We flew high over the next row of barbed wire fencing below, leaving the country of Lecolie for the antagonistic land of Gronorlie, the ground based obstacles being completely useless against anything with wings. Presumably they had radar and other scanners too, but they wouldn't want them to trip on every bird. What would they make of me? The border was heavily militarised, yet I hadn't seen any response to my presence. I hoped I hadn't been detected, or had been mistaken for a large bird, as high up as I was.

One plus point right now was that I was finally full. That hadn't happened since before they'd started feeding me wildlife. I had no idea how much a harpy was supposed to eat, beyond 'lots', but apparently Leona's few days long feeding frenzy had been enough to compensate for however much the kidnappers had underfed me. Or perhaps it was because we'd finished replacing whatever energy our transformation had cost? It made no difference; the important point was that even if we reached another city right now, I still had some time to spare before I'd have to worry about organising our next heroic rescue.

Hah, and to think that when I first got kidnapped, I'd claimed that heroic rescues never happened.

What I needed most right now was to form some sort of understanding with Leona. Trying to influence the monster was getting easier, and she'd flown this way with no complaints, but it was still unreliable, and I needed to get more control if I wanted to avoid any... accidents. What even was she? How did we have two minds sharing the same brain in the first place? She definitely wasn't intelligent, at least to start with, just a murderous bundle of instincts tied together with claws and teeth. As time passed, she seemed to be learning more, but she still didn't understand language, or show any overt signs of complex thought.

For most of my captivity, I hadn't noticed any mental changes. The food had been the first sign, with human food looking unappetising and raw meat starting to look appealing. Then I'd started feeling inclined to violence, and that was the point I'd started doing my best to resist. Then there had been other instincts; the need to be up in the sky, the urge simply to fly free. Finally, there had been the hunger. I'd been terrified of what I was becoming, and had done my best to reject every new instinct that was thrust upon me, to separate them all, and to lock away those instincts in a box that was far away from 'me'.

I'd succeeded for a day or two. Then the box had burst and out had come Leona. She seemed to be all the parts of me that I'd rejected and tried to lock away. I couldn't say for certain, but I didn't think this split-personality thing was something deliberate my captors did. I thought it was something that I'd done to myself. I'd refused to accept the mental changes, rejecting them so thoroughly that the two of us had split apart. And then, as time had progressed, as I'd got worn down and stopped fighting piece by piece, bits of Leona had been leaking back into me.

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The most telling was my acceptance of her feeding habits, as I shifted from horror at the very thought of eating people towards making sure she ate the right people. And as she leaked back into me, I've been leaking into her in turn, giving her some spark of intelligence and making it easier to influence her. No, that wasn't completely correct; it was true that she had an easier time understanding my mental imagery, but the bigger difference was that the things I wanted to influence her to do were less far-fetched. I hadn't been influencing her more easily, I'd simply been learning to compromise. We probably could have stayed out of sight in the countryside of Lecolie if we wanted, but instead we were crossing over to Gronorlie because Leona wanted a city full of people to hunt in, and switching country was the safest way. I'd switched from resisting her to aiding and abetting.

I wondered if I could get a cheap rate at any psychologists; surely treating a harpy with a split personality would be worth some fame and prestige? The thought made me giggle to myself. Nope, I'd have to deal with this myself; I'd scare their other customers. Or Leona would eat them.

Leona twitched in mid-flight, disturbed again by my mental giggling. Well, there was one way to figure out if my theory was right or not; I simply had to give in. Not in the way I'd been resisting right after Leona had taken control, by letting my consciousness die and leaving the harpy free rein, but simply by accepting the truth; that thanks to the mutilation that had been performed on me, Leona was every bit as much 'me' as I was. I didn't have to disappear, nor did we need to compete. We were both the same person, and there was no reason for us to be split apart like this in the first place.

This split part of my mind was the last part of me that I was prepared to call human, and so giving it up would mean abandoning the last of my humanity. But frankly, after what I'd seen of humanity these past weeks, the right to call myself human was no longer something I'd miss. Between Leona and the people responsible for the atrocities I'd seen, I struggled to think of Leona as the real monster.

We reached a border city undisturbed, Leona again picking the tallest building to land on. What I was about to do was probably ill-advised, and not knowing what the result would be scared me immensely, but I had no intention of remaining a prisoner in someone else's body forever. Yes, I was giving in, admitting that in some way my captors had beaten me, and that the girl called Lily was gone. Perhaps someone with more willpower could have 'won', but that someone wasn't me, and that was a fact I needed to face up to. 'I'm sorry for pushing you away, Leona,' I thought at her, causing her to look around in confusion. 'I'm ready to accept you now.'