[Prior listens with his head tipped into the dark. He knows enough about the result: bandages wrapping Byerly's hands, bloodied and bad enough to need more than human healing could achieve. He knows about the days laying pale and unnaturally still, for all the world like he'd been tucked into an open coffin. It was enough to make him wonder if he'd been rescued from his own kidnappers at all, or if this was just another poison-tipped arrow to their bow.]

It had wings. The creature. Wings and claws and it moved like a hawk in the dark. [He'd caught glimpses not just from Byerly but others in the sanctuary who found the thing waiting again in sleep when they should have been safe. At first he'd taken it for another visitation of his own: wingbeats and screeching in the dark.] I woke him. Well, both of us really. It was either that or get stuck there too. So I woke him, but I don't know if I chased it off.