Unexpectedly, Charles’ dreams were blessedly empty of the suffering that he had come to find familiar during his previous life. That was good, considering his instincts were driving him to eat as much as possible and sleep off the resultant growth spurt ad nauseum.
And indeed, there was a growth spurt.
While he wasn’t sure how large they really were, Charles could tell that he and his siblings must have added at least three inches in as little as two days.
‘What I wouldn’t give for access to the internet right now,’ Charles spluttered mentally, ‘Oh, and the thumbs I should have right now.’
Neither were likely to happen ever, if at all, so he instead dragged his attention to his siblings and the nest around him. There were six of them in all, including himself, and so far he got the sense that they were… well, they were birdbrains, he wasn’t really sure what he should be expecting. Charles suspected that losing a chick or two to utter curiosity wasn’t especially uncommon, though his values as a sibling who was also once human had kept that from happening thus far. Twice now, the really chubby chick of the group of five had wandered up to the lip of the nest. At first, he’d been content to just stare wide-eyed at the blurry world as it came into focus, but then he’d tried to get closer to the scenes.
That first time, Charles felt a few years come off the end of his life as the bird-brained idiot very nearly fell out of the nest when it lost its balance. Instead, the chick had luckily fallen backwards into the nest, chirping in alarm the whole way. The others chirped wildly in response, and Charles himself waddled forward, preening over the alarmed chick and prompting the rest of the troupe to do the same.
‘You’d think that would have been enough…’ Charles sighed, knowing that he’d had to make a mad dash - as fast as that actually was as a chick, anyways - to pull that one away from the edge not five minutes later.
“I’m naming you Yak, because you’re stubborn and pigheaded,” the reborn human thought with exasperation as he moved over and indelicately trounced his sibling away from the ledges of the nest once more. It huffed and fussed as it landed on its back, but there wasn’t really a better way to do that. Charles beak wasn’t strong enough to yoink the chick down by its feathers, and besides that, there was no guarantee Yak wouldn’t just keep on hobbling along.
Yak rose up after several tries, peeping vehemently at Charles who simply hobbled away, ignoring him.
“Eh, you’ll be fine. Thank me later,” he peeped at his younger sibling, knowing that words didn’t work out, but feeling a sense of catharsis from pretending he could still talk anyways. Charles refocused himself, “Alright, gotta figure out some things. Questions, sort things out as we go, alright… so I have no idea how big I am, that’s gonna have to wait, I think. So, second, are we regular hawks? I mean, we’re in a world that, at a minimum, has magic of some sort, and has literal god-given powers. I’m already aware that there are monsters on this world as well. Ordinarily, that might be a bad thing, but at the very least that gives me a chance to not be just a regular bird.”
“So, the second question is legit, are we regular hawks? If not, I gotta figure out what we can do. Third question is if I can still grow… I honestly don’t really know how to quantify this. Do I evolve if I get enough experience? Is experience a thing?’ Charles paused, the gears churning in his head, ‘Quick test… Status!” he called out in his mind, attempting to push the thought outwards.
After another minute of variants on that, including looking inside himself in a form of meditation that rapidly threatened to become another nap, Charles had to face the music.
“Alright, so, not a stereotypical Isekai novel thing. So, better to just consider everything that happens in as realistic a sense as possible first and not expect skills to be a thing. I don’t think I have any overpowered abilities, yet, and I definitely don’t have a smartphone. Not that it would help without thumbs. Hah!” The man-turned-baby-bird quickly turned his attention from the return of that particular item that he’d lost. Charles waddled back and forth deep in thought, only to pause when he noted the absence of noise. Perplexed, he looked around for his siblings.
He found them huddled up together, each of them staring at him with a fair bit of intense curiosity. A glint of something resembling intelligence flickered behind their eyes, not quite there but getting to it.
It felt odd to Charles to see it, though, “What’re you staring at me for? Didn’t your parents-- oh, no, I guess they didn’t teach you that’s rude… huh.” The playful remark spluttered weakly as he noted that, no, their parents hadn’t really taught them much of anything yet.
Then he realized that they weren’t just following him with their eyes, but also seemed to be listening to his directed chirps.
“Uhhh, yeah, don’t mind me, I’m just thinking?” Charles thought-chirped at them, “Go about your business, citizens!”
He waited, watching to see if there was any change in the reactions. Did they perhaps understand him? Could they communicate with him at all?
For a few seconds, nothing happened, and the eldest couldn’t help but let out a warbling sigh. It’d been worth a shot.
