Crimson could not remember ever having been happier, or more frustrated, in her life. She quite literally could not remember. So far as her memory could recall, her life began with her delivery to Mab's court. She had been trussed like a gamefowl, carried in by two of her kindred as an offering to the Queen of Air and Darkness. Everything that came after that had been misery and slightly less misery until she had met Richard, or Shard as he had been called then. Such a brief meeting, but such an incredible turning point. She had never expected to gain her freedom, but Lord Oberon had chosen to be merciful in his granting of her desired boon. Queen Mab might have gainsayed him had he stood alone, but not with her own sister at his side, and so Crimson Gaze had found herself in a euphoric tailspin as she was ejected into the mortal realms with Richard. Her mate, or her intended mate. Not that he was being very cooperative with her intentions, hence her frustration.

She was learning much in this new world that was dominated by humans and technology, and not the least of those things was that Richard was a rather frustrating individual. He had accepted her into his home, far larger than the cramped closet she had been forced to nest in when not needed for performances and games, yet the human shifter refused to progress things further. She was a shifter as well, now, just the same as he was, both human and hawk, the same as he was, and they were nesting together, but he refused to accept her as his mate! Everything in her said that the natural progression of things was being balked, and she did not understand why. She supposed that it might be because she lacked the ability to care for herself in this new world, which she would find completely understandable if only he would tell her that. He might very well see her as more of a chick to be tended and cared for than a viable mate, so she was working very hard to learn in order to prove otherwise.

Cyrillion Bastion was a great help in that. The half-dragon sorcerer was known to her from her time as Mab's pet. He and his mate, Svetlana, had been relatively frequent visitors on official business in his role as Ambassador of the White Dragon Flight. She had always been surprised at his kindness, especially to those who stood lower than himself in the hierarchy. He was a clever male, highly intelligent and cunning, quick to see the turbulence in his flight path and avoid it. Or better yet, to force one of those who opposed his intentions into it. He had even, once, managed to balk Queen Mab herself and had done so in such a way that she ended up agreeing with his proposal instead. It had been rather incredible to witness, and so she was very attentive to his teachings, and those of his mate.

Svetlana taught simple things, such as how to dress oneself so as to be acceptable in public, how to use the various cooking implements and eating utensils, how to use the various electronic devices that humans were so fond of, and so on. Very basic things that were necessary to survive in the human world. Cyrillion taught more complicated things, such as the history of the human race, mathematics, how to do taxes, and so on. The more complex and arcane aspects of survival in the human world. She spent most of every day at their estate absorbing as much information as possible and demonstrating her grasp of it to their satisfaction. It had been only a month and a half since her arrival in the mortal realms, and they judged that she would be ready to attend the college properly in only a month or two more at her current rate of learning. Admittedly, that was also aided by the flock that lived there.

She called them sisters but they were closer to cousins, of the same family but only tangentially related to herself. Domesticated harpies. She had met many of them as Mab's pet hunting bird, killed many of them, competed against more, and it had left her with a slight distaste for the various breeds that was born more out of pity than anything else. They had been bred for appearance, mostly, made to look pretty for their fae masters to the detriment of their predatory abilities. Those who had been bred for utility were... ugly creatures. Vicious, ugly creatures, unfit for socialization. She was quite glad to be of wild stock, and Cyrillion's flock found her to be fascinating. She had many stories of the fae courts to relate, and they helped her to better understand the things that Cyrillion and Svetlana taught her.

While Richard did not yet trust her to do anything on her own, she was taking as much initiative as she was able to prove that she could be trusted, at least a little bit. She helped him with cooking, both breakfast and dinner, with the cleaning up after meals, with ensuring the cleanliness of the apartment, and with managing Angelmaris. The fae lord was an annoyance that she could have done without. Thankfully, he was afraid of her, which was a great aid in making him comport himself in a manner acceptable to Richard. With his ability to access magic curtailed by Richard's command, the faerie was entirely vulnerable to her, and he was well aware of her dislike for him. He had been part of Mab's court as well, frequently joining in with his peers to torment her. It had been impersonal on his part, but she had taken it quite personally, and there was a long list of transgressions for which he would need to atone. She did not, however, return the favor. Richard would not like that.

Instead, she did her best to help guide the fae in the same ways that Svetlana and Cyrillion (and the flock) guided her. In that way, she hoped to prove that she would be desirable as the mother to his chicks. While he showed gratitude for her assistance, he seemed to be entirely missing the point that she was attempting to make. Frustrating! The human was kind, considerate, gentle, protective, strong, and supportive, everything that one could desire in a mate, and she had been rather blatant in her desire, yet he had rebuffed her. Doubly frustrating! He had even learned how to take on a harpy form, mimicking her natural appearance, and he failed to see how that might attract her even further or hint that he might well be attracted to her. She had thought it a sure sign of his interest, but he insisted that it had simply been an experiment to see if he could take on such a form after her own display. Curiosity had driven him rather than any attempt to either make himself even more desirable or more like her. Trebly frustrating!

