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Six months since Victim had crash landed into the Outernet. Six months of learning how people worked. Six months of having a community. Six months of knowing Mitsi and gradually knowing she was the best person he could have ever shared this with.
Six months, and he was beginning to feel phantom pain in his back. It wasn’t bad, nothing compared to before. But it was unexplained, and Victim didn’t do well with unexplained things. It didn’t feel like the normal back pain that came with a day of hard work or sleeping wrong. It felt more localized, and specific, like there was a purpose to it. And his head had been foggy alongside it. His focus wasn’t as good, and he was more prone to zoning out than he usually was.
He decided to take a day off from fixing various things around the Village when he woke up for the fifth day in a row of this feeling of just being vaguely off. When it started, he mentioned it to Mitsi. She always asked more specific questions about what felt off, but he wasn’t usually able to put a word to it. He hated to disappoint, but he really just didn’t have that same natural understanding of feelings that she did. He understood mechanics, the logical order of things more than anything else, feelings were always too subjective.
Maybe a day to himself would clear his head.
He wandered the village and gained the most interest in spending some time at the top of the windmill. It had always felt like a comforting spot even from the beginning, and he often found himself returning to it just to look over the village and feel the movement of the air. The air never moved on the PC.
Being up there did make him feel a little better, but it wasn’t doing what he wanted it to do. That vague wrongness that had been following him that was different from everything else that followed him was persisting, even if it was weakened by retreating to his favorite spot.
He watched the movements of the villagers and gave small waves to the ones that spotted him and waved first, and kept an eye on the shifting patterns of the clouds, broken up by the occasional flock of birds or sheep grazing in the fields.
After a little while, he spotted Mitsi walking around and speaking with some of the villagers before one pointed him out to her. He smiled, watching her say hello to everyone who walked by, knowing she was calling them by name and asking about the small intricacies of each of their lives. She was great like that. He once asked her how she remembered everything about everyone, and she told him she just remembered. He gave her plenty of grief for that lie when he spotted her writing down notes about everyone in a small journal she kept on her person.
She waved at him from the ground, making a gesture that asked if she could join him, and he gave an affirming gesture back so she knew he was in a good enough mood for his alone time to be interrupted by her.
She climbed up the windmill with a good amount of speed, given that she was practiced with getting up there.
“Fancy a bit of company?” She asked, hoisting herself up the last rung of the ladder and taking a spot next to Victim.
“Always from you,” he said, moving over so she had more space to sit.
She happily took a seat next to him.
“You doing okay?” She asked. “You seem off.”
Victim sighed. Of course she had noticed, she always noticed. He didn’t know how she did it.
“I’m not sure. I feel strange,” he said. She hummed and propped her chin on her hand to show she was listening. “My back hurts, but I didn’t hurt it.”
“I wondered,” she said. “You haven’t touched your back to the wall or any chairs in a few days. Do you think you need to see a doctor?”
Victim grimaced at the idea and looked away briefly.
“I’d rather not. I don’t like the idea of someone poking around me looking for a problem.”
She flashed him a fun smile and nudged him with her shoulder.
“How do you like the idea of me poking around?” She teased, and clung an arm around him. He smiled.
“Only if it’s you.”
She giggled and started giving friendly pokes. It was a genuinely nice game they would play. She would try to poke him somewhere and he would lightly try to fend her off until one of them got bored.
They were being more careful, since they were up on the windmill, so the game was going slower than it usually did, but it remained fun as always, even if Victim was ignoring the dull soreness in his back and cloudiness in his head. He batted away some of her attempts to get him in the side and near the head, and even a fake out where she pretended to get him in the leg and sneak one with her other hand over to his arm.
And then she actually got him when she forgot for just a second that his back was actually hurting him and he was expecting her to go for the front, and it sent a worrying shock of pain through him.
Victim startled and jolted. He hadn’t expected it to actually hurt that bad, he knew she had just gave a playful jab at him, she had done it before and it was fine. Mitsi noticed it was different as well, and stopped quickly.
“Did that hurt?” She asked, placing a hand on his shoulder while she tried to look at where she got him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think I did that any harder than usual.”