And then, against all real expectation, the five hatchlings went about doing other things in the nest. For his part, Charles watched in stunned disbelief, “Holy crap, can they understand me? Hey, you and you, chirp twice if you can understand me.”
The two chicklings slowed and considered him, but after a few seconds they lost interest once more and continued on their way.
“That… okay, do they not understand me then? But… why did they just disperse, then?” Charles stood stock still, staring at the wayward little fluff balls with confusion. “Do they think I’m insane? Man… I’m talking to myself, but do birds care about that?”
Then he noticed Yak moving back over to the edge of the nest again and neatly trilled in frustration and fear.
“Yak! For crying out loud, it’s dangerous as all feathering peck over there, be careful!” Bird noise exploded from Charles' beak, startling the siblings once more. His stubbly legs were already carrying him towards Yak when, against all odds, the little bird actually turned around and fled from the edge. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that Yak saw something that scared him witless. Yet, there was nothing that was out there, nothing that Charles could see anyways, and Yak wasn’t so close to the edge to peer over it as of yet.
Still, he looked around for the threat, just in case, even knowing that there would be no chance that he could protect himself, let alone any of his siblings. To his surprise, Yak buried himself face first into Charles’ downy fluff, shivering and chirping, clearly afraid.
“Uh, what?… Did I do that? But how? Do they understand me or don’t they?” Frustration welled briefly, but was subsumed by surprise. He was hit on all sides, clumsy weight thrown against him and rubbing against him with chirrups of alarm. It only took a moment for him to realize that each of his siblings was positively quaking and pushing themselves to be closer to one another.
Guilt bubbled up alongside the realization of what he was likely looking at here.
‘So, maybe they didn’t understand the words? Maybe it was the way I said it?’ a chagrined Charles looked over his panicking, newly born siblings. They knew nothing of his words, but the intent of danger that he’d delivered to them had tapped into the most hardwired of all survival instincts. Fear was a healthy response, regardless of what some people seemed to think, and was doubly so in the wild. For animals - or monsters, he guessed - that sense was perhaps even more powerful than what a human might experience.
So, knowing that he’d just exposed babies to the concept of fear for the first time in their lives, a chagrined Charles did the first best thing that he could think of.
He began cooing to them softly, “It’s gonna be okay. You’re all gonna be safe, you just gotta stick together. We’re a family-” his voice, as bird-like as it was, hitched there “-and family takes care of eachother. Come here, you’re gonna be fine. We’re all okay, just let it all out.”
Charles never thought this was something that he’d be doing again. Elizabeth, his human sister, had gone through a phase of crying over the smallest things. He’d done his best to console her, and had found that the best thing you could do for an ailing child was to just be there for them. Hold them, tell them everything was going to be okay, even if it was a bold-faced lie.
Slowly but surely, with the gentle application of warmth, cooing, and gently patting with feeble wings and beak, the five steadily stopped shaking. When he began settling them in, placing them just as much upon the others in the nest as him, they stopped having panicked chirping. By the time he’d begun to actually get in practice with his chirping, they’d all passed out.
Followed shortly after by an exhausted eldest chick.
Awakening and promptly being ‘invited’ to another feeding session had largely seemed to put the events of earlier in the day behind him. Charles was glad to see that the chicks were back in high spirits, and even more grateful that they stayed far away from the edge. Charles absolutely detested the idea of his siblings being harmed if he could do anything at all about it. Perhaps that was from being a big-brother once already, but in any case he had no intent to relax overtly.
It was pretty easy to say that, however, the reality was that the eldest chick was currently being half-smothered beneath his Mother’s feathers and mostly helpless to change that fact. They really were tremendously different from red-tailed hawks on earth, given that their feathers were literally black and red. The stark coloration difference was startling on the adult, and made no sense with the greenery around them. He wondered if perhaps they were stealthier than they looked, but also realized he had no real idea how hunting worked here. Were their senses greater than earth animals? It wouldn’t be surprising considering the possibility that monsters existed, albeit he hadn’t seen them as of yet.
His own feathers were a light shade of pink, some magenta and blue, to which his siblings only seemed to bear the pink, magenta, and darker streaks of grey. It was chaotic in pattern for the time being; none of the chicks had any kind of discernable pattern, unlike their parents.
Mother bore a band of red feathers around her neck plumage, and also had red strips across her wings. Father, on the other hand, bore only around the neck and up to his head, including the frilly feathers that protruded at length from his head. The rest of their bodies were completely black feathered, or close therein.
Charles was aware that they struck a vibrant contrast with their chicks. Eventually they would begin to molt their newborn feathers, but until then, they were a mixup of colored feathers against the black of their parents.
