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alonewiththemoonAll right.
Shuddering breath. tendrils ripple. I twitch at the sensation against my arms and back.
I need to wake up Melville again. If she’ll wake up and look at me. Cleaning myself up will help. I find the strength to move past Melville's inert form on the floor, stagger into the shower hall. I have to kneel in order to fit my, well, my wings, in the cramped space. tendrils tense against the water’s spray, then relax. The warmth feels good. The steam smooths.
I realize my eyes are closed and that I am drifting off, kneeling on the tiled floor with my arms stretched out before me, funneling the water across my shoulders and down my back. Experimentally I raise and lower my shoulders. soreness but no tearing, no fresh blood in the water that pools around me. The bony spires holding the tendrils bend and flex with my movement and settle folded behind me as my shoulders fall. Did I do that?
I reach behind me to examine my new body and find that I have reached forward as well, that a few tendrils have met my hand partway, tips entwining among my fingers. It is a confusing sensation, a new touch and yet it is my own flesh against my own flesh. My tendrils are soft, somewhat downy, and my hand is smooth, somewhat scaly. My own touch is familiar yet strange, intimate yet alien.
Alien. That’s the inescapable word for it all. Reluctantly I stand, turn off the shower and turn to face the mirrors. Familiar yet strange. It is my face in the mirror, my hair, my arms and legs and hips and breasts and shoulders, my scars and my bodmods, but I now see my wings, slate blue-gray and echoing my breathing with soft movements, I see new muscles under my skin, and my eyes--my eyes have taken on the blue-gray cast of those wings. I would panic at the sight of this well-known stranger, I feel the edge of panic creeping in, but the crystalline music, never far from my consciousness, surfaces in my thoughts, and now I can hear that my change is part of the music too, that it is the outward showing of the rightness I feel when I look at the trajectory I have plotted on Ehrengard’s star charts.
I flex and extend my wings above me. They are beautiful. They have always belonged there. I stretch and turn, learning how to move. I don’t think I could actually fly with these bones and tendrils, but they feel vitally important to me now.
I find a new flight suit and tear the back open. Better tailoring can come later. Now, Melville and the rest of the crew. Maybe I can convince them I’m an angel. Ha. They all know far too much about me for that to work.
Shuddering breath. tendrils ripple. I twitch at the sensation against my arms and back.
I need to wake up Melville again. If she’ll wake up and look at me. Cleaning myself up will help. I find the strength to move past Melville's inert form on the floor, stagger into the shower hall. I have to kneel in order to fit my, well, my wings, in the cramped space. tendrils tense against the water’s spray, then relax. The warmth feels good. The steam smooths.
I realize my eyes are closed and that I am drifting off, kneeling on the tiled floor with my arms stretched out before me, funneling the water across my shoulders and down my back. Experimentally I raise and lower my shoulders. soreness but no tearing, no fresh blood in the water that pools around me. The bony spires holding the tendrils bend and flex with my movement and settle folded behind me as my shoulders fall. Did I do that?
I reach behind me to examine my new body and find that I have reached forward as well, that a few tendrils have met my hand partway, tips entwining among my fingers. It is a confusing sensation, a new touch and yet it is my own flesh against my own flesh. My tendrils are soft, somewhat downy, and my hand is smooth, somewhat scaly. My own touch is familiar yet strange, intimate yet alien.
Alien. That’s the inescapable word for it all. Reluctantly I stand, turn off the shower and turn to face the mirrors. Familiar yet strange. It is my face in the mirror, my hair, my arms and legs and hips and breasts and shoulders, my scars and my bodmods, but I now see my wings, slate blue-gray and echoing my breathing with soft movements, I see new muscles under my skin, and my eyes--my eyes have taken on the blue-gray cast of those wings. I would panic at the sight of this well-known stranger, I feel the edge of panic creeping in, but the crystalline music, never far from my consciousness, surfaces in my thoughts, and now I can hear that my change is part of the music too, that it is the outward showing of the rightness I feel when I look at the trajectory I have plotted on Ehrengard’s star charts.
I flex and extend my wings above me. They are beautiful. They have always belonged there. I stretch and turn, learning how to move. I don’t think I could actually fly with these bones and tendrils, but they feel vitally important to me now.
I find a new flight suit and tear the back open. Better tailoring can come later. Now, Melville and the rest of the crew. Maybe I can convince them I’m an angel. Ha. They all know far too much about me for that to work.