“Uh, no, I don’t think you did. Sorry, I wasn’t expecting it to do that.”
Mitsi gave him a worried look.
“I think you need to see a doctor. If it’s hurting you that bad you should get that checked out.”
“Mits, it’s fine. It wasn’t that bad, I just wasn’t expecting it. I don’t need a doctor.”
She gave him an unimpressed look and shook her head.
“No, you have a scary high pain tolerance,” she argued and Victim went quiet. She didn’t know why he had that pain tolerance. He hadn’t realized she had noticed it. “I watched you smash your hand with a hammer two weeks ago, and you barely flinched. If that’s getting you and you don’t know why, you need to get that looked at. What if it gets worse?”
“It’ll go away. It’s fine. I can probably just sleep it off.”
“Please Vic?” She gave him the sweet eyes. Oh, she knew what she was doing, she knew he didn’t like denying her of anything. Clever, very clever. “I’ll go with you.”
She kept up the act, keeping that innocent look in her eyes.
“That’s very sneaky, Mitsi,” he said in a neutral tone that teased at fondness. She smirked and looked upwards with a little half-shrug.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she obviously lied. Victim sighed.
“Fine,” he conceded. “I’ll go. And then you’ll find out that it’s actually nothing.”
“If it’s nothing, I’ll buy you a coffee and you can rub it in my face.”
He smiled and shifted to stand up. He extended a hand to help her up.
“Coffee is overpriced,” he argued lightheartedly. “It’s not that hard to get a hold of.”
She shrugged. “Did you see the amount of money we made on the last job? Both of us can afford it and probably twenty more for the next week if we wanted. Actually,” She thought and did a quick mental calculation. “We could each afford twenty three $5 coffees a day for a week with that last payout. That is if we decided to spend all of it on coffee, but we’re fine.”
“It would be more if we go to that one place that’s a non-profit. They don’t have to do sales tax.”
“Oh, I love that place!”
They got an appointment with a general practitioner that day with a recommendation from one of the villagers for a good doctor. Even though Victim was actually willing to go to the doctor if only to get Mitsi to stop worrying about it, he wasn’t keen on visiting the emergency room. It would almost certainly take too long.
Just three hours later, he was sitting on the edge of a cushioned table in a doctor’s office waiting for the man to come in while he and Mitsi worked on a crossword together. The latch on the door clicked and Victim’s head shot up to see a sage-green stick in a doctor’s coat walk in.
“Good afternoon,” the doctor greeted with a clipboard in his hand. “I’m Dr. Sage, it’s very nice to meet you. You said on your intake form that you’re feeling some back pain?”
“Yes sir.”
He nodded and took a seat in a swivel chair by a desk, meeting Victim’s eye while he talked. He looked rather determined, which gave Victim a sense of relief that he was invested in finding out what was wrong with him.
“How long have you been experiencing this pain?”
“It started five days ago, and it’s been getting steadily worse.”
“I see. I have a few questions about your history if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Uh,” Victim’s eyes darted over to Mitsi, who have him an encouraging smile. “I’ve never been to a doctor before.”
“That’s alright, may I ask you questions anyway?”
“Sure?”
“Wonderful. Are you a born stick or made?”
“Made.” His tone was more clipped on the answer and he didn’t want to invite any more discussion on that front.
The doctor went on to ask more questions, some that Victim was more willing to discuss than others. He hadn’t really experienced past medical conditions or ailments, given that he never had an injury that stuck around long enough before he died, and he wasn’t willing to discuss the dying and the redrawing. He wasn’t willing to discuss that with anyone actually. He had seen the villagers whisper when he avoided mundane things and give him concerned looks when he would jump like something was about to attack him. He could tell they already felt some kind of pity for him. It was evident that no one else had his experience with humans or cursors, and he didn’t feel like opening that up to anyone, especially not a doctor he had never met before.
He stayed vague, mentioning that injuries had never really stuck on account of dying from them, and that he had arrived on the Outernet six months ago. He did confide that he had never been uploaded like what most other animations were, but the doctor assured him that he shouldn’t have any medical side effects from that.
