Oh, to fly on snowy wings to soar through the air of nobles and thieves, peasants and kings the birds, fairest of fair ----------------------------- On Snowy Wings By Scribe Robin Historian's note: This story (and its two sequels, "Birds of a Feather" and "War Birds") takes place just before arc three of my 'Bowmage Chronicles' series. But since I haven't finished that yet, you don't need to worry about it. Linguist's note: This story is told from Wings' perspective, and since he's been a bird most of his life, he's still a litte confused, and tends to flutter from past to present tense often. The side effect of not having to worry about past/present tense on the part of the author is just a coincidence. Really. Historian's note, postscript: The Linguist is a big fat liar. Caterer's note: I quit. ----------------------------- ~ On Snowy Wings ~ I remember those simple days... wake up, get food, eat food, look for mate, go to bed. Back then, of course, I was a bird. I wish I knew what type of bird I was, but birds don't generally have names for their species. I think I might have been blue. I was flying. I remember that quite vividly. I'd just finished the eating part of my daily routine, and was moving on to the looking for a mate part. I'd gone to my favorite branch, and started yelling. When people hear birds yelling, they think of it as singing, but I don't know why. I'd heard a response yell, coming from somewhere down on the ground. Excited, I flew down to take a look at my prospective partner, and... Um, let's see. There was a loud noise... then... I must have fallen asleep. I remember someone saying something about a curse, someone else yelling about something... I... can't really remember. That brings me to right now. I'm lying on the ground, feeling weird. I also feel... smarter. All these feelings going around my head... can't make sense of them. Can't make sense of making sense of them. A little while ago, I didn't know what making sense meant. Now, it's all I can seem to think of. First things first. Have to get up. A snake or something could come. Push up with wings... Ouch. That hurt. Am I heavier? Let's try this again. Gently push wings down towards the ground, use leverage to get on feet... there. Whoa. The forest shrunk. No, I'm bigger. That means snakes won't bother me. One point to new form. New form? Oh, yes. I seem to have changed. Hard to process all of this... Okay, start by looking at yourself. Seem to be 'human'. Hm. It's convenient having words to go with pictures, now. Another point to new form. Stay on track... Hm. Angel. All these thoughts and feelings... it's as if the memories I had as a bird were taken out, and then shoved into a human brain. I have years worth of knowledge that I'm just now coming into contact with. Okay, I look like an 'angel'. Human-like, but with wings. I'll mentally look at the 'memory' of a picture of an angel... Hm. On second thought, I'm not quite an angel... Angels don't have feathers on their bodies. But then again, these are large, white, smooth feathers. From a distance, they'd look like a cloth robe. All this thinking... is tiring. I suppose I'll be able to think for longer and longer periods of time as I get used to thinking, but for now... I just want to be. And I know just how to get back to just being. Time to see how these new wings work... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It has been a long day. These new wings are powerful, but tiring. I spend four times the energy to cover thrice the distance in an hour that I would have gone as a bird. It has occurred to me that I ought to be freaking out about changing form, but that's the human part of my brain talking. The bird part, though, is taking it in stride. Having seen such things as 'cars' and 'fireworks' as a bird, undergoing a total change is just one more unexplained thing in daily life. Something also wants me to not leave the forest. I think it's the human part of my brain talking. It points out that I'm still getting used to this form, and furthermore, people might try to shoot me if they saw me. I don't understand what shoot means, though. Well, that was all right. I got a chance to look at my forest while I was flying around. There goes the human part of my brain talking again. Your forest, you act as if you own it. Well, yeah, I live in it. I think I'll stick with using the bird part of my brain as the main bit for now. It doesn't question things so much, and the memories in it are my own. I was flying above my forest... there's where I lived as a bird... there's where I looked for food... There's that cave... the lake... the town... Shut up, human part... Now, the bird part of my brain isn't wasting time wondering what the town is like. It's more concerned with a more important matter right now. Namely, where am I going to sleep? Can't sleep in my nest anymore... There. An old tree, the branches flat, thick, and expanding outwards, making a sort of nest. I'll rearrange it later, right now I just want to get some sleep... