly button, but even with the extra fabric in place the shirt still leaves slivers of his stomach exposed.

“You really wear this stuff everyday?” Shou asks, tugging at the edge of the top and attempting to stare at his own back to confirm that it really is as bare as Ritsu’s is.

“Only in the summer,” Ritsu replies. “Summer clothes are easy, since I don’t have to worry about covering the skin around my wings. My winter clothes are a bit more complicated.” He gestures to his bottom shelf, but without picking up one of the aforementioned winter shirts and looking at it himself, Shou has no way to gauge what ‘complicated’ could possibly mean. “In the summer it’s easiest to wear these kinds of tops, or just not wear a shirt at all.”

Shou nods, figuring it makes about as much sense as it possibly can considering he’s currently standing in front of an honest-to-god winged person.

Ritsu takes a step back and admires his handiwork now that the outfit is properly in place. “You look much better now,” he comments. “Your dull clothes are ridiculously boring, you know. You’d think humans would have some sense of color.”

“We do, that’s just what I usually wear when I go hiking,” Shou replies, scooping up his faded brow tee-shirt and laying it out carefully. “And if you ask me, it’s you who looks more ridiculous!”

Ritsu makes a sound half between a sniff of disdain and a laugh, and when Shou glances over he sees the dark-haired boy fighting another smile. It makes Shou wonder why he feels the need to keep his reactions to himself, what kinds of reservations he has about Shou that keep him from letting loose and expressing himself. “Say, Ritsu,” he starts, moving to fold up his tee-shirt and pants until he figures out what to do with them later, “why’d you save me, anyway?”

The question makes Ritsu stop in his tracks, halfway to the table to gather and replace the bowls and glasses he’d used for breakfast. “Why do you ask?” he retorts, answering Shou’s question with one of his own, and it comes across defensive.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t seem terribly fond of humans,” Shou says, sitting down on the edge of the bed he’d woken up in. He shifts uncomfortably in his borrowed clothes, trying to ignore the way he can feel the drafts on his back now. “I mean, I can see why, humans do some pretty shitty stuff all the time, so what made you want to stop and rescue someone like me?”

Ritsu swallows, picking up the glasses and bowls and dropping them in the sink to be washed later. He lets his hands fall against the rim of the sink, bracing against the surface of it, and is quiet for a few long moments, brows knitted together so tightly that lines form between them. A deep frown tugs at his lips, lips that Shou knows to be soft and warm. “I don’t know,” he says after a moment, quiet and contemplative and maybe just a little lost.

There’s really nothing Shou can say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.

---

Shou finds himself in very little rush to get home, and to his surprise, Ritsu doesn’t rush him to leave. When Shou asks, he brushes it off with empty words, telling him he isn’t back to full strength yet and that he should wait another night, but three days later, when Shou is back to feeling well again, he still hesitates to leave.

He’s not quite sure what keeps him rooted to this barren, empty space. Ritsu is the only humanoid creature for miles, which would normally make Shou ache for the bustle of the marketplace or the empty chatter of the village women gossiping by the church, but instead he finds himself soothed by the noise of the wind in the trees nearby and the lull of Ritsu’s soft humming in the early mornings when he doesn’t realize Shou can hear him.

“Aren’t you weirded out?” Ritsu asks him once, when they’re sitting in the twin porch chairs underneath the hand-thatched awning overhead. The woven straw back of it itches against Shou’s exposed shoulders, but he’s growing more used to it every day. Ritsu continues, “A person with wings like a bird’s, clawed fingers and a feathered face. Doesn’t it make you even a little afraid?”

Shou laughs, loud and unwithheld. “Of course I’m weirded out, you’re like something out of a fairy tale. Afraid, though? You haven’t done anything to make me afraid of you,” he replies, flashing Ritsu a bright grin in return. “You saved my life, after all, it would be kinda rude if I was scared of you after all that.”