Once the history questions were either answered or avoided, the doctor returned to the question at hand, and asked him a few questions. Ones about his workload, the type of pain, the exact location of the soreness, and if he had experienced any injury to cause it.
After the doctor was mostly done with his questionnaire, he asked Victim to lie on his stomach on the table. He was immediately hesitant to do so, but Mitsi was quick to recognize this was more outside of his comfort zone than he would have liked, and she moved to sit near where his head was and gave him a gentle and comforting smile that did enough convincing for Victim to do what the doctor asked.
“I’m going to press on your back to feel for anything out of the ordinary. Let me know if you’re feeling any pain.”
Victim nodded and took a deep breath in. This was exactly the reason he didn’t want to come here. To just expose his back to a complete stranger while they poked around. Mitsi was probably right that this was the best thing for him to do, but he was so glad she was here, otherwise he might have already walked out the door.
The doctor’s hands were cold, and gave him chills, and he could feel every muscle tensing at the contact. He could feel Mitsi’s concerned gaze watching as the doctor pressed down on a couple spots on his back that caused him to inhale sharply.
“There,” he said, ready to be done already.
The doctor retracted his hands and wrote down some more notes on the chart and told him he could sit up.
“Are you experiencing any brain fog or uncharacteristic behaviors?”
Victim straightened up and looked over at Mitsi. For the next question to be so spot on to what he was experiencing was surprising for him. She also looked rather surprised at the question.
“I have, yes,” he said, confusion leaking in his voice. “How does that relate?”
The doctor checked a box on his clipboard, and placed it on the counter.
“I’m going to order you an MRI so we can get an official confirmation, but in my opinion, based on your description and location of pain and your symptoms, I believe it’s likely you’re an emerging avian.”
Victim blinked a couple times. Avian? He was unfamiliar with the term. He looked to Mitsi, who has an expression of a little more understanding than his own, but she still looked vaguely unfamiliar as well.
“Avian?” Mitsi said. “Aren’t those the sticks with wings?”
“Yes. It’s somewhat common. Between 5-10% of the population is an avian or some variant of it, based on recent statistics, so there’s plenty of resources and information. If your test comes back positive, I’m going to refer you to a specialist, and we can talk next steps.”
Wings? Victim was going to be getting wings? If the test came back positive, of course, but if this doctor was so sure, what was that supposed to mean? How were the wings supposed to come out, and why were they making his back hurt? Was this going to hurt? And did he really need a specialized doctor for this? Why did he need resources for this? Wings were a good thing, right? Sure they probably required a little extra maintenance, but why would he need anything outside of maybe some new tools for cleaning that he could probably make himself anyway? And where were they before? Why now?
“I can see your mind whirring away,” Mitsi said, breaking him out of his question loop. “You feeling alright?”
“Ah, I think so. I just have a lot of questions. I’m not sure how to feel about this, I’ve never had wings before.”
“Well, let’s make sure we’re sure before we make any decisions. Here.” The doctor scribbled something on a sticky note and passed it to him. “Instructions on how to get to the MRI machine. I’ll send up the order and you should be in and out in probably 45 minutes. Do you have any metal implants?”
Victim shook his head and glanced at the sticky note. It was simple enough, third floor, west wing, left side of the hallway. Easy enough. He would rather have a simple set of instructions right now.
He walked with Mitsi up to the third floor and checked in at the office, which then directed him to a small waiting room. He hated the waiting game. The feeling of being idle, waiting for something to happen was awful. Having nothing to do wasn’t terrible, he had taken the day off for that reason. But knowing something was about to happen and sitting in wait for it, unable to predict when it might happen was one of his least favorite feelings.
He bounced his leg and sat hunched over on a cheap, but cushioned chair.
“Whatcha thinking about?” Mitsi asked.
“I hate the waiting game,” he mumbled.
Fortunately, it wasn’t too much longer before his name got called and he got instructed to go into the MRI machine. It was loud as hell even with the ear protection, and it took forever. No one else was allowed to be in the room. The closed space wasn’t pleasant either, he had been in a few too many of those, but somehow the noise made it better. It would have been worse if it were quiet.
