avian incognito

I want to dance on the horizon line, but there is something I am caged behind

A portal to someplace warm is far more up Lily’s alley than a portal to a frozen hellscape.

Slipping through the Spire all by her lonesome, the redhead follows the directions in the inbetween place and in a hot second, finds herself stepping out to sun, sand, sea, and a bustling port. Oh, this is more like it. A place she’s familiar with, in theory, for Portsmouth was a terribly original name and was a port city at the mouth of a river (those Brits… a terrible knack for stating the obvious) and had its own bustling, stinking dock area.

At least this place seems a bit cleaner.

Her pale skin and bright hair cause a bit of an immediate disturbance, eyes roaming freely, men leering, and everyone immediately recognizing her as an outsider. Normally she’d relish that kind of attention but not… yet. Not until she knows what she’s getting herself in to. Lily steps into an alleyway and quickly shifts into her cat form, using it to take her relatively unnoticed to the water’s edge, where she can get a bit higher before shifting into her bird form. Aside from the pretty cat being there one moment and gone the next, no one should really notice a plain brown bird, right?

No, no one at all. Save for the hawk who is considering eating her. Remi's brand of hawk is not large nor impressive. Often mistaken as some other bird given its light plumage, still, he is quite fast and more than deadly enough to devour the small songbird. He circles lazily high above, feathers softly stroking the thermals below. Remi appears for all the world to be watching nothing, doing nothing. Until he is. Because suddenly he is diving, silent as a bullet as it races the speed of sound. Shaped not unlike an arrow-head, Remi has pulled his wings in tight against his body to reduce the wind-drag as much as possible as he fixes his eyes on the fluttery brown creature below. REMI I wish I could discover something that doesn't expire

I want to dance on the horizon line, but there is something I am caged behind

She’s oblivious. Mostly. The bird in her is ever-watching, her head moves in ticks and starts and her eyes - the eyes of a prey animal - are positioned to see all around (except for directly in front of her, weirdly enough). Her stalker dives and it isn’t until maybe seconds before he hits that she’s aware of something hurtling at her. With a cry of alarm, FUCK! she hops off the rope she’s been sitting on and shifts - cat’s feet hitting the dock’s planks while she’s still got a bird tail.

There’s no way she’s fast enough to turn and successfully defend herself against a hawk, so Lily braces herself for the inevitable pain, her claws scratching against the wood as she tries to scramble horizontally from where she originally was in the hopes that he can’t shift directions as quickly as she can. Maybe as long as he gets her tail or hindquarters, she’ll still stand a chance.

Agile as he is, cats are far more dexterous. Even so there is much the hawk might have continued to do to give chase, had his prey not clearly revealed itself (herself, as it'll turn out) to be an attuned. There isn't much in the way of apology that wafts down towards the cat as Remi pulls himself from his dive to land on the roof of one of the buildings nearby. Really, it's just vague feelings of disappointment. He'd been hungry after all. Didn't know you were an attuned. He sent, his voice thickly accented but fairly emotionless. For having nearly just killed whomever it was below, the alchemist was incredibly relaxed about it. REMI I wish I could discover something that doesn't expire

I want to dance on the horizon line, but there is something I am caged behind

Eventually, she realizes there’s nothing coming for her and a heavily accented voice drops into her mind. She stops her scrabbling, tail puffed, and turns her head wildly - franticly - to the sky to try and find the hawk again. It sounds familiar.. but.. Recalling that she’d first met the alchemist as a lion, this shouldn’t be so surprising.Re - Remi? she asks the voice back, feeling at once shaken and relieved. Having lived her life in the top 1% of the food chain, she’s not used to having to keep an eye out for things that might eat her. It’s a valuable lesson, and one that she needed to learn sooner rather than later. As it is, she can't even find him right now, and it leaves her pulsing with mild frustration.

But for someone she thought was her friend to do it (even if it was an innocent mistake) is scary. A shiver runs through her furry little body. Maybe Torchline wasn’t a good idea after all.

Mhmm. The pulse of agreement was weak and disinterested. Lily? Not really a question. Who else could wear the feathers and fur with such ease if not the entertainer? The woman with the room, a woman he'd met oh so long ago, nearly startling her as a lion and providing wood for that first Deepfrost? But those seemed like the memories of a man who he no longer was. ]Well if I can't eat you then I'll be off. I'd watch yourself here though. Most wouldn't think twice, attuned or not. REMI I wish I could discover something that doesn't expire

I want to dance on the horizon line, but there is something I am caged behind

Amalia said something to that same effect, so Lily takes the advice for what it’s worth with a hum of acknowledgement. She can hear the disinterest, feel it in the bond (that she’s still getting used to), and yet… and yet he has proven that he knows something she needs to know. Normally the entertainer is pretty respectful about fucking off when she knows she isn’t wanted, but if this is life or death… Wait! she blurts out, hoping to keep the alchemist-hawk there. I’m sorry, you don’t sound like you want to stick around. But – I don’t know how to fly.

It’s not his job to teach her. She won’t guilt him into it, and really, she’s not even asking. But if he could find the patience to maybe give her a quick lesson, she’d be forever grateful. Like always.