Ritsu hums, soft and thoughtful, and runs his fingers absentmindedly through the feathers of one wing. Shou’s caught him doing so a few times now, has watched the way he straightens the crooked feathers and lets the loose ones fall to the ground to be swept up later. He’s preening, Shou realizes, and the thought causes a smile to tug at the corners of his mouth. The little quirks he manages to catch Ritsu indulging in only endear him more to his new friend, if he can consider this friendship, and he finds himself feeling just a bit more fond of Ritsu with each day that passes. “I suppose it’s a good thing, that you’re not afraid,” Ritsu says after a long pause, his black-eyed gaze fixed in a point in the distance that Shou can’t follow.

Shou simply shrugs in reply. “I think it is,” he offers, and sees the way Ritsu softens to it, ever-so-slightly.

There’s a stretch of silence between them, comfortable and calm, and then Ritsu blurts, “Let’s go somewhere.”

“Okay,” Shou agrees immediately, sitting up in his seat, and he tries his best not so show how elated he is at Ritsu’s sudden, impulsive request. In the few days they’ve been together Ritsu has already proven himself to be thoughtful to a fault; he refuses to make even small decisions without thoroughly considering all of his options, so that fact that Ritsu has decided to do something without noticeable forethought sends a thrill of excitement through Shou. “Where should we go?” he asks, curious about what destination Ritsu has in mind.

Ritsu pushes himself to his sandal-clad feet, shaking his wings out and scattering a few dark feathers on the porch. “Someplace I used to go a lot. Get what you need, and we can go now.”

Shou doesn’t wait to be asked twice. He ducks into the house and grabs his tennis shoes, the ones in which he’d walked miles to get here, and slips them on over his sockless feet. Then, as somewhat of an afterthought, he snatches up his backpack from where he’d propped it up against the mostly-empty shelf by the bed he’d claimed and hefts it over one shoulder.

When he turns to head back out the front door, he spots Ritsu standing in front of one of his many bookshelves, holding a hand-bound book in his clawed hands. He runs the fingers of one hand over the cover of it, eyes downcast, and Shou is struck by the wistful, melancholic expression that crosses his face for just a moment before he slides the book into his own bag and settles the strap of it over his shoulder. A question perches on the tip of Shou’s tongue, a quiet curiosity that he has to hold himself back from voicing. There are plenty of things about himself that Ritsu’s hasn’t told him, and that’s okay with him. After all, Shou has plenty of things about himself that he hasn’t told Ritsu, either. It doesn’t keep his mind from wandering, though, wondering what those things could be.

They walk, because even though Ritsu says flying would be faster, he’s adamant that walking will be easier. Shou’s not sure whether or not Ritsu can support his weight and fly at the same time, anyway, and he doesn’t mind walking. The hardest part is scaling the hill behind the house, which is steep and a little slippery from the morning dew that still clings to it, and by the time they reach the crest of it both of them are just a little out of breath.

Shou’s breathlessness is partially due to something else, though, as Ritsu gestures with one feathered hand to the little valley nestled in the hills and Shou’s eyes land on what is quite possibly the most beautiful sight he’s seen since leaving his village all those days ago.

At the bottom of the hill is what appears to be a field of wildflowers, though most of them have wilted under the late summer sun’s glaring rays already. The few that are still standing are bright against the green of the rest of the valley, poking out of the tall grass so that their bright petals can be seen by all who pass by. Most notably, clumps of little sunflowers like the ones in Ritsu’s vase at his house can be seen cropping up all over the field, the bright sunlight only serving to make them look even more vibrant than before.

“Woah, this place is awesome!” Shou exclaims, face blooming into a broad grin. He finds himself reaching for Ritsu’s hand on instinct, fingers curling around his palm and pulling him down the hillside. The surprised yelp he lets out only serves to make Shou’s grin widen, but he’s conscious of the way Ritsu squeezes his hand back so he doesn’t lose his grip.