Eventually, the MRI finished up and Victim was let out of the machine. Mitsi was waiting anxiously outside the room and she was quick to make sure he was doing alright. He just gave her a shaky smile and talked about what he was thinking about to keep himself entertained, that being how to assemble the motor for one of the villager’s tractors that had recently died on him.
And then they were playing the waiting game again for the results to find out if Victim really was an avian. They didn’t need to wait as long this time.
A rosy-pink stick in nurse scrubs came to find him in the waiting area again with some papers and politely introduced herself as Carnation.
“So your results are back, and after looking at the scans, we can confirm that you are an emerging avian. I’m here to discuss your next steps and to help you schedule a surgery, but first, do you have any immediate questions?”
Victim gave her a blank look and Mitsi waited for him to catch up for a moment before she took the lead. He usually needed a moment to react to information like this.
“Yes, so how are his wings supposed to be coming in? I’m assuming that’s what’s causing the back pain?”
The nurse nodded, smiling kindly.
“Looking at your MRI scans, you’ll be due to get them out in three days, but we can do this earlier. Today if you want, but if you want to go home and prepare, you have time. It’s good that you came in. There’s a routine surgery you’ll need to come in for. I have a couple pamphlets, one of them is for the procedure itself, and the other one has a general guide on what you’ll need to know about maintenance.”
“Surgery? You need to put me under for this?” Victim had caught up at this point and could ask his own questions, and that was the one at the forefront of his mind.
“It’s highly recommended and standard. It’s a bit like wisdom tooth surgery, if you’re more familiar with that process. You’ll receive numbing to the area regardless, but it is still generally uncomfortable enough for us to recommend putting you under general anesthesia.”
Victim grabbed the pamphlet and held it out so Mitsi could look over his shoulder at it. There were a lot of words there he wasn’t sure what to make of. Instincts, preening, wing care, chirping and birdsong, imprinting, nesting, all kinds of things he was unfamiliar with, and Victim didn’t like being unfamiliar with things that were so closely tied to him. It felt like he was about to change species and it didn’t even seem like that was an inaccurate description. He could also feel Mitsi’s analyzing gaze on the pamphlet, and he heard her ask for one of her own from the nurse, which he heard the sounds of it being given to her and a pen clicking.
“And what happens if I don’t get this surgery?” He asked, generally unhappy with the outcome of this doctor’s visit. He wondered if Mitsi would still get him a coffee after this even if something was wrong.
“Well, then the wings will come out on their own.” Her tone was very serious. “However, that is an extremely painful process, as they have to break through the skin and muscle, and often takes longer without a professional to assist. It’s extremely dangerous if they come out without medical intervention.”
“Seems like a bit of a flaw in design,” Victim complained quietly, turning the pamphlet over.
“Unfortunately so. Most sticks who aren’t drawn with their avian traits have to go through this process, and we’ve done everything we can to make it as painless as possible.”
Victim sighed and closed his eyes. Well, based on that information there really was only one correct method of action, as much as he didn’t want to deal with it.
“You said you could do the surgery today?” He asked after a bit of reading and he flipped to the procedure pamphlet.
“If that’s what you want. You’ll have it over and done with and we’ll only ask you to come back for a follow up on how everything is healing about two weeks after the procedure. We can call the department and have you and your information sent over. It’s a fairly quick procedure and it seems you already have someone to get you home.”
“I don’t need to be stewing over this any longer than I need to,” Victim said, folding the pamphlet and looking over at Mitsi. “The fewer trips here, the better.”
“It says here that it lasts about 45 minutes after sedation,” Mitsi said. “How long does it typically take for people to wake up?”
“Usually between 15-30 minutes, and there’s grogginess for the next several hours.”
“Okay.” She turned to Victim. “I’m thinking I’ll go up with you, and when they get you for the surgery, I’ll go out and buy some of the stuff it says you’ll need, and I’ll be back to pick you up. How does that sound?”
“Sounds efficient, I can get you back for whatever you spend on all of this.” He gestured to the list given on the pamphlet and took a quick breath. “To be clear, I’m supposed to be out for the surgery, I won’t feel or remember anything?”