When it came right down to it, she had to admit that she did not understand the process by which humans usually chose their mates. As a shifter, she would have expected Richard to take a more raptoral approach, but he seemed to have far more of a human outlook on things. So, with her own attempts to engage him in courting having resulted in failure, she turned to her new teacher for further assistance.

"Mistress Svetlana, I am wanting to ask you some questions, but I am not sure if they are something that you would be able to answer," she haltingly began as she helped to knead dough that would soon be baked into bread. "They are regarding... Richard."

"I was wondering how long you'd take to work up to this," the exceptionally tall, exceptionally muscular blonde replied with a kindly smile. "Go ahead, ask what you want, and I'll answer as best I can. And I really hope you get over calling me Mistress sometime soon."

"I am sorry. I forget sometimes. But Mistress... uh... Miss? Svetlana?"

"I guess Miss will work for now, if that's the best I can get."

"Yes, Miss Svetlana." Crimson found her words stalling out. She wanted to approach the subject from an oblique angle, side-slipping towards the topic that she wanted to discuss before pouncing upon it. But she had never been a very subtle hunter, and so she decided to dive for the target. "How would I go about getting him to accept me as his mate?"

Svetlana let out an amused snort and gave the harpy an appraising look. "Well, I really don't think that's something I can help with, but I can make a few suggestions that might give you a bit of a boost in that direction." Crimson nodded, so she continued. "Well, my first suggestion would be to give up."

"Give up!" the harpy sputtered. She felt hurt, wounded, like the wings of her heart had been snapped so that it spiraled down to smash against the ground. "But... but I..."

"No, no, hun, I don't mean for good!" The wolf shifter took her shoulders and guided her to a seat, handing her a cloth to wipe the flour from her hands. "I meant that you... Well, I really don't think that he's exactly noticed, but you've been trying a bit hard. I'm not sure how you act around him at home, but you need to give the boy some space out in public at the very least. You tend to cling up on him like he's claimed, and he's not. I'm sure he feels responsible for you, and because you're not from here, he's making some concessions regarding your behavior, but you have to give him some room. Humans like to get to know someone before they decide to spend the rest of their lives together, and you're acting like he's already your lifemate instead of..."

"Instead of my... owner..."

"No! No. Not your owner." Svetlana clasped her shoulders and gave her a slight shake. "He doesn't think like that, and you shouldn't either. He's your custodian at absolute worst but never your owner. Crimson, Richard sees you as his responsibility, his vassal, and he acts the part of your liege lord, but he's also... conscientious. He knows that those who have power over others can sometimes, even unintentionally, wield that power against them. He's going to be very careful to set very strict boundaries, particularly for himself, and it will be a while before he feels like he can relax those boundaries. He's like Cyrillion. He cares about those who rely on him, who depend on him, who look to him for guidance and leadership. Like you. Like Angelmaris. If he didn't care, he wouldn't be trying as hard as he is to socialize that little anklebiter, and he would've let you force yourself onto him instead of keeping you at arm's length like he has been. The thing is, Crimson, he's a human before anything else, and he's a very good person on top of that. You can't expect him to react like another harpy would, or even like a regular hawk would. Just being interested in him isn't enough, and if you keep pushing yourself on him, he might end up the exact opposite of interested in you. So you need to back off, give him time to adjust to the new situation, and get to know him as a person. Heck, you might not even want to be with him after you learn more about him.

"Not that there's anything wrong with him," Svetlana hastened to add at the harpy's glare. "He's a good boy, very upstanding, no skeletons in the closet that Cy or I could sniff out. I'm just saying that you might find his personality doesn't compliment yours very well. I know that's not something most harpies tend to worry about, but it's something to consider."

Crimson let out a long sigh and shook her head. "You talk of what most harpies want or do or feel, and I do not know these things. I only know what I feel and want, and so I do what seems like the right thing, but it is not."

Svetlana put a crooked finger beneath her chin and lifted her head to peer into her scarlet-hued eyes. "Aw, no, she didn't... No, no, she did. Damn. Well, that's just terrible. Believe me, I know. I guess your mom thought it would be better for you not to know where you came from." The wolf shifter sat back and let out a sigh of her own. "Well, I can't say that I blame her. Kinda wish my dad had done the same sometimes, though I've managed to patch things up with my old pack over the years."