Shou doesn’t let go until the ground beneath their feet evens out again and he finds himself in one of the little sunflower patches. He drops Ritsu’s hand and flops unceremoniously down into the grass with a laugh, kicking his feet into the air in a burst of energy. The grass and dirt is rough against the exposed skin of his back, but he can’t bring himself to mind as he stares up at the great blue sky and the fluffy white clouds that occasionally cross it. The sun is warm, but not unbearably so, and its rays make everything around him look and feel so much brighter than he’s used to. He takes a deep breath of the sweet-smelling air, limbs flopping out all around him starfish-style, and lets himself be blessedly still for a few minutes.

Ritsu continues past him, black wings folded comfortably against his back as he drifts deeper into the field. Shou cranes his neck back and manages to catch glimpses of him through the tall grass as he walks, stopping periodically to bend over and touch the flowers that poke up through the grass. He looks peaceful, Shou notes, expression holding the closest thing to a smile Shou’s ever seen from him, but there’s a hint of bitterness behind it, too, that makes Shou’s own high spirits dip just a bit. He sits up, turning to give Ritsu a proper look, and watches as he sits down cross-legged in the grass not too far away and plucks a small but bright purple flower from the ground. He twists its stem between his fingers, quietly observing it, and Shou is suddenly and surprisingly reminded of the pencil sketch he’s stumbled upon during his first morning at Ritsu’s house.

Hit with a sudden urge, Shou quickly snatches up his backpack from where he’d discarded it at his side and opens it up, removing his sketchbook and a tin of pencils he’d brought with him from his home in his village. He shifts himself to sit cross-legged on the grass, flipping the book open to the nearest empty page.

He’s not sure if he can consider himself an artist, at least not by trade, but the scratch of his sketching pencil on paper is a familiar and comforting noise. Sketching has become somewhat of a hobby over the last few years, a way of relieving boredom or filling time when he has it. Sometimes he sketches memories, or tries to copy down the faces of people passing outside his window. This time, he finds his eyes drawn to Ritsu: to the not-quite-bittersweet expression on his face, to the little purple flower he twirls between clawed fingers, to the long grass that half-hides his legs and sways gently in the warm summer breeze. It’s like a painting, the kind of image that’s surreal enough that it shouldn’t be able to exist in the real world, and yet Shou sits, and stares at it, and has the undeniable urge to cement this moment for posterity in graphite.

His sketches are fast and rough at first as he focuses on copying down the base image and plotting out his canvas with light lines and geometric shapes. He roughs in the shape of Ritsu’s form sitting in the grass, cross-legged, one hand propping himself up in the grass while the other lightly grips the little bloom he’d claimed for himself. He sketches the curve of his shoulder and the arches of his wings, stretched out to accommodate their length while sitting, and attempts to capture the effortless messiness of his wild, untamed black hair. With softer, more deliberate strokes, he brings to life the line of Ritsu’s jaw and the slope of his nose, all soft edges and muted curves. There isn’t a sharp angle on him, and when he moves he does so with effortless grace and purpose that just serves to add to his ethereal beauty.

Shou would be hard-pressed to deny at this point that he does find Ritsu beautiful, and not just for his shimmering feathers or the way he seems to glow in a way only mythical creatures can. There are little things that bring this thought to mind, like his slender, careful fingers, or the annoyed little frown he gets whenever Shou tries to tease him. He’s never seen Ritsu really smile, but he imagines his smile must be beautiful, too. There’s no way it can’t be, coming from him.

He moves his pencil to capture the set of Ritsu’s mouth, but when he looks up to get another look, he finds that his companion has moved. He blinks, momentarily confused, until a distinct shadow falls over his sketchbook.

“What’re you doing over here? You look really intense,” Ritsu comments, leaning over Shou’s shoulder to get a look at what he’s working on. His expression quickly changes from confused to surprised when he recognizes the rough sketch, though. “Is that me?” he asks.

“You moved! Now it’s ruined,” Shou groans melodramatically. There’s no real anger or annoyance behind his words, though, and his sketch is mostly finished, anyway. “Don’t you know that the first rule of modeling is that you have to stay still? Otherwise the artist has to start over.” He tips his head back and offers Ritsu a smile, if only to reassure him that he’s really only joking.