Carnation nodded.
“You’ll be unconscious. Recovery is typically smooth.”
“How high is the risk of the anesthesia wearing off mid-surgery?”
“Extremely low. We’ll have the anesthesiologist in the room to administer another dose if we find your tolerance is particularly high, and they’ll be monitoring you for any signs of waking up early.”
After a few more questions about the procedure and the doctors who would be performing it. Mitsi walked Victim up to the floor that had the surgeons. Even though he had decided this was the road of least stress, he was not keen on having this surgery and was frankly freaking out inside. Mitsi stayed close and held his hand the whole time they waited for his turn, which was an uncomfortably long time. She had switched the subject off the avian stuff and onto lighter subjects to distract him, which he appreciated.
And then the surgeon called his name and he couldn’t quite force himself to stand up and walk in that room on his own. He and Mitsi were the only ones in the waiting room and he felt the doctor’s gaze on them as Mitsi also waited for him to get up on his own. He didn’t think it was going to happen. The doctor called his name again and his breath hitched. Mitsi tapped him twice gently on the arm and whispered a quiet reassurance to him, though he was a little too zoned out to hear it.
“One moment doctor,” Victim heard her say as she carefully wormed one arm around his back and under his arm to stand him up on her own. He just let her. She took one of his hands.
“Hey, it’s going to be fine. I’ll be there when you wake up and I’ll be there with a smoothie, okay?”
“I’m not going to feel it, right?” Victim said. Mitsi looked at the doctor, who shook her head.
“Just the recovery soreness,” she said while Mitsi somehow managed to get Victim on the other side of the door to the room. The surgeon gave Mitsi a reassuring smile. “How ya’ doing today?”
The surgeon made pleasant small talk with him until they got to the room and talked through everything the people in the room were doing. She gave him her statistics for how many times she had performed the surgery while managing to put in an IV without him even noticing by distracting him on his other side, and after asking him to count down from 10, Victim was out.
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Mitsi drove herself to a nearby store that was meant to have everything. She hadn’t spent much time in the city, but she knew enough to know that it ought to have everything Vic would need.
She was relieved she had insisted so heavily he go to the doctor. It might have gotten messy if he had emerged as an avian without any knowledgeable intervention, and she knew well enough that she wouldn’t have had the proper knowledge or tools to help. She would buy him a coffee anyway though, along with all the other things that pamphlet said he needed.
Some of it was basic. Specific combs, a special shampoo and some recommended oils, that was fine. What Mitsi was having a more difficult time with was the blankets. Vic was very specific with his texture preferences, and if he was going to be using blankets and pillows for a nest, she wanted to make sure he got ones he actually liked.
She knew he didn’t have enough to make one from the house, so this was her primary goal, and it was harder than she expected. Blankets that looked like they would be the preferred softness were too fluffy, which would bother him, and ones that had the right thickness weren’t soft enough. And when she did find one that was the right texture and thickness, it was the ugliest thing she had ever seen in her life.
After enough looking however, she ended up with what she felt was a decent collection of pillows and blankets, along with enough supplies for wing care that were recommended.
She felt like Vic would probably handle the taking care of things fine, she was more worried about the behavioral shifts that were projected. Nothing about it sounded even remotely bad or annoying, but for Vic, it was a big change. It had taken him a long enough time to open up to her and a few of the villagers, and by her understanding, it seemed that having a community was going to be vital for his health far more than average.
She just didn’t know how he was going to take it. She was reading through the imprinting process on her phone while at the checkout line, already thinking of how she could help. Mitsi didn’t feel it was too presumptuous to assume she might be one of the first, if not the first target of Vic’s instincts, and she was determined to help this go as smoothly as possible.
And honestly? She was excited! She had been getting closer to Vic since the beginning, and it was no secret to either of them that they liked each other and this sounded like such a lovely way for them to get to spend time together.
She researched chirping as well, that was going to be something she was going to need to learn, and she especially became more interested when she read that oftentimes chirping helped avians express emotions they struggled to express verbally. She loved Vic, but he was frankly terrible at expressing more complex emotions at times.