Crimson's gaze turned sharp and questioning, and the Amazonian woman gave a sad nod. "Yup. It was a long time ago, and nowhere near here, but I was meant to be a sacrifice to the draugr. It helped keep the peace since the pack didn't have the strength and numbers to stand against them properly. Cy saved me, helped to broker a true peace between the draugr and the pack over time. He was raised mostly human, too, and wolves... well, we tend to latch onto the strongest male around. I stuck with him, hanging on like a lovesick pup for a long while, and he let me hang around, but he didn't treat me any differently than anyone else who followed him. So, I tried doing some things to get his attention, and then I tried doing some really stupid things when those didn't work. Took nearly getting myself killed before I realized how dumb I was being. And the thing is, what I was doing might well have impressed an alpha wolf, but Cyrillion Bastion is not a wolf. He's really not even a dragon, unless you want to argue about his intelligence and the way he takes a long view of every last little thing.

"So, I gave up. Or rather, I gave up on how I was going about it all. Instead of trying to prove to him how much of an alpha I was, I started listening to him. Talking with him. I stopped trying to impress him, and I got to know him. And in doing that, he got to know me. And, y'know, obviously everything worked out the way I had wanted to start with, but it was because I gave up on doing it the wrong way. I stopped trying to do things on my own terms, and I did things on his. Now, I'm not saying that's absolutely guaranteed to work, mind you. You might well find out that you like the idea of him a lot more than the actual him, or he just might never get interested in you. But it's the way I suggest going about things. Stop trying to make him fit into how you want him to be, learn who he really is, and only then think about if he'd be an acceptable mate."

"I... see... I will try to do as you say."

They returned to kneading the dough, and Svetlana helped her to begin pinching off parts to shape into rolls. Her long residence within the Winter Queen's quart where one must always be both wary and attentive had trained her to multitask, so she was able to put most of her mind to considering the new insights that she had been given. And she could see the truth of the wolf shifter's words almost immediately. She did not know how wild harpies chose their mates, so she had been following her instincts, instincts that Richard did not share. Her domesticated cousins only rarely got the opportunity to do so; in the vast majority of cases, all those that she knew of, their owners would choose a mate for them, and that was definitely not an example to follow. Richard would most assuredly be made even more uncomfortable if she asked him to pick a mate for her, and she didn't want anyone else besides. So, following Svetlana's advice was the best thing that she could do for now.

The problem there, of course, was that she didn't know how else to act, either. She didn't want to act towards him the way that she had been forced to act towards Mab and the other faeries at court. But if he was not to be her mate, or not yet, then she was unsure as to how to treat him. If she chose to view him as a flockmate, that would be worse. Her instincts insisted that a lower ranking flockmate, like Angelmaris, should be made to obey her, and she should seek to curry favor with a higher ranking one. Both of those had mating rights intertwined with them, so neither would do. Then she struck upon inspiration.

When she had first been brought to the Bastion Estate, she had immediately seen the harpy flock and had wanted to meet them. She had of course immediately seen that they were of domesticated breeding lines rather than like herself, but she had not attempted to enforce dominance over them despite her instincts insisting that they should be made to recognize her superiority. Instead, she had approached them as equals, as strangers whom she was both curious and eager to meet, as she would have approached another of the fae's pets whom she was allowed to be friendly towards. As she would have approached Shard the hawk had they been able to meet before the race, before she had known he was Richard, before she had known he was a shifter, before she had decided to be his mate and wish for his freedom as thanks for his assistance.

They put the rolls into the oven to bake, and Crimson came to a decision. "Miss Svetlana, I have another thing to ask of you..."

When Richard arrived with Angelmaris, the harpy waited inside the house rather than going out to meet him in her usual eager manner. She was nervous, hoping that he would understand and not reject her. Her request to Svetlana had been such that the wolf shifter would have the option to adopt her if the hawk shifter reacted badly. Of course, that contingency and the worry that had inspired it were for nothing. It was only a few minutes after his car had pulled into the drive that the harpy was called out of the house. She had assumed her true form for this reintroduction and preened herself near to the point of fraying her feathers from anxiety, so her appearance was a bit more frazzled and demure than she would have liked, but Richard schooled himself to polite interest as much as he could.

"Richard, this is Crimson Gaze, called Scarlet Crimson Aspectum in the mortal realm," Svetlana announced. "She is freshly arrived from Faerie, and I would consider it to be a personal favor if you would take her under your wing and assist her in learning to live here. Will you accept her as your cohort and companion until such time as I deem her capable of surviving and thriving on her own?"

"Of course, Svetlana," he answered, and Crimson tried to hide the relief that flooded her. "I consider it an honor to even be asked. Will you be ready to leave soon?"

The last had been directed at the harpy, and she realized that she would need to resume her human form and get dressed before they could leave, and it made her feel silly despite how proper it seemed to greet him in her true form. She nodded and trotted back into the house to don her garb, but she still found herself pleased with the outcome. Now that she had things correctly settled in her mind, she could begin the process that Svetlana had suggested, finding out more about Richard. And once she had done that, she could resume trying to win him as a mate with the help of that knowledge.