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I woke up in the middle of the night, and find that I can't get back to sleep. Normally, the night holds untold dangers... mainly owls. I don't like owls. But now, I'm bigger than an owl. My human side is agreeing, saying that the fact that I know this forest (My forest) negates most dangers of nighttime travel. So, let's take a little stroll... as my human side would say. I prefer to fly. Flapping my wings, I soar into the air, and then extend my wings outward, gliding through the forest. Ah, it is an experience everyone should try once! Dodging past tree after tree, wind blowing across my face, the leaves trembling as I zoom past, and my favorite part, angling through a tight hole between the branches, to emerge- Ow. I forgot that I'm not as small as I once was. Okay, self-assessment. Broken bones? None. My human side pipes in, noting that birds' bones are hollow, and more easily breakable, while humans' and other mammals’ bones are more solid, therefore less vulnerable to breaking. The way it always spits out fact after fact is starting to get annoying. Okay... head hurts. Bruised, probably. Minor concussion (what's a concussion?), no permanent damage. Left wing slightly bent, probably from landing on it. Several wing feathers missing on both wings... still have enough to fly, though, and I can always grow more. Feet... Ow. Human toes are VERY open to twisting and turning, and lots of pain. I wish I had my bird feet instead. Situation... lying on back, eyes closed. Open eyes, check for imminent danger... An owl. Here, my mind splits into its two distinct sides. The bird side is screaming to run, while the human side is wondering what kind of owl it is. Then I remember that I'm not owl food anymore, and, having nothing else better to do, start glaring at the owl. The owl glares back, and starts spouting gibberish. I should mention at this point that, although I didn't realize it at the time, I know both the human language and the language I used as a bird. What I did know right then, though, was that owls and my species didn't communicate much with each other, mainly because the former was always trying to eat the latter. So the owl was yelling some weird owl language or something. Instinctively, I started yelling in 'Owl-Tease', which is bird-talk interspersed with the most insulting owlish words we know. We get a lot of practice out of it when we are in a safe place, preferably out of reach of any owls, and perhaps out of earshot as well. The owl didn't immediately launch itself at me, as I thought it might. Aha, went my human side, this must be a tame owl. Or a very stupid one, added my bird side. Rather, it is very smart. If it were to launch itself at us right now, it would be its death. You mean, fight back against owls? Er, yes. Fight back. Fight back? ... Um, yes, fight back. Let's get back to more important matters right now, shall we? Fight the owls...? Hmm. Oh dear. The word schizophrenic came into my mind at this point, but I did not know how to spell it, or even what it meant. Maybe some sort of foreign worm. My human side came into play at this point, since it was obviously the more socially inclined one. Er, wait. Order of events mixed up. First, the owl started talking in bird speak, much to the annoyance of my bird side, more on that later. "You... speak... this?" Now the human side took over, etc etc. "Yes, I speak this. Who are you?" The owl ignored this, and continued. "You taking... too much time. Complete curse, then leave." "Huh?" "Big man get angry." "Oh. ... Hey, wait!" But the owl, having delivered its message, had already flown off. I tried to take off after it, but my bird side had all the muscle memory in that area, and it was busying itself muttering about how if the owls had learned bird-talk, then what amounted to a bird communication network had been breached. By the time I managed to get it to start the wings flying, the owl was long gone. The trip back to my makeshift nest was a quiet one, my bird and human minds both back in sync, or as it were. Both sides were working on what had happened, with no answers in sight. Nothing for it, I guess. As I lay back down on my bed of branches, a song came to my mind. I'd mentioned before how most of what people think of as birdsong is actually yelling, but there are real bird songs, too. This was one of them. I sang it softly, remembering what I had wrote it for. One of my prospective mates... trapped under a fallen branch after a storm... I sang it to try and calm her down, since it would have been impossible to move the branch while the storm raged. I tried to sing of how not everything is as bad as it seems to be, of how the sun will shine down on tomorrow, and it will turn out better than today... She managed to hang on until the storm stopped, and saw the sunrise. Then she sighed, turned her head to look at me, smiled, and then died. I cry myself to sleep. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When there is trouble here and nothing seems clear... When all seems gloom and looks of doom... When the world seems stacked against you... the only thing you can do is... cry. Cry yourself to tears, cry yourself to sleep. No matter how bad today, one thing’s certain... Tomorrow can't be any worse! And it can't be as bad as yesterday! And if tomorrow is even worse, then the next day will be even better! These things, they turnaround (turnaround) These things, they turnaround (turnaround) The sun brings a new day! Wind sweeps bad memories away! The plants can regrow, and the waters know: Tomorrow can't be worse than today! Tomorrow can't be worse than - TODAY! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, it does seem that today is, at least, not as bad as yesterday. Certainly more interesting, anyway. No, that comes later. First, I got up, found something to eat (I've taken to eating fruits instead of bugs, and not just at my human side's insistence. It's hard to catch enough bugs to get a good meal, at this size.), ate it, and had almost started looking for a mate before I stopped myself. Instead, I went for a fly, and spotted something unusual. For the first time in the three or so days since I changed form, I saw a human walking towards the forest. My bird side started asking my human side why humans didn't come into my forest, while the human side started urging the bird side to go into finding a mate mode. I took my bird side's suggestion first, since it was the more logical of the two. Cursed? Haunted? I don't know. Maybe they just weren't the outdoorsy type. Well, it was worth taking a look at this human, anyway. I managed to land relatively quietly in one of the trees, and looked down at her as she walked underneath. Hmm. Female, young, brunette, fair complexion. Attractive. That was, in case you hadn't figured it out, my human side talking. Now that I knew what she looked like, I decided to take to the air again, tracking her position through occasional glances between the treetops. My human side noted that I had unusually strong eyesight, more like an eagle's than a human's. My bird side made a note of that, but put it away for later consideration. Do the job at hand first, and all. She seems to be looking for something... Well, she found something, anyway... Huh. Looks like she found one of my feathers. Must have fallen off while I was heading back to my tree. And she's found another... Oh, dear. The trail leads right back to my tree. She's looking around... I can almost hear the wheels turning in her head. Then she looks up, and sees a handful of feathers stuck in the branches of my tree. At this point I decide to go in closer for a better view. I land in a tree with a muffled thump, and she glances around, nervously. Then, she swings up into my tree, and takes a look around. I wait for her to come down, but... she's staying there. She obviously knows that something strange lives here, and is waiting for it to return to the nest, so to speak. Well, that's all right, I'm patient. I can wait her out. ... ... What's she doing!? She brought her lunch? Ergh, she's going to attract ants to the tree... I hate ants. They get all under your feathers, and they ITCH. Wait... !!! SHE THREW THE CANDY WRAPPER ON THE FLOOR! THE FOIL WRAPPER! ON MY FOREST FLOOR! RIGHT NEXT TO MY TREE! THAT DOES IT! I yell out, loudly, "What do you think you're doing?!" That was in bird-talk, which, of course, sounds like singing to humans. She looks up and tries to locate what, to her, sounded like chirping run through a heavy-metal-grade amplifier. "Huh?" I unconsciously switch over to Human, which I didn't know I knew. "I said, what do you think you're doing?!" "Who said that?" I jump down from the tree and rush over to mine, standing beneath it and yelling up at her. "I said that! And what in the world are you thinking?!" She stared at me openmouthed, which is what most humans would do if they saw an angel-like being yelling at them. Too wrapped up in my righteous rage, no pun intended, to notice, I plowed onward. "First, you come up into MY tree! MY TREE! There's a whole ant-ridden forest to climb up, so why didn't you go into one of the other canine-feed trees!" I continued when no response was forthcoming. "And furthermore, you started eating your off-key lunch, IN MY TREE! That sort of thing is messy, attracts ants, and is just plain twittering rude!" If anything, her jaw dropped farther. "And then, you had the nerve to… the nerve to... DROP GARBAGE ON THE FLOOR! IN MY FOREST! RIGHT NEXT TO MY MOLTING TREE! You mouse-breath, sour-berries, cat-bait, upside-down worm-brain!" I glared at her. She stared down at me. We continued like that for a good handful of minutes. Eventually, I realized she wasn't going to respond, so I made a follow-up. "Well, what do you have to say for yourself?" She was silent for a few moments, and then... "Are you an angel?" Oh dear. "... Have you even been listening to what I've been saying?" "... Um?" I lost my temper at this point, flew up, and socked her a good one. "Ow! What was that for?" "Let me see. You barged into my home, made a mess, and left garbage on the floor. I'm the one who should be offended here!" "That's no reason to hit me!" "What would you do if I broke into your room, messed up your stuff, and left trash lying around?" "... That's not the point! You don't hit girls!" "Wait. 