She didn’t see any downsides to this. Except for possibly the fact that it meant Vic was going to have to go through another transition period. He didn’t like things to change, he was usually just happy working with what he knew and what he had. A new set of rules meant he had to learn to play the game again, so for all her own excitement about this, she was probably going to have to wait for him to catch up.
She finished shopping earlier than she expected, and upon checking her phone for any updates on Vic’s surgery and finding none, she decided she would relax at a coffee shop nearby. She had been talking and thinking about coffee all day, she might as well get herself something.
She got a hot vanilla latte in a mug and took a seat by the window for the next fifteen minutes. She wasn’t disturbed, approached or even greeted. It was lovely. These times of day when she could just sit quietly and watch the world go by were some of her favorites. It was her thinking time. She considered the origin of the vanilla in her latte and listened to the sound of more lattes and soothies being made behind the barista station, following along with the process in her head with her eyes closed. Mitsi loved people. And she loved her time to sit quietly and enjoy the world around her and appreciate it. The feeling of the wicker seat slightly sagging under her weight, the warmth through the mug, the sounds of cars driving past the window, drivers on their own adventures in a life she might never cross again. She wondered if these times would become more rare in the coming weeks with figuring out new details about Vic, not that she would complain. She could have these moments in his presence anyway.
Her alarm chimed and it was time to go pick him up from the hospital. She asked the barista for a to-go cup and a blueberry smoothie, and she returned to the hospital. She wasn’t waiting there for long before she was brought into a secondary waiting room where Vic was still knocked out from anesthetic.
The surgeon gave her the rundown of how the surgery had gone. It was smooth, no complications. She had the anesthesiologist keep a close eye on him, as he had been nervous to wake up during the surgery. They had already cleaned off the wings of blood and tissue and stitched up the incisions. Mitsi would need to help keep them clean and change bandages, as he would have trouble doing it himself.
The wings themselves had been identified as the wings of a pigeon, specifically a homing pigeon. Mitsi wrote the information down in her journal and thanked the surgeon for a job well done. She took a note of her name and information in case she either needed to contact her or possibly recommend her to someone else.
She parted ways with the surgeon, who told her a nurse would be out to help her get Vic to the car when he woke up, and she sat near where Vic was laying on his side on a bench. She didn’t feel it would be appropriate to touch his wings yet, but they were absolutely lovely. She hoped he would like them as much as she did.
He woke up close to ten minutes after the surgeon had left the room to attend to another patient, but he was not on their plane of existence, still high on anesthetic. Mitsi had wondered how he would react while coming down from anesthesia and she was not disappointed.
While his balance was off, both from the drugs and the new weight on his back, he was also being incredibly sweet. As soon as he woke up, he just looked at her with dazed eyes until she giggled.
“What cha’ looking at me for?” She asked with a smile on her face.
“Hmm, pretty,” he slurred, his head tilting to the side much further than what was normal.
“You think I’m pretty?” She asked while helping him to his feet and toward the door.
“Mhm. An’ smart…are you r’l?”
She laughed a little as she helped him keep his balance. The nurse had joined in and was keeping close watch while Mitsi helped him to the car.
“I’m very much real, dear. How do you feel?”
“Hmmmmm…like the time I got stabbed an’ hit in the back with a wrecking ball,” he giggled as Mitsi startled slightly and met the nurse’s eyes, who also looked equally surprised by his response. This was the first Mitsi was hearing about that. “But my head feels nice, and y’re here. S’s pr’bly fine.”
Mitsi recovered from his previous description of how he felt and gently rubbed his shoulder where she was helping support him. She got him into the passenger side of the car. The nurse held the door open and helped him get situated so his wings weren’t smashed against the seat. She wished Mitsi good luck and saw them off.
“W’t happened?” Vic mumbled after a little bit of driving.
“You had surgery,” Mitsi explained softly. “You’ve got wings now.”
He lulled his head to the side to look at the pretty things and stared at them for a bit.
“H’w ‘bout that,” he said and Mitsi giggled at the comment. He giggled back in response. “Y’re laugh is nice. I like it.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s like stars, You laugh like stars.”