Ritsu raises a brow at him, unimpressed, and turns his attention back to the rough sketch in Shou’s hands. “I didn’t know you were an artist,” he says, rather than trying to pick apart Shou’s attempted joke. “Why me, though?”

Shou shrugs, setting down his pencil for now and craning his neck back to look at Ritsu upside-down. “I just thought it would make for a good drawing,” he replies honestly. “I can leave it unfinished if you’re uncomfortable.”

Ritsu moves to sit at Shou’s side rather than leaning over him, shaking his head. “No, it’s fine, you can finish it,” he replies, and one of his hands drifts to the bag draped over one arm. He hesitates for just a moment before reaching inside and pulling out the hand-bound book Shou had seen him stow away earlier. He turns it over in his hands once, twice, then holds it out to Shou. “I guess you could say I’m a bit of an artist myself. I sketch in my journal sometimes, when I see something nice that I want to remember. You can look, if you want.”

“You’d let me read your journal? Hope you don’t have any deep, dark secrets in here you don’t want me to know about,” Shou quips, cracking open the book’s leather cover.

Ritsu snorts out what might be considered a laugh, tapping the first page with one long nail. “I wrote it in my mother’s language, you won’t be able to read it anyway,” he points out, quirking a brow in an amused manner. He drags a finger to the top of the page. “This is my handwriting, and this,” he adds, running his finger down the page to where the shape of the unfamiliar words changes just a bit, “is my brother’s handwriting. We used to take turns writing little passages in these books.”

The implied “before he left” hangs in the air between them, unspoken but felt and understood all the same. Shou nods, noting the way Ritsu’s neat, even script contrasts with his brother’s more messy, sloped style. He flips through a few pages of indecipherable writing before he reaches the first aforementioned drawing, a sketch of a new garden filled with tiny green sprouts. Each row of plants is meticulously labeled with a little sign written in that same language, unreadable to Shou, but it’s an impressive sketch all the same.

Most of the sketches in the book of are a similar calibre, still life drawings or landscape sketches of places Shou has yet to see. “You’re really talented,” he tells Ritsu after flipping through a few of them. In between the sketches, Ritsu and his brother’s alternating handwriting take up most of the extra space.

“I’ve been drawing since I was a kid,” Ritsu replies, reaching over Shou’s arm to flip the pages of the journal of his own accord until he reaches one in particular. His hand lingers on the page before he sits back and lets Shou look at it himself, pale yellow eyes trained on his expression from beside him.

Shou blinks in recognition when he lays eyes on the sketch Ritsu’s chosen to share with him. It’s different from the rest, far more detailed, and it takes up an entire page of the little journal. The only writing on it is a few letters written in the corner with Ritsu’s neat handwriting: some sort of caption, Shou guesses. A name, or maybe a date.

The sketch is of another boy, one that Shou recognizes, because he has the same face as the boy from the sketch he’d seen in Ritsu’s other book just a few days ago. He looks like he can’t be more than a few years older than Ritsu is, his face carrying the same soft, childlike curves that Ritsu’s does. On his face is a small, tentative smile, shy, like he’d modeled for this but could never get quite comfortable enough to make the emotion come across natural. Faintly, Shou can make out laugh lines around the corners of his eyes, and dimples at the edges of his mouth where his smile shows his teeth. Like the other sketch, his hair is cut bluntly all the way around his head, leaving straight bangs that fall nearly into his eyes. There’s something undeniably endearing about the sketch, as though it’d been drawn with a great deal of affection. “Is this him?” Shou asks. He doesn’t need to clarify who he’s talking about.

Ritsu nods. “His name was Shigeo - is Shigeo, I mean,” he says, catching himself as he begins to refer to his brother in the past tense. “He’s about a year and a half older than me, though he never could really keep up with me, growing up. Where I was quick to pick up concepts and new skills, he always took just a little longer. My parents worried about him a lot.” As he speaks, his eyes flick down to the sketch in the journal, something undeniably sad in the way he speaks.

Shou swallows, watching Ritsu’s face as he speaks. “Where did they go?” he asks. Surely they couldn’t have abandoned him?

