Summer 1 124
Wings. Sjal loved them. Caelum had gone out to find a bat, captured it, taken its form with seeming and now… he had access to the bat's form. He had transfigured Sjal to grow bat wings, and she was loving them. Despite how awkward they currently felt and how much pain they caused her, it had all been worth it. They hadn't been free, but her debt to Caelum was currently pushed far in the back of her mind. The instant gratification of receiving the wings up front made her giddy with glee.
It wasn't just the wings – her entire skeleton was different, lighter as Caelum had not only taken the form of a bat, but also a bird. So the transfiguration included hollow bones of a bird. She couldn't remember all the details that Caelum had told her, just that her bones were lighter than normal. She felt light. She bounced a little more on her saddle and moving her body felt effortless even without using runes. It was a fine counterbalance to the heaviness that her mutated arms gave her.
She had gotten some odd looks from people. Her wings were not something many expected to see on a human, especially since they weren't feathery like a normal bird's. She might have even been mistaken for a humanoid dragon like Caelum, but she lacked many of the other features such as horns and a tail.
She still didn't know how to tell her friends what had happened. She knocked on Caelum's room door and waited patiently, careful to avoid knocking over some candles with her wings. She wasn't supposed to tell who had given her her new look, so she was going to have to make something up when she talked to tohers. Sadly, she hadn't put half as much thought into creating a believable lie as she had about flying.
"Dad, it's me. I need you to help train me to fly!" she called. "Oh, and I could use some healing!"
Sjal laughed at how concerned Caelum looked as she stepped inside – harder than she ought to have. The wings had torn her skin a little so she could do with some druidic healing. "It's not much to worry about, just a little wound," she said "Obviously," she added as her laughter subsided.
"Well, see, the thing is," Sjal said, "I asked for these wings and I got them. I plan on keeping them and to use them I need a proper teacher. I helped you learn a little about fighting so I think it's only fair that you teach me how to fly. Let's get going, we're burning daylight!"
She hadn't bothered sitting down and now was trying to usher Caelum out of the door. Her excitement was hard to contain, which was why she was here now instead of later. She wasn't a complete idiot – she had applied some pressure to her wings to make sure they wouldn't detach from her body if she did some basic movements with them. If Caelum helped her heal faster, then she might be capable of flight in the next day or so.
Sjal felt her pain start to lessen slightly when the rune was applied. She really liked Caelum's ability to heal – it made her jealous that she didn't have a similar power.
The field they went to was massive and she could see a massive lake in the distance. She yearned to soar over it someday.
"Okay, so what do I do?" she asked as she opened up her wings. She tried flapping them but her movements were very slow, mechanical, and deliberate. Not to mention, she didn't even flap both wings in unison. She couldn't see herself so she couldn't tell just how silly she looked. Caelum guided her through some basics as she did so.
A gust of wind passed by and caught her wings unexpectedly mid-flap. Her body was unexpectedly lifted a couple feet off the ground and carried backwards. "Ahh!" she shouted as she floundered in the air like a fish out of water. She managed to twist her body around but the wind pushed against her wings in ways she could have never expected, merely flipping her back around again.
Sjal thought that the wind might carry her away into the sky, or throw her back onto the ground. She braced her body for impact… but she could feel her focus falter as her balance shifted. She found it difficult to do anything else while creating her precautions so she let her body go limp.
She didn't crash, however. She was pulled to safety by Caelum and she finally let her guard down. When she was set down she noticed her breathing was rapid and that it was hard to stand. Her stomach churned for a few moments before she started to calm again.
"Thanks… that was terrifying," she said as she got back to her feet.
Caelum did his demonstration and Sjal paid close attention to his movements. She watched how his wings opened up when he picked up speed, and how the wind caught them intentionally. Much of the finer details were lost to her though and Caelum didn't explain any of it. It was comforting to know that she wasn't the only bad teacher.
"Okay, I'll give it a try," she said as she started to jog. She picked up speed until she was damn near sprinting. Then, when she didn't think she could go any faster, she opened up her wings. They caught the air but all they did was slow her down… until she angled them differently and then suddenly her feet lifted a few inches off the ground.
Sjal's arms started moving instinctively to try to balance herself but there wasn't anything to hold onto. She heard Caelum's suggestion to close her wings, but doing that was easier said than done with air catching them. She grunted as she tried to work the new muscles at her disposal, forcing the wings to collapse slightly, allowing her feet to touch the ground again.
For a moment she thought she would have a graceful landing, but then one of her wings unexpectedly opened up again and she went tumbling to the ground. She expected to be able to roll but having wings complicated every motion that used to be natural to her. The tip of her wing caught the soil sooner than expected and she thudded to the ground.
"Ow," she said to the dirt as she pushed herself up.
"That wasn't so bad," she said to Caelum whenever he caught up. "What's the point in running though? I've seen you take off without running, and I don't recall ever seeing a bird run." Now that she thought about it, Caelum had always seemed to run before flying. She thought about how much easier it was for her wings to catch the air when she ran and wondered if there was some science behind it all. It was starting to make sense that the speed of the wind was important to some degree.
After Caelum gave her an answer she didn't like, she would take off again, applying any new advice he gave before trying to open up her wings and catch some more wind with them.
Sjal kept Caelum's advice in mind as she speeded ahead. She didn't want to use magic like grist to assist, not wanting to expose her wings to that much stress. She felt that actual flight would probably do way too much damage to her new wings and did have enough common sense to take it easy for the time being.
As suggested, she opened her wings slowly, [knowledge skill=flying level=novice name=Angling wings to catch wind or it pass by]and realized that all she had to do to catch the wind was to angle them properly. She shifted the angle of her wings relative to the incoming wind experimentally to figure out exactly which positions worked and didn't. She kept on running at a quick pace until finally she decided to lift off.
She tried to follow the rest of Caelum's advice, but the moment her feet left the ground, all common sense went out the window. It was such an unnatural feeling to be in the air for so long. Coupled with her new weight that she still wasn't used to, she felt completely out of her element.
"Just fold the wings," she told herself as she willed her muscles to listen. The wings closed slowly at first and then quickly, dropping her to the ground where she was able to fall back into the rhythm of running.
Sjal was breathing quickly again, this time less due to fear and more because of how much she had been running. She had been sprinting for a long time with little rest. Her lungs were hungry for air and her legs burned almost as much as her wings. She desperately needed to rest.
