Tomorrow was going to be Twigseethe’s first day at her new school, and she was incredibly excited. They had done tests in class earlier in the year, and the teachers had discovered that she had a prodigious talent for Change.

She didn’t really understand how somebody could not have a talent for it, or why they'd had to do the tests. All Change involved was drawing an image in her mind, or pulling the image from the mind of the person she was targeting, and pushing the magic into shape.

They had said her tests were to see if she could store magic in her heart, but, couldn't everyone do that?

It was just weird. Was that how normal people functioned?

She held on tight to the dragon's horns. She had discovered after a few days of travel, that if she was careful, then she could scale up his neck and perch on his head, holding onto his two horns for balance. It had quickly become her new favourite place in the world.

She was kneeling there right now, her knees against his head, the pattern of his scales pressing into her skin, building an image in her the back of her mind.

The magic told her she couldn’t become a dragon, their bodies simply weren’t built… Well... Weren't built, was all it said. She didn’t know how, but only a small part of him existed on the physical, and the physical was what her magic focused on.

Taking a deep breath, she screamed into the wind, laughing with joy! "WHEEE!" Under her knees, she felt the body of the dragon shift, as he gave a slight tilt into the wind, first one way, and then the other. Enough to lean her against the horns, but not enough to threaten her balance.

He was having fun too, he told her, "woooo!"

-

Before setting off, the people at the post office had tied a piece of rope around her waist. They'd secured that rope onto a ring, which in turn was secured to the straps around his body, but she had cut it away before the end of the first day. It hadn't given her nearly enough room to move or see.

She wasn’t worried about falling, he would catch her if she did, he told her, and she was building an image for that anyway.

Some time in the second week of flight, they had flown near a huge flock of birds, huge enough to black out the sky. She had managed to convince Dragon (She wasn’t going to call him ‘Crests the Skies on Wings of Knowledge’ every time she thought about him, it was way too slow, and he didn't think of himself like that) to fly above the cloud. She had wanted to fly either underneath or through the flock, but he had pointed out the sheer amount of bird-poo that they produced, and she had relented.

The two of them had flown above the flock for almost an entire day. The birds were unafraid, predators in the sky seeing another, bigger, scarier version of themselves. She had taken the time to study how their wings worked, how they stayed in the air even whilst even asleep.

She wished she could have caught one and spoken to it, but observation would have to do. She had never considered differing air currents before this, or the different shapes of wings. The only birds she knew were the pigeons and sparrows that inhabited the city, and only the pigeons would talk to her, the sparrows too busy for conversation.

Pigeons were very cool, much smarter than one would expect from the so-called 'winged rats'. They told her how the pulls in the wind and earth showed them North, and how to recognise landmarks from far above. They told her how to hear incoming storms, and which shops sold the tastiest chips. They told her to care for those around her, and to always remain loyal to your flock.

She couldn’t make use of a lot of the bird-knowledge, especially without the right senses to detect the things they could, but she was getting there with the other stuff.

Flying on the back of the Dragon was, she had decided, the greatest thing that had ever happened to her. She screamed into the wind again out of pure, sheer happiness, “WOOOOOO!”

She felt a laugh ripple through the great head below her, and she laughed herself, standing up and clinging onto the horns with her face into the wind.

In her mind, something clicked as the image finished building, and she gave Dragon a pat on the head, before sliding down his neck and landing back in the hollow of his neck.

It was the most complicated thing she’d ever made, and if her teachers found out then she reckoned they would have shouted at her, and told tell her parents, who would have been very proud but also rather shouty.

She didn’t know what the big deal was. You couldn’t Change a living being in a way that would cause it to stop living, that wasn’t how it worked. If she tried to Change herself to a form without a head or something then the magic would fail, if she could even form an image that broken in the first place.

The one she had just finished building was based on birds she had known over the years and those she had studied on the journey. The pigeons had shown her their bones, the low density a part of how they could lift themselves into the air. They had shown her the skeletons of their dead, and she had seen how they were formed. Humans were strong and sturdy, creatures of the earth, while birds were creatures of the air, and it showed in the structure of their beings.

The image she had created aimed to cut as much weight from her bones as possible. It would knock a bit off her height, and her limbs would be a little longer, but it would also make the heavy bones in her arms and legs much lighter. She could change the other bones in her body to a certain extent, but they were more important and resisted more. She was already slim, being eight years old and having lived an active life, but she wasn't going to mess around with fat and muscle just yet.

The magic whispered to her that this wasn’t the best idea. The stuff within bones made her blood work, and to change it too much would cause her body to work badly, but she could concentrate on the working parts, thin out the bones and change the structure enough for her needs without weakening them too much. It was all about compromise, but if she did get break something, she could always just Shift back.

She settled down, crossing her legs underneath her and starting the Change.

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A single inward breath to pull the magic out of the air around her. There was so much mana around Dragon that she barely needed to store it, her heart already full to bursting. Then, with an exhalation, she pressed the image across her body.

She knew the moment the fire ran over her skin, that something within her image wasn’t right. It burnt for a moment, a tremendous heat sweeping over her skin and through her bones, and then the fire went out.

She took a few minutes to work out what the issue had been. Ah, the pelvis was more important than she had thought. An adjustment, adding back strength and marrow, and she let the image build again. This time instead of fire, it was like a cool breeze, the wind of flight around her.

She would take a nap first, and then give it another go.

-

She was awoken by a violent shake from the Dragon, and she crawled out to see what was up- Oh!

The birds were back, the same flock as before, but there was a much bigger one with them this time, a leader. It was huge and orange, and almost the same size as her ride. Impressive!

The feathers resembled fire, and she knew just by looking that it wasn’t an entirely physical being. Not in the same way Dragon wasn’t, but like a younger, much, much more distant cousin.