“My parents passed away a few years ago,” Ritsu says, letting his hand fall away from the book. He draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, hugging them close to his body. “They were hunted by humans who were scared of them and their magic. They would have killed me, too, but Shige protected me.”

“You care a lot about him,” Shou murmurs, “and he cared a lot about you, so what changed?” After all, Shigeo isn’t here anymore. His bed and shelf are empty and there are no traces of him in the little house that used to belong to both of them, but at one point he’d been as active and present as Ritsu is now.

Ritsu’s expression darkens, and he leans forward to rest his chin atop his bent knees. A frown tugs at his mouth, and his gaze is distant. “He fell in love with a human,” he replies, the words barely travelling over the gentle noise of the wind, and Shou catches the way his voice wavers in an attempt to keep his emotions from coming through. “I didn’t like him. I tried to tell Shige that it was bad idea to get involved with humans, that he’d only get hurt in the long run, but he wouldn’t listen. Growing up, we always got along well, to the point where we only had a few silly little fights as brothers, but this was different. Neither of us was willing to change our mind.” His wings shift slightly against his back, drawing in around his shoulders as though to protect himself. “I said terrible things to him, about how I didn’t want to be his brother if he was going to choose a human over me. I told him that if he was going to make such a terrible decision, he might as well just leave. I didn’t think he’d take me seriously, at the time.”

Shou stares down at the sketch of Shigeo laying open in his lap and tries to imagine him standing beside a younger version of Ritsu, one with wide, dark eyes and arms that are a little shorter and chubbier than the ones he knows. He can easily picture a loving and dedicated siblings relationship between them, the kind Shou has never experienced himself but that he’s seen countless times in the children from his village, can easily wrap his mind around a protective Shigeo eager to please his genius little brother. It makes his heart ache to imagine what such a bad fight between the two of them must have felt like. It’s a vulnerable memory, the one that Ritsu has chosen to impart to him. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asks after a moment, folding the journal shut and holding it tightly with both hands. “Why save me, why let me hang around you for so long, why tell me about your family? I thought you hated humans.”

“I do hate them,” Ritsu says immediately, squeezing his knees closer to his chest, and his gaze hardens with regret and anger and loss. “They took my parents, they took my brother.” He pauses to take a breath, shaky and tense, and buries his face in his arms so that Shou can no longer see his face. “I hate them… but I don’t hate you.”

Shou forgets to breathe for a moment, stunned speechless. He’d known, of course, that Ritsu can’t possibly hate him, but it’s still shocking to have it laid out so plainly. Shou had never considered that he might be the exception to the rule, the lone redeemable human that Ritsu has chosen to place his bets on. That if he had been someone else, Ritsu might not have deigned it necessary to try to save his life. “But why me?” he repeats, desperate to know what part of himself was the part that Ritsu had seen and decided was worthy of saving. “Why am I different from everyone else who tried to cross that forest and never made it to the other side?”

Ritsu lets out a long breath into his arms before he raises his head once more. He still can’t look Shou in the eye, though, and he stares stubbornly at the patches of bright flowers instead. “Did you ever realize why the forest seemed so endless and impossible to navigate?” he asks. “It’s because it’s guarded by a magical trap. My brother and I laid it when our parents were killed, to keep humans from ever finding this place again. Anyone who walks into the forest is cursed to wander it until they die from starvation or are killed by wild animals.”

Shou hums, remembering the way his map had become all but useless once he’d walked deep enough into the forest. Without magic of his own, it would have been impossible to sense a trap laying in wait for him. “So that’s why I could never find the end, even after five days of walking,” he murmurs.