‘Molting is going to be just such a joy,’ Charles thought dryly, watching as Mother fretted over cleaning the chicks. He’d been groomed already, but found the attention surprisingly nice, if perhaps a little obsessive. Father had taken off shortly after delivering food, but Mother stayed this time, just as last night.
And, unlike last night, Charles managed to wake up during it, and force himself to remain awake. The siblings were only half conscious, Mother nearly finished with her task and quickly settled them in around or even partly beneath her. Warmth was an undeniable plus as the cold began to trickle in. Even Charles, with all of his experiences, found the chill to somehow cut straight to his core. He blamed it on being an infant, and drove himself slightly deeper into Mothers side.
She shifted and looked at him, one glistening, reddish brown eye that affixed him with an assessing gaze. Charles paused, meeting her questing eye curiously, likewise mesmerized by the depth behind them.
Mother gave a low coo before turning to her watchful duty, but in the wake of that Charles felt a warmth and lovingness wash over him.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He very nearly passed out in comfort right then and there.
‘Hmm, is this why my hatch-mates kept snuggling up to me? No wonder why they pass out so quickly. Damn.’ Charles thought to himself, pushing willfully to keep his head up to study the area. While the world was large, he was sure that any information that could be gathered at this stage would be nothing if not helpful.
At least, until he realized, again, that he couldn’t see anything from his perspective, and would need to climb to the edge of the nest to ameliorate that. With a huff, Charles managed to pry himself out from under Mother, waddling over to survey the land that he would one day rule - err, hunt in - with his superior human mind!
Mother made a scuffing noise that translated amusement and firmness, and Charles found himself pausing, turning around to see an amused, but admonishing parent looking him over.
“Yes, Mother,” Charles tried to put on an aggrieved expression. In the next moment, he felt a strange awareness focus on him, and understood at once that something was looking at him. Not just seeing him, no, something far more personal, as though he were being inspected on some level beyond just his features. It was difficult to explain, and as he looked up, he knew exactly who it was that was scrutinizing him.
His Mother stood several times his size stared at him, and through him, at the same time. In the darkness, Charles could almost see what appeared to be a vague dancing light deep in her eyes, color and form shifting ever so marginally as to be unnatural.
‘Feathering peck, did she understand me?’ The question hit him as Mother lowered her head, eyes taking him in, orange and red taking up the entirety of Charles’ field of vision. A small part of him screamed a warning, the not insignificant part of his still-human instincts afraid of the level of scrutiny the much larger, carnivorous animal was giving him. Just when he began to dread the possibility that he’d made a fatal error, Mother lifted her head slightly and bopped him on the beak with her own, admonishing him as any Mother would an irreverent child. Then she plucked him up with her razor beak gently and carried him back, being certain to wedge him firmly amidst his siblings.
As Charles was being stuffed tightly enough into place to make escape too much effort, he could have sworn there was a smirk, perhaps pride in the expression his Mother gave him..
‘Oh my sweet talons, I thought she was gonna chuck me out of the nest for a moment.’ He breathed a deep sigh of relief, the rudeness of the interaction pulling his remaining energy reserve out from under him. ‘Hopefully she just thinks I’m really smart?’ He thought to himself, before shaking his beak ruefully before turning his attention to his previous goal, ‘Ah, well, looks like tonight’s watching is a no-go, too. Maybe when I get bigger… however long that takes…’
And, just like that, Charles added on an even greater amount of time spent sleeping than awake in his new life.
The next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, passed much in the same way as the one before it. As a human in a bird’s body - let alone that of a chick - Charles was swiftly becoming frustrated with the many limitations he had. He tired quickly in the first day or two, and had been struggling to be more capable of walking around the nest. Only, the issue rapidly became that of balance, having a too-large head with stick-legs that were weak and ill-intended for moving around too much on the ‘ground’ made the issue ever more difficult.
But, he’d kept at it. If there was anything he was accustomed too, it was the familiar strain of struggle and strife. In fact, he’d begun relishing the way his as-yet feeble muscles burned when he moved, something that he’d been even more limited in feeling in the latter half of his life.
He pulled his attention away from that topic quickly, lest he become mired in it. Instead, as Mother and Father prepared to leave the nest, the chicks began practicing their routines. His parents had already shown them how to clean themselves, and while they were as of yet still young, they were now old enough to do some basic things to care for themselves. It still alarmed Charles how quickly he was growing, but compared with his siblings, he supposed that their growth was perfectly natural. For all he knew, in this world it wasn’t strange for something to grow dramatically fast, usual biological understanding be damned.
