“Get comfy,” he tells the bird, simply. “Things might get a little bumpy.”

Lambert zips the bag shut, not worried about any problems with ventilation, dropping the crow in darkness save for the pinpricks of light that shine through the small holes in the cloth. It’s also a dude’s gym bag, cleared of its usual contents or not, so it’s probably lucky crows have a poor sense of smell. Reclaiming his hoodie, he tugs the hood up over his head, then stops by the unsorted lost and found bin, liberating a promisingly pointy umbrella before he heads out.

If he’s about to be attacked again, he’d rather not head out there unarmed, and he slings his gym bag over his shoulder carefully, gripping the umbrella tight. A couple of years navigating this campus means he’s figured out the more efficient ways to get from building to building while being outside as little as possible, and he takes advantage of that now, keeping an eye on his surroundings for anything that might be trailing him as he goes. Twenty minutes of ducking in and out of buildings and wandering out of exits later, he emerges on the other side of campus, stepping to another bus that will take him closer to the apartment just in time for the clouds above the city to crack open and begin to shower Portland with unseasonal rain