“Do you want assistance in getting up there?” Gleaming-Scale asked, varying up the pattern of its slithering to express its uncertainty. “Or should I fetch the Forager and bring it back down to the ground?”
“No. No, I think I can do this,” The crow replied, giving his wings a flap as he walked. “Or at the very least, I think I need to try.”
Flying. The idea had been on his mind all day. In fiction, flight was the ultimate liberator. The power to break limits and achieve freedom. Obviously it wasn’t actually that magical. He’d still be in the body of a bird, limited to the things a bird could do. But it would be the one singular upside to any of this if he could pull it off. He’d be mobile, more independent, and less of a burden on everyone around him. But also, it would be something fun.
“Then I suppose it is time for you to try. We are almost there.” The black snake made for the rightmost of a row of three trees, stopping partway to turn around and watch with apparent interest. “That one, on the right.” It pointed to the platform in its branches with its tail. “Be safe, and fly true.”
Okay. Lock eyes on the target. Focus what needs done. Understand the mechanisms that make it happen. Act. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to center himself before opening his eyes and using his Attunement to take a lightning-speed inventory of his own body. My wings are blades. Foils to cut the air in front of me and generate lift. If I’m moving fast enough, they will keep me aloft. But I need speed first. My legs move me forward. Slow for walking, but I can coil them like springs. A strong forward hop will get me started, but I need to keep pushing. My core is strong muscle, strong enough to fan my wings and flap to push forward, precise enough to control their angles.
Stride.
Coil.
Spring.
Fan.
Flap.
Glide.
Stride, coil, spring, fan, flap, glide.
Stride coil spring fan flap glide!
GO!
The crow launched himself forward with almost unnatural grace, taking two swaying steps forward before putting that momentum into a low crouch and springing upwards, unfurling his wings as he did so.
One flap. Holding steady. Two flaps. Gaining altitude. Three. Four. Five. Six. His tail fanned out and he adjusted himself to bank slightly to the left, immediately recognizing exactly what angle would alter his ascent to avoid a low-hanging branch. Seven. Eight. He banked back to the right and cleared the height of the treehouse platforms. Now to land. He just had to…
…Look down.
He froze. The world seemed to spin beneath him, the distance to the ground that would have barely been two stories story up as a human now proportionally equivalent to looking down from the top of a skyscraper. Except he didn’t have a building beneath his feet. He was stalling out, falling. Some part of him screamed to focus, to keep moving his wings. But action failed him.
He hit the woven floor of the treehouse hard, wings still wide open, legs still tucked underneath him. He bounced, flipping beak over tail as the world spun even more, only to finally come to a stop when his head impacted the trunk of the tree in the center. Everything went black.
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It lies motionless where it landed, wings and legs splayed out in random directions, body in shock from the impact. Consciousness slowly returns, but lacking in a way it cannot comprehend. After some time, it rolls onto its back, still not entirely aware of what had happened. It needs to be still and rest to recover, but it is vulnerable. Exposed. It is afraid.
It is aware of the approach of something small to its left, and a squirrel comes into view. It relaxes. The squirrel is a friend, there is no danger. The squirrel-friend squeaks and chitters before reaching out to touch it. It is not comfortable being touched, and squirms away. The squirrel continues to make noise. It doesn’t know why. The squirrel eventually leaves. Time passes. A black snake later approaches. Fear returns. The snake is not a friend. It is in danger. It still cannot flee, unable to do more than thrash its wings about to deter the predator’s approach. The snake halts, then leaves. It is safe again. More time passes. The squirrel-friend visits once more, this time with a lizard-friend. They leave again. Eventually-
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-the crow’s mind returns as quickly as it left, with control of his body following soon after. But he still didn’t move, stuck processing what he had just experienced. He Understood exactly what had happened to him physically without even trying. Minor head trauma stunned him, no different than an ordinary bird slamming into a window, and he had taken time to recover. He was even “aware” the extent of his injuries. No internal bleeding, no broken bones, just some minor swelling to account for the pounding headache. No, what could not be accounted for was what happened to his mind while he was stunned. He remembered all of it vividly. But they weren’t his memories. They weren’t his thoughts. They were that of an ordinary crow. Not even an intelligent one like Ink-Talon supposedly had been. Just base animal reasoning. He, the human mind within this body, had vanished.
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He hadn’t “gone” anywhere. He didn’t return to his old body, or have an out-of-body experience. His perspective didn’t change. He simply ceased to be. And that frightened him.
“Hello?” he called out, finally rolling over onto his talons. “I’m okay! I’m awake now!”
The rapid patter of paws on the straw floor sounded from one of the nearby shelters as the squirrel rocketed out of a curtained door and nearly tackled the crow, skidding to a stop as he thought better of himself and simply placed a forepaw on his wing.
“Oh thank God,” the squirrel chittered. “Don’t you dare scare me like that again!”
“Sorry,” the crow croaked. “I shouldn’t have even tried that.”
“What happened? To make you crash, I mean. Gleaming-Scale told me that you had a flawless takeoff.”
“I think…” The crow paused, trying to come up with an answer that didn’t make him sound like a total idiot. “I think I’m afraid of heights. I just looked down to plan my landing and… panicked. It’s stupid, I know.”