Ritsu nods. “Well, we both helped to lay down the spell, but Shigeo was always far stronger than I was when it came to magic. His powers are deeply rooted in people’s emotions, including his own, and it made it difficult for him to control them,” he continues, picking at the purple flower still pinched between his fingers. He tears a petal from it and lets it fall into the grass, nervous. “His powers created a link between the two of us and the emotions of those who would enter the forest. We could feel their anger and their killing intent, but we could also feel the fear they felt in their final moments, their regret and desire to keep living. I tried to ignore it, but Shigeo never could. He never admitted it out loud, but I could tell it tortured him inside, even as the people walking into the forest become fewer and far between. I think that his connection to the trap is part of what led him to start caring for the humans.” He pauses, lowering his gaze, and adds, “Empathy is a powerful thing.”

“So, you knew I was in the forest the whole time?” Shou clarifies, leaning forward and looking up into Ritsu’s face.

By this point, Ritsu’s plucked the flower bare, nothing but its brown middle left attached to the stem until Ritsu pinches that part off, too. “Yes,” he replies. There isn’t an ounce of regret in his voice, but after hearing his story, Shou can’t find it in himself to be annoyed by it. Ritsu continues, “As soon as you entered the forest, I knew you were there, but you seemed… different from the others. You weren’t scared, and you weren’t angry. You weren’t lost, either, like the children would that sometimes wander into the forest without knowing where they were. There was something driving you, I could tell, but it wasn’t a desire for revenge or self-preservation like the hunters that used to come after my brother and me.” He drops the flower’s browning stem, lets it be swallowed up by the tall grass around him. “I saved you because I could tell you didn’t come to hurt me, and because part of me was curious to see if a human really did exist who could look at me without fear or anger. I thought that maybe then, I could start to understand the feelings that would make my brother want to leave me behind.”

Shou swallows, glancing down at his legs, splayed out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. It hasn’t occurred to him until now just how insanely lucky he is to be alive right now, now fortunate it is that Ritsu had decided to let him be the one to change his mind about humanity. “Do you think you understand any better, now?” he asks, voice soft and curious.

Ritsu squeezes his legs impossibly tighter against his chest. “Yeah, I think I do,” he admits, but when Shou chances another glance at him, he doesn’t find peace or closure in Ritsu’s gaze like he might expect. Instead, Ritsu just slumps with regret. His dark eyes are clouded with grief, as though this discovery has condemned something within him. “I do, and that’s the scary part.”

---

Neither of them speaks on the way back to Ritsu’s house. The sun is beginning to set behind the horizon by the time they make it back, and Shou’s stomach is grumbling. He grabs an apple from the fruit bowl to graze on while Ritsu sweeps the feathers and early fall leaves from off the deck, and he tries not to think too hard about the implications of the day’s revelations. He plops down on the edge of the bed that used to be Shigeo’s, a person who Shou now has a name and a face to attach to it. A person who still has a place in this house, should he ever come back to reclaim it. It’s not a place that Shou can keep for himself much longer, and he knows it. Guess I have to go home sometime, huh? he thinks to himself, and the thought leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

Ritsu comes inside and closes the door behind him, leaning the broom up in the corner by the coat rack. He moves quietly over to his shelf to change into his night clothes while Shou lays on the soft mattress, and when he’s ready to climb into bed himself, he turns to face him. “Shou,” he says, hesitantly, fiddling with the fingers on one of his hands. “I want you to know, I’m… I’m really glad I met you.”

Shou sits up in the bed, eyebrows raised in quiet surprise, but his reply is caught in his throat when he sees the small but undeniable smile on Ritsu’s face. It’s shaky, like he’s fighting the urge to stifle it the way he has so many times already, but it’s still there. It’s slightly crooked and, Shou notices, entirely humanesque, holding the same blunted incisors and sharp canines his own mouth carries. The sight of this little smile, simultaneously remarkable and unremarkable, is enough to send Shou’s heart somersaulting in his chest, the words on his tongue dying before they have the chance to see daylight.

It’s irrevocably beautiful, to Shou.

“I-I’m glad I met you, too,” he finally stammers, once he’s managed to get a grip on his thoughts long enough to form a coherent sentence, though he can’t quite suppress the awe-struck stutter that accompanies his words. “You’re a good friend, Ritsu. I’m really grateful that you decided to save me, that day.”