He was giving her stray compliments most of the way home. She considered starting to record some of it, because it was really sweet and she would have liked to come back and listen to him ramble about how much he liked her, but she felt his pride might not survive the day he found the recording, so she decided she would just remember it very well.
She got back to the village before long and helped him into the house and into his bed. He was going to be drowsy for a while, and she was happy to let him sleep until he was feeling more himself. One of the villagers spotted her helping him into the house and she had a very quick body language exchange with him as he spotted Vic’s wings he hadn’t had before the two of them had left for the day.
Once he was settled and back asleep, she returned to the car to bring in the purchases. She was determined to have everything ready for when he woke up.
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Though Victim woke up slowly, he was acutely aware of the new weight on his back and the way it moved. He remembered why he was as drowsy as he was very quickly. Seemed the surgery had gone well. Or at least as it was supposed to.
He sat up in bed and noticed Mitsi reading a book in a chair, curled up in a blanket that looked new next to a pile of what were also new blankets. Right, she had gone shopping. Those were probably supposed to be nesting materials. She was on top of things, that was for sure, this was just going to be a weird transition.
She spotted him wake up and set down her book and smiled.
“Morning Vic.”
He looked back at his wings and gave them an experimental stretch, being careful of the stitches he could distantly feel. The longer feathers were a light grey, tipped with a darker one, but the closer they came to his back, the darker and smaller they were. At some point, the smaller feathers gave off a slightly iridescent shine of greens and purples.
“A pigeon?” He didn’t know how to feel about that.
“I think they’re lovely,” Mitsi complimented. “The gradients are gorgeous and I spotted some flecks of grey in the lighter spots that are just very pretty.”
“Okay, but they're pigeon wings,” he said, a complaint in his voice as he slowly folded one against his back while leaving the other outstretched. “Don’t people typically call them rats with wings?”
“I did some research on them while you were out, actually” Mitsi said while shaking her head. “They have a fascinating history. They’re very clean birds. Smart too. Apparently humans domesticated them some time ago to do various tasks. They were trained as carrier pigeons and used to be central to some countries' mail systems. Some people also race them. Perception of them has shifted a lot in the past century, with having some diseases blamed on them and one of their primary uses becoming more obsolete with better forms of communication. That’s where they get their bad reputation. They’re actually very lovely birds.”
“So they’re birds that were made by humans for a purpose to be used, and then they were discarded and abused?”
Mitsi pursed her lips. “I suppose you could look at it that way.”
Victim looked back at his own wings.
“Hmm, go figure,” he mumbled. “I guess they’re fine. You get the stuff?”
She looked like she wanted to question his comment further about humans, but thought better of it and confirmed that she had gotten everything he needed. She asked him if he wanted to jump into kickstarting his instinct drive, and mentioned that it was recommended he start as soon as possible. He agreed that it was probably best. He remembered how the pamphlet mentioned that delaying instinct indulgence could lead to long-term issues, and he felt he had enough long-term issues as it was.
She had gotten good blankets. He was worried they might be too shaggy, but they were just the right texture, and the pillows were right as well. No memory foam either, those got too hot. Making the nest was easier than he thought it would be, though ever so often he struggled to get something to fit right, and Mitsi would help keep something secure while he got it the way he wanted. The colors were nice as well. She mostly stuck to blues, greys, and there were a couple stray green and pink items thrown into the mix.
He thought it would feel unnatural, but it just felt like a more intense working groove. He got like this when he was building something on a sunny day for one of the villagers, or when he was wrapped up in a project. Except instead of something mechanical, it was an arrangement of blankets and pillows.
He had worried the feelings would take over his mind and control him, but he felt more self-assured than he expected. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and how. This was relaxing, and before he even registered it, he was quietly singing in birdsong noises that he somewhat knew what they meant. He could tell they were fairly relaxed and communicated some kind of ease and relief, but there wasn’t a very good translation for them.