It was like Dragon, in the same way Dragon was like a Pigeon.

Even despite that, it was beautiful, and she sat up in her seat to better admire it, wondering if it would come closer to talk to her. The wings were like flame, and the beak was hooked like a falcon's, coloured a dark orange, fading up into a blue as it met the body.

The cry it let out was the scream of a house fire burning out of control. The screech of a damp log thrown into a bonfire, the wail of the fire station's sirens in the distance. When it opened its mouth, the flock surrounding it scattered, and the noise of it made the jungle below explode in life, as every bird within a hundred miles was suddenly compelled into the air all at once.

Before they rapidly realised what was in the air above them, and returned back to their trees with haste.

Dragon gave her a moment to admire the bird, knowing her obsession well by this point, and then shifted his position, beating his wings and climbing upwards. Up and up, higher than she’d realised he could go, until the air was thin and her head span with every breath. Then, just as she started to see spots, he dove, gaining speed until she thought she would lose consciousness from the speed instead.

She curled up into a ball and tried to hide in her sheltered hollow, regretting cutting the safety line and glad for her human weight. Without it, she feared she would have blown away in the wind.

Even as she hid, a part of her was still working and adjusting the image. Analysing the pattern of its wings and how the feathers connected together.

The magic whispered how she could modify her arms and hands into wings. She would lose the functionality of fingers, but nothing she did was permanent. With wings, she could glide through the air. She wouldn’t be able to gain height, but if she fell then she could catch herself, could float to safety.

She would need some sort of rudder, maybe a fantail like the fancy pigeons she had spoken to in the gardens of one of the upper-class, once. It would look daft on the ground, but it was possible she could form it into a sort of skirt.

Did it count as being naked if your feather skirt was your own feathers? She thought back to some of the people she had seen over her life with fur and scales, and decided it probably did, at least to adults. Dammit. She would have to wear a proper skirt over it, she supposed. Split down the sides like you would have for horse riding.

Being at school was going to be weird, but maybe they'd be more forgiving of that sort of thing, in a school where everyone had a Talent. Back home she had been seen as strange and odd, and the other kids had avoided her unless they had a complicated request nobody else in the school could realise for them.

It could have also been a class thing, she considered, huddled up with her hands over her head, peeking out at the bird through the gap between her knees.

Twigseethe didn’t think she came from a particularly rich family, but they had always been well off. A house attached to no others, with nice gardens. Two stories, her own bedroom. They had a live-in maid and a cook, but she didn’t have servants to wait on her hand and foot, like others her age. She didn't even have a pony!

Her mother owned a tailor's shop, and her dad designed things. Buildings, bridges, houses and shops, if it needed designing, he was your guy.

She had been expected to become an artist, surviving off her painting and drawing, but then the scholarship had come in and now here she was, being shipped off to a fancy private school, far away from home.

She would live there for eight years before graduating, it seemed like an awfully long time.

She had accepted that she might never see her family again, they were hundreds and hundreds of miles away, but, she would write every week. She had promised. She would send her drawings back, and her dad would send his in return.

And when she had learnt everything the school could teach her, she would Change herself, so when she graduated, she could fly home under her own power. Below her, Dragon approved.

In her mind, the new image clicked, the patterns of the feathers and the bones merging into one bird-like form. It wasn’t perfect yet, and if she was being honest, it would never be, but it was a start. As an added bonus, if she fell off now, at least she might have a chance at surviving!

She clung onto Dragon as best she could, as the giant bird swept and veered around them, never managing to hit, but also refusing to give up. It left ripples in the air behind it, from the heat of its wings, and up close she could see small blue flames ringing the bottom of each quill.

During the fight, she considered sliding down Dragon's side and wedging herself against the bag near his neck so there was no chance of her rolling off, but he was very careful, and she was safe where she was...

It kept attacking for what felt like hours, before suddenly tiring and falling back, lagging behind with angry screeches and calls.

Now that it was over, she could feel the tiredness in his body, exhaustion and lactic acid infusing every muscle. She didn’t have nearly enough talent to Change him some healing, but she patted his neck in a comforting manner, trying to encourage him to keep flying.

He wasn’t used to this sort of exertion, and with her on his back it had only been more difficult, having to fight whilst also not losing her to oxygen deprivation or fall damage.

Now that it was gone though, she scrambled out of the gap, returning to her rightful place on his head. Wheeee! She pushed through the change to her bones as she did, lowering her weight, but keeping back the feathers later experimentation.

It set this time, and the feeling was strange, not one she had experienced before. Sudden lightheadedness, and a sense of, not weightlessness, but as if she’d been carrying around something all her life that she could now put down for the first time.

Standing up, holding onto one of the horns, she looked back. In the distance, she could still see the flock of birds, the fire-bird a tiny orange speck, in the middle of a huge black cloud. She wondered why it had attacked, and what it was.

Either way, she had gotten some interesting ideas from it, and she was already adjusting her image to adapt to the changes.

She couldn’t replicate the fire, but she could the colours and the shapes. She had absorbed how it used its wing feathers to change its direction during flight, and was now realising that the way a predator flew was very different from a pigeon or a sparrow.

-

She sat there on his head for the rest of the journey. At some point she adjusted her regular Image, changing her hair to be like fire. A deep red at the tips, fading into orange, and then blue at the roots. It would look strange as it grew out, but she was always updating it anyway.

She stayed there for the night, and then as the sun rose before them, she saw the city appearing over the horizon. It was a raised area of white and green, bathed in the orange light of dawn, and it was beautiful. Off to one side was a taller structure, as if somebody had taken piles of cubes and piled them all up on top of one another. That would be the school.

The two of them would arrive within a few hours, and that pile of cubes would be her home from now on.

It was gonna be so much fun.