And yet, when Mother met his gaze, he couldn’t help but feel just a little bit special. Occasionally it felt like she was somehow connecting to him through her gaze, a jolt of lightning that rushed down his spine. When she’d first done it a few mornings ago, he’d sprawled out in shock, but now he knew what she wanted as easily as if she’d set up an enormous, well-lit sign for him to read.
“Protect.” The word rolled across my mind as she flicked her eyes to the siblings around me.
“Yes.” Charles tried to project back, and felt a strange sort of connection that lived and died within a flicker of time. Yet, Mother seemingly got the message clearly this time, and gave him one last appraising, pseudo-smile before turning and pushing off of the branch. Father joined her in the air, moving along her flank eagerly. Their wings spread wide, Charles watched them for the few precious seconds that he could before the trees obscured them from view.
“Peck. I want to learn to fly,” Charles, no longer bothering to note how many times his vocabulary shifted without his intent. Perhaps the changes he was undergoing were far deeper than he’d realized, rather, it seemed impossible to deny that was happening. And so, came the second frustration that most predominantly occupied his time.
Red Hawk chicks grew fast, faster than their Earth versions, or Earth cousins - however it worked. He was hardly an expert of birds, but he suspected that around two or three months would probably be the requirement for flight for a normal bird.
And yet, already they were double the size they’d been in the egg. That came with a rather insatiable appetite, growing pains - oh, how he wished that didn’t need to happen again -, and feathers gradually growing in. That led to some level of misery overall, as the chicks pecked at each other to pull loose fluff. But, it wasn’t all so bad, Charles had to admit. The chicks grew in body and mind, and with just a few days of time, he’d begun teaching them, somewhat.
“Alright, you lot!” Charles turned on the chicks, who still started in surprise whenever he started talking. Thankfully, they were all paying attention this time, and no one needed a light pecking to get their attention.
“We have another big day ahead of us, plenty to do!” Charles lied outright, “We’re going to start with the basics, and move from there. So, line up!” The small chick commanded his kin with some measure of success. The other chicks managed a rough sort of line, only after he’d come over and moved them into place, partly leaning on each other for support. It only took five to ten minutes, and they’d only fallen over three times! That was progress, in Charles’ eyes.
“Okay, uh… roll call! Yeah, we’ll start from left to right. My left, your right.” He nodded, staring at the second chick from the end, one whom very often began to tweet and warble at random times throughout the day. Somehow, it wasn’t annoying, though Charles chalked that up to it still being novel.
Usually.
“Yak!” Charles called the chick at the end of the line. The little chick vaguely came to some sort of awareness from his distractions, blankly staring at the attending Charles.
“Gabby!” The second in the line turned her attention towards Charles, still tweeting quietly enough, studying everything. There was the vaguest sense of intent from her, but nothing concrete, not like Mother’s.
“Owl!” Thirdly came the chick who blinked, similarly to how he would imagine a tired owl would. He swiveled his head too, though couldn’t quite get the full rotation down. Charles could only guess that he’d seen an owl around and emulated it, which disappointed Charles. He’d wanted to see one, but at the same time, given circumstances, he wasn’t sure if he’d end up on the menu for an owl or not.
“Pecky! No, stop Yak, we’re not done yet.” Charles spoke and immediately watched Yak straighten up, clearly not inching over to grab at the tuft of fluffy feather that wiggled in the wind distractingly. Pecky, for her part, was the one primarily responsible for those tufts, freeing the loose bits with vigor and aplomb.
Which was fun until she pecked you too hard. She really liked pecking, and so Charles gave her her name, Pecky.
As the line grew restless, only one of the chicks remained in position with any sense of true attention. The last in the line, perhaps the next most intelligent sibling, “Talon.” Charles greeted the fifth chick, who stared attentively for a few more seconds before turning her attention to her siblings in a motion that seemed somehow almost graceful.
Her namesake was simple; her Talons were growing faster than the others, and they were huge things. Charles wasn’t sure how large they’d get, but among them, he had little doubt that Talon would be the largest, or close to it.
Still, for as much as she managed to stay in place for roll-call, Talon just as rapidly piled onto her siblings in the pursuit of the tuft of fuzz. Playing, after all, was equally important as whatever it was the eldest sibling was trying to get them to do.
“Well, it’s a start,” Charles murmured to himself, before he too found his eyes drawn to the tuft of fuzz. It was moving around so enticingly, and the others were chasing it, too. Whatever was letting it move around, Charles wanted to be the first one to catch it.
He poised himself to start running after it, only to halt in mid motion with confusion on his face clear for all to see. “What in the feather am I doing?”