“Well, I mean, it’s a pretty common fear to have,” the squirrel chirped reassuringly. “Pretty inconvenient for a bird, though. Honestly, I’m impressed you had the courage to try at all if you felt that way.”
“That’s just it, I… didn’t know I did. It wasn’t a problem I’d ever had as a human. Everything is just so much larger now. The shift in scale is messing with my head.” The crow huffed, happy that the frustration over something more concrete could distract him from the existential horror for a moment. But he still had to bring it up. “Any idea what… happened to me after that?”
“Only barely.” The squirrel approximated a shrug. “Physician Mindful-Sight said that it sometimes happens to animals who take a blow to the head, temporarily losing 'connection to their Gift’ and becoming ‘feral.’" His paws mimed the scare quotes in the explanation for emphasis. "The particulars lost me, and when I asked what any of it meant they said that they preferred to leave the whys of it all to philosophers.”
“That’s… honestly fair. I try not to ponder questions about why I’m alive either,” the crow said, knowing full well that he probably won’t be able to help it. “How long was I out for?”
“A few hours, maybe?” The squirrel looked up at the sky. “I have no idea how anyone tells time here, but it was kinda late-morning-ish when you crashed and it seems to be early-afternoon-ish now.”
“I see.” It hadn’t felt like that long, but then again it hadn’t felt like much of anything other than alternating between idle thoughtlessness and primal terror. “What about you? I’ve been told you’ve… discovered some things.”
“…Right, then you should follow me.” A sudden somberness came over the squirrel as he led the crow back towards the room he’d come out of. “How much do you already know?”
“I know that you have a litter of kits that you insist on taking care of, and that’s about it.” The crow paused, choosing his next words carefully. “It’s not… an instinctual compulsion, is it?”
“No,” the squirrel sighed, his tail drooping. “I almost wish it was, that would be easier. They just… deserve a mother, is all.” He didn’t elaborate, but the crow got the gist. The thought that the previous owners of these bodies had been their own people had crossed his mind more than once. He’d just opted to ignore it. The squirrel obviously didn’t have that luxury.
The kits themselves were about what he had expected. Still blind, only mobile enough to slowly crawl about the floor. They reacted quite positively to their entrance, clearly happy to notice their mother, and surprisingly unbothered by his own presence. He sat down to watch a short distance away as they moved about. The black-furred one managed to wobble over to the older squirrel, who stroked it with a forepaw in a very human manner. It seemed to like that.
“They’re definitely cute. Do they have names?”
“If they did, they’re as lost as our own. Seems baby names are temporary here, if they’re even used. Everyone picks their own once they can think for themselves, renaming themselves later if they want.” The squirrel paused, lost in thought for a moment. “We could do that too, you know.”
“No thanks.” The crow stiffened, not remotely comfortable with the idea.
“You know that they’re just going to keep calling us by their names if we don’t, right?”
“Huh.” The crow pondered this. The squirrel was right, of course. He couldn’t keep being nameless. Either he picked one, or else one would be applied to him by default. “You know what? That’s fine by me.”
“What?”
“I know my name, I remember the sounds, even if I can’t express them,” the crow explained. “That’s still me, and any name I pick here won’t be mine. At best, it’d be a nickname. So why not go with the flow? If they want to call me Ink-Talon, I can make it easy for them and just let them. It’s no worse than anything else at this point.”
“If that’s what you want, I can do that.” The squirrel nodded. “I’m gonna need more time for myself, though.”
“I think needing more time is perfectly normal right now. I’m just lazy, so-“ Ink-Talon froze, startled by something bumping into his side. It was one of the kits, the one with rust-tinged gray fur, having gone out of its way to approach him and not its mother. It let out a satisfied peep and snuggled under his wing before promptly dozing off. “Oh. Okay then.”
“I was wondering if that would happen,” the squirrel squeaked, clearly amused.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ink-Talon cawed, toning down his indigence to keep from disturbing the kit. But he didn’t have to wait for an answer, the realization dawning on him almost immediately. “Were they raising them together? Oh God. They were a couple, weren’t they?”
“They were certainly roommates,” the squirrel affirmed, somewhat surprised that the reference translated. Probably because it was also literally true. “I am not asking you to help care for them, to be clear. Whatever the real squirrel and bird had going on was between them, not us.”
“No arguments there,” Ink-Talon clicked his beak. “There is one problem, though. I still have to live here, and I’d feel awful if all I did was just sit around and take up space without chipping in at least a little.”
“I… appreciate that, thanks,” the squirrel squeaked, seemingly taken aback by the offer. “Hopefully, we aren’t stuck like this for long. I’d love nothing more than to get them their real parents back and go home.”
“…Yeah.” The crow barely managed to hide his unease at the statement, unable to get the experience of the crash out of his head. He didn’t want to drag down the squirrel’s hopes. After all, it could have just been a fluke, or his messed up animal brain could be misinterpreting the whole thing. But as it stood, if that was what awaited them if they restored the original Keen-Ear and Ink-Talon, if their minds were to be removed from these bodies, it wasn’t a way home.
It was death.