Ritsu doesn’t say anything in return, just flashes him another little smile and, oh, Shou could definitely get used to seeing that. Then he blows out the candle keeping the room dimly lit and plunges it into darkness, crawling into his own bed for the night.

---

Shou decides the following morning that it’s past time he returns to his village. He has a house and a job waiting for him at home, after all, or at least he hopes he still does, and while he doesn’t have any really close friends, his neighbors are bound to be wondering where he’s gone off to by now. He tells Ritsu as much as he packs up his sketchbook and his pencils and prepares to start the walk back home.

He pretends not to notice the way Ritsu stifles his disappointment under a layer of practiced calm. “Are you sure? If you need an extra day, it really wouldn’t be that big of a deal,” he offers, but Shou just shakes his head and offers Ritsu a bittersweet smile.

“No, I can’t do that. This was never meant to be permanent, anyway, I’ve just been borrowing your extra space from your brother. He’ll need it once he decides to come home,” he replies, gesturing to the empty bed and shelf nestled into the back corner of the house. “Although, it may be a good idea to invest in, like, a bedroll or something, in case he decides to bring his boyfriend with him.”

The suggestion makes Ritsu screw up his face in unhidden disgust, drawing a loud laugh out of Shou’s mouth at the sight of it. Ritsu rolls his eyes, long-suffering. “Yeah, alright,” he sighs, and follows Shou to the door to he can give him a proper send-off.

“You’re sure I won’t get lost again in there?” Shou asks, pointing to the magically trapped forest that lays sprawling in front of him. “I just walk straight, and I’ll make it home?”

Ritsu snorts, raising an incredulous brow at him. “Of course, I know what I’m doing,” he assures. “My brother may have been the one strong enough to lay the trap in the first place, but the illusion on it is all from me. I can manipulate it in any way I want. I won’t take you more than an hour or two to make it back without the trap getting in your way.”

Shou nods, taking comfort in Ritsu’s confidence as the two of them stand side-by-side facing the woods. “Well then, I guess this is goodbye,” he says, and tries not to let show the way the words make his heart fall and his throat feel just a little tighter.

Ritsu shakes his head, laying a hand on Shou’s shoulder. “It’s not ‘goodbye’, it’s ‘see you later’,” he corrects, and lets slip one of those small, kind smiles. “I don’t expect you’ll be able to resist coming back anyway, even if I tried to stop you, so I may as well give you permission to come visit before you end up lost in the forest again.” He plays it off in a casual manner, but the way his neck flushes just slightly pinker than usual gives away his true intentions.

Shou doesn’t bother to fight the grin that comes to his face at this, and before he can think better of it he pulls Ritsu in for a quick, tight hug. He catches the little squeak of surprise Ritsu makes in response to it, but his friend doesn’t pull away, lifting his arms to tentatively return the brief embrace. One of Shou’s hands finds its way into the downy feathers between Ritsu’s shoulders, soft as cotton between his fingers, while Ritsu’s splay against his back and squeeze him once, gently.

“Come back soon,” Ritsu mumbles against Shou’s shoulder before he pulls away, letting his hands linger for just a moment before he lets them drop back to his sides.

“Count on it,” Shou replies with a bright grin, offering Ritsu one last clap on the shoulder before he turns and begins to walk toward the forest. “I’ll see you later,” he adds over his shoulder, raising a hand in an energetic wave as he reaches the edge of the trees. He watches just long enough to see Ritsu return his wave before he turns and disappears into the forest, homeward bound.

---

When he would reach his lonely little house just under two hours later, his neighbors would greet him with worried words and frightened expressions, and when he would tell them where he’d gone and why, they would ask him if he’d found anything worthwhile after so many days away from home.

“No,” he would say, with a helpless little smile. “Nothing at all.”

#mob psycho 100 #mp100 #ritshou #kageyama ritsu #suzuki shou #kageyama shigeo #fanfiction #mp100 fanfic #wings au #reach au #winged ritsu #winged shigeo #alternate universe #dehydration #near death experience #serendipitousfics

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kennethmontiveros · 4 years