Chirping didn’t feel too bad either. It was just like a hiccup or cough that didn’t feel intrusive. Sure, it would take some time figuring out how to properly understand his own noises, but he still had the general idea of what they meant. He could talk fine amid them as well, though he didn’t feel like he was too deep in this to the point he was going to go mute. That was something the pamphlet warned about and it still worried him a bit.
Mitsi asked if his sounds meant anything, and he did his best to relay them. He didn’t think he did a very good job. She just seemed to take the description of calm as a good thing and kept helping where she saw fit.
Once the nest was built and he climbed inside, making some final adjustments, he took a breath and extended a wing in its own invitation for Mitsi to join him in the nest. She accepted quickly, and climbed in herself. He drew the wing around her carefully, still learning some of the muscle movements, and she gently reached an arm over to it. She ran her hand through the soft feathers, which actually got a little trill out of him, much to her delight.
“You mind if I mess with them?” she asked, and he opened his wing up a little more to let her.
She lightly traced some of the patterns of the darker grey speckles in his wings and smoothly stroked through the feathers.
And then the feeling he was waiting for hit. And it was strange. Everything up to this point felt like a pleasant focus from somewhere within. Like he could really zero in on the task at hand. It felt natural and even a little familiar in some areas of how he already acted. Not this. This was something else.
The brain fog he had been experiencing hit like a train, only instead of being mildly disorienting, it made him feel more like all of his rational thoughts were barred and locked behind a vague feeling of bliss and a desire to chase more of it. He distantly felt his body melt into Mitsi and the nest, and she was quick to support him.
“Oh goodness, there it is,” Mitsi said with a small laugh while he grumbled slightly. “I wondered when that would hit. You doing alright?”
He nodded very slowly and gave a sleepy, affirmative chirp in response. There went his words. He didn’t really have it in him to be irritated.
“Okay, you having a good time?”
He nodded again and nudged her with a wing to encourage her to keep going. Mitsi continued to mess with his feathers, switching between petting and ruffling them in an absolutely perfect routine. It was just the right combination of predictable and varied. She was trying to cover every spot she could, and it was good that she was being so thorough.
She gently brushed over the spot where his wings met his back and he practically melted, a loud and satisfied chirp escaping him. Good. She paused and gently went back over the spot and he was practically serenading her in birdsong while his head filled with clouds. She was being careful of some of the stitches, and it was still a bit sore, but the way she was doing it seemed to make any pain vanish. That might just be his favorite spot she had found and she had clearly noticed, as she was focusing on it more than she had anywhere else.
After enough time though, it was starting to get a bit overwhelming. It was an incredible feeling, but his senses couldn't focus on anything else and for a moment his rational brain poked through and told him he ought to be a little more aware than what he was able to be while she kept focusing on that one spot on his wings. He shifted slightly to get her to move somewhere else and she noticed quickly, hands tracing back to focus on the primaries in a much more gentle motion.
He could vaguely feel his normal thoughts returning to him, and he was rather surprised to notice that he didn’t actually feel a sense of embarrassment from all of this. He really thought he would. But as he considered everything, there was nothing negative attached to this. She had been with him the whole time, his avian traits hadn’t emerged while he was trapped, and he didn’t have a precedent that dissuaded him from letting someone close while he was caught up in emerging instincts.
It just felt…fine. Like everything was going as it should.
She was smiling at him.
“I think this is going to be fun, what do you think?”
“Not as bad as I thought it would be,” he said peacefully.
He leaned against her and brought a wing around her in a gentle motion. He brought the wing up to her cheek a little and she leaned against it slightly.
“Not as bad?” she asked. “Was anything bad?”
“No. Best I’ve ever felt, I think. I’m looking forward to everything healing.”
She agreed. The two of them spend a good amount of time in the nest together, just adjusting to everything. They tried to learn some basic chirps together, and Mitsi used some audio recording to keep track of them so she could study. She suggested continuing to learn together and eventually Victim felt the call of sleep return to him. He was still worn from the surgery, and his first ever preen certainly hadn’t woken him up any.
He laid down in the nest, one wing still slung around Mitsi.
Stay with me. He warbled in a tone that sounded like love. And somehow, he knew she understood as they fell asleep in the nest together.