'I' don't hit girls?" "Yes! Boys don't hit girls, and you're a..." Distracted from something she could readily grasp and understand (I.e. a good argument), the girl went back into staring mode. "Er... What are you, anyway?" "I asked first." "You did not!" "I remember it quite clearly. I did." I remembered quite clearly that I didn't actually. But I wasn't going to let this girl make demands of me. "Um, ... How about a compromise, then? You tell me something about you, and I'll tell you something about me. Fair?" "Fine. Where do you live?" "Brownsmite. What are you?" "What you see here. What-" She interrupted. "That's not an answer!" "Well, yours wasn't exactly detailed either!" She looked ready to start another argument on this, but thought better of it. "Whatever. What-" "It's my question. What is your job?" "I don't have one. What species are you?" "Some sort of blue bird. Who-" "Wait! You are NOT some sort of blue bird! You aren't even blue!" "Look. Have you read..." I paused for a moment to get the name from my pre-made memories. "The princess and the frog?" She thought about this for a moment, then started towards me. I shoved her away, hard. "Ow! What did you do that for?" "You looked like you were going to attack me!" "I was trying to kiss you!" "What?" "Isn't that why you brought up the story?" I thought about the story for a moment, saw what she was getting at, and grimaced. Now I was glad I shoved her. "The point I was trying to make is that the frog thought of himself as human!" She had a blank look as she thought about this, and, not finding a satisfactory answer, shrugged it off. "Whatever. What-" "My question, remember? Who do you live with?" "My grandma. Do you have magical powers?" "Of course not. What is your name?" "Heather. What's yours?" "Haven't got one. Who-" She interrupted me. "You don't have one?" "It's my question, now-" She waved me off. "Well, I'll give you a name, then. How does Angel sound?" "No." "Cherub?" "Definitely not." "Er, hang on." She rummaged around in her backpack and brought out a book. "Let's see... Gabriel?" "No." "Zion?" "No." "Christian?" "Where are you getting these names from, anyway?" "This book, 'A Guide to Ancient Christian Mythology.'" I noted that, although I could speak human, I couldn't read it. "I don't like that sort of name." She put it away, thankfully. "How about Sparrow?" "..." "Robin? Eagle? Hawk? Owl? Jay? Dove? Birdie? Feather? Wings?" "Hmm." "You like Wings?" She asked, hopefully. "It's better than the other ones. Okay... What does your grandma do for a job?" "She knows a lot about magic and witchcraft. Er... you aren't going to bring down the wrath of heaven on her, are you?" "No. How much does she charge?" "Twenty as a consultation fee, and 40 per hour to work her skills, plus materials. What are you doing in this forest?" "Living. Final questions. Will you take me to see your grandmother?" "Um, sure, whatever. Can you fly?" "Why do you think I live on the top of a tree? Now, let's see your grandmother." "Um, sure. Follow me." She got her stuff put away, and then climbed out of the tree, stopping to pick up her discarded wrapper in the process. My opinion of her rose, but slightly. I settled into a slow glide beside her, just below branch level. After an uneventful trip, we arrived at her grandmother's house, which was thankfully on the outskirts of town. I waited outside while she went inside and talked. After a while, she called me in. Heather's grandmother was, indeed, an old lady, almost looking the part of a witch. "So... who is it that is cursed?" I stayed silent, not knowing what to say about this. Heather spoke up, however. "Cursed?" The grandma rocked back and forth in her chair. "This, my dear, is a curse spirit, bound to deliver a punishment upon the one that is cursed. Also, are you sure you weren't imagining it talking? Curse spirits don't have more than a simple vocabulary." Now THIS I could recognize as an insult. "May a snake eat all your eggs." It's a severe birdish insult that, obviously, loses something in the translation. Grandma looked up. "Well. It appears that this is something more complex." She pulled herself out of her rocking chair, and shuffled up to me. Suddenly, she struck out and yanked off one of my chest feathers. She knew the blow was coming, and ducked, countering with a punch to my stomach, winding me. "A bird, apparently. Curse spirits don't feel pain, and birds are vain about their feathers." "Dog-greeter." The insult is implying that the subject would go up and greet a hunting dog as it walked by, which is really stupid. "Interesting," she said, shuffling back to her chair. "And this feather, if I'm not mistaken..." She glanced up at me once she was properly seated. "I believe I may have some answers for you. My fee is eight of these feathers." Heather, looking guilty, reached into her backpack and pulled out a fistful of my discarded feathers. "These will do. However, I shall have to research this. You may use the guest bedroom." With that, she shuffled off into her library. Heather shrugged. "She's always like that." I sighed. Thinking makes me tired, if I do it for too long or too hard. "Just show me where the guest bedroom is..." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~