The question forced him to contemplate things from a more rational perspective. Clearly he shouldn’t be feeling so driven to cha-
The tuft rolled past his feet, and before he could stop himself he was chirping just as loudly as the others, chasing it with his beak snipping closed just behind it. “Mine! It’s mine!”
That declaration fell on deaf ears as the siblings chirped excitedly and happily, Yak bowled over Talon, only to run straight into Owl, who fell in a tumble with the aforementioned chick. Gabby and Charles hit the tuft of fuzz at the same time, and both clamped onto the fuzz before they tried to pull it apart, only to be stuck in a deadlock, staring at each other.
He could see the gaze on Gabby’s face, almost as surely as he could hear the thoughts going through her emerging mind. “You don’t need this, right? I mean, I am your little sister, why don’t you let me, oh, take this? Pretty please?”
At least, that’s the voice that Charles attached to her at that moment, and just as well, because that thought process matched her fairly well.
“C’mon, it’s a tuft of feathery… stuff! Certainly not something for you to play with. Why don’t you go over and play with something more fitting? Oh, like that stick over there? I’m sure that’d be fun, right?” Charles' response felt a little something like that as his eyes met hers.
And then the resistance stiffened as they pulled, yanking and pulling each other off balance. As hard as they tried, it really was impossible to get a good footing on such weak and clumsy legs. So, Charles went with the next best thing. He fitted his clawed feet under some nearby sticks, woven tightly as part of the nest. He didn’t get far down into them, but he didn’t need to. Gabby was about to get a lesson on a very important part of mechanical application - however rudimentary - that had been applied in fights between siblings since the dawn of time!
Leverage.
Suddenly, Gabby was unable to pull Charles at all, and Owl, Talon, and Yak all stared as their older sibling suddenly became immovable. Sure, he still moved a little bit, but for them, this represented another level, a standard of might that they viewed then as insurmountable. Yet, for all their feather-brained wonder, Gabby refused to give in, resolutely holding on in spite of the fact that she no longer made any remote progress.
Charles would have liked to be able to say that he could smugly smirk at his sibling as she tried, in vain, to wrest control from him. But the fact of the matter was far from any such naivety - Gabby was a god damned machine! Charles grit his beak, trying hard not to let up, realizing that in affixing himself here, he had no give or take, which ironically made it even harder to hold the damn clump of feathery fluff. If he hadn’t fixed his talons under the sticks, he’d be able to maneuver more, try to exhaust her.
Alas, Gabby seemed to have a semblance of pig-headed mule in her blood, because she still wasn’t stopping, even ten seconds later. For chicks, that was an immense expenditure of energy, and even more, concentration. To want that fluff so badly… Charles considered letting go just to have his sibling have her prize.
But only considered. This was going to be his prize, after all.
‘Seriously, what in the flying peck is going on in my brain?’ Charles spared precious brainpower with that dismayed thought.
In the next moment, though, there was a tearing and suddenly Charles was reeling backwards, falling out of the knot of twigs, thankfully, before his bird ankles could be harmed. Gabby, on the other side, yelped as she rolled back, but somehow snapped up a tuft of fuzz in her mouth as she went. Charles' expression was one of utter disbelief for a moment, before he realized that he had a tuft of fuzz, too!
And then realized it was smaller by half than what it’d been before.
“Oh, we tore it in half.” He blinked in surprise, then shrugged just as quickly, “Eh, whatever, that works.” Satisfied, Charles strutted forward, proudly, showing off the fuzz that he’d snatched. Gabby, likewise satisfied, seemed to emulate him. The eldest beamed at that, and together they looked haughtily upon their other siblings.
“See, fair sister, these plebeian siblings of ours have no tufts of fuzz!” Charles mentally beamed.
Gabby said - or he guessed at least - “Indeed! These poor fools, empty of beak of the precious fuzz! Would it be that I could share, but alas, I have only enough for myself!”
And then they chortled together, and that part at least was very real.
Which lasted just long enough for Pecky, Yak, Talon, and Owl to look back and forth between each other, realize they were being insulted, and then charge the pair to obtain the fuzz from them.
“Ack, flee! Flee my sister! The masses rise!” Charles crowed aloud, but couldn’t help but laugh as the chicks flooded over him. In mock horror, he cried out, “Alas! In the end my wea-”
He was cut off as Yak sat on his head, having fallen over and muffled the rest of what Charles was going to say.
Any concept of a plan for the day, just as the day before, and day before that, was abandoned as the siblings found other creative ways to play and hopefully drive away boredom.