The hawk pauses, wings untucked from his sides. Well you aren't going to learn prowling around in that body. He noted, his wings spreading even more, though not lifting him into the skies just yet. The first thing to know, is that the more you think about how, the more you'll fail at it. How many times had Remi done this now, teach some new attuned to fly? Perhaps that's why Lily's request had stayed his departure without much fuss. You have the instincts of a bird, whether you're aware of them or not, and birds want to remain in the air. Lean into those instincts and as best you can, lose yourself to them. Your human mind will try and control things it has no business worrying about. Your body knows how to move your feathers and wings." REMI I wish I could discover something that doesn't expire

I want to dance on the horizon line, but there is something I am caged behind

Bah, he’s right about one thing; she won’t learn anything in her cat form. Lily leaps to a nearby thick pole, which probably a place to tie up a small boat but will now become her launching pad. She shifts to her bird form while listening to Remi, tiny head tilting in the ‘direction’ it’s coming from. Quieting racing thoughts has always been a little difficult for a woman who was never content with her colonial life, but she dutifully does as the alchemist instructs by clearing her mind of as many human thoughts as possible.

It takes awhile for the new Attuned, even though this is the perfect time to practice what Amalia taught her. Nodding to indicate that she’s working on it, Lily spreads her wings as well, trying to feel the wind and the instincts, listening to the world around her, letting her bird-eyes take over.

And then? she asks softly, fairly certain that the next instruction will be to just jump, but wanting to make sure she’s checked all the boxes. Because the alternative is to fall - into the water. Where there are fish who might eat her, and her only other shift would probably rather go through hell than land in the Ocean.

Remi does as he explains. His feathers gently twitch as the light breeze moves beneath them. He moves from foot to foot, feeling out the air and its relative buoyancy to his hollow bones. If you can't keep your mind quiet, give it something to think about. A food you like, a sensation you can remember clearly. Something to occupy it. And then? Well. And then you fly. Being larger the physics aren't quite the same. I need to thwart gravity more than you will, when I take off. Think of it like you're skipping rope. The downwards motion of her arms followed by an upwards press of her legs. Follow. He tells her, hoping that having a trajectory will help. So saying, the hawk lifts off easily, gliding in a lazy arc towards the sand and surf so that any potential crash landings might be met with a softer cushion than the busy streets. REMI I wish I could discover something that doesn't expire

I want to dance on the horizon line, but there is something I am caged behind

Like skipping rope? Something she’s never done, can’t really imagine doing. Skipping over a rope? Who ever heard of such a thing.

But Remi says follow, so she does, holding her breath and holding on to clarity before taking a couple of steps into the open air. And for a moment, Lily falls. Ahhhhh, oh fuck, oh - . She begins to panic as the water gets closer and closer, the wind ruffling past her feathers, but can’t quite seem to catch it - until they do. Muscles take over, the sea breeze lifts her up, and the little nightingale is air-born. Oh... oh!

Very unsteady. Very… all over the place. But it is flying.

Steering? Eh. Not so much. Kind of hoping that she can just look at where she wants to go, something sort of works that way, and she manages to follow Remi to the sand instead of crash landing into the ocean or the people on the street.

As she panics, her fear filling his mind, the alchemist remains quiet. To give her any other instructions would just be to pull her more into her human-form, which wouldn't do her any good. So while it may seem as though he's just abandoned her to her own failings, it really is the best thing for her. It's hard to fly at her pace; every beat of his wings however slow pulls him farther ahead. Coasting is a large-bird's game, and given the frenetic pace of her wings (compared to his), he doubts that finding a thermal would do her much good. Try to sort of...make gradual loops in the air. Don't think about it too hard, and don't turn too fast. It takes far less effort than you think it will. REMI I wish I could discover something that doesn't expire

I want to dance on the horizon line, but there is something I am caged behind

Once again, Remi is right. This is just something she has to learn to do on her own.

As Lily aims for the sand, she tries the gradual loops that he suggests, and is actually able to make a spiral or two before she ends up feet-first in the sand. Stumbling a little in the soft ground, she even manages to make her bird-self look surprised at the small success - that is, not landing in the ocean and not dying. That wasn’t… terrible was it? No, don’t answer that. Hopping to face the water, the nightingale knows that if she’s going to be able to do this on her own, she has to be able to fly without falling off things.

There’s a surge of determination in her (he might even be able to feel it) as she opens her wings again and prepares to ‘jump’ from the ground. Focusing on the horizon, she clears her mind, takes a couple of steps to start, and then leaps, flapping furiously.

Lo and behold… the bird rises.

Once there might have been words of encouragement. A silent mental melody for the songbird to follow. They might have soared as high as she could, resting on the large bird when it became too much. Remi might have shown her how to find the thermals, showed her other tricks about banking on the wind and how to abruptly stop. What he did instead, was begin to glide up towards the sun. Now you know how. Try not to get yourself eaten, or worse while you're here That was about all the kindness the alchemist had left in him at this point, though perhaps in the coming weeks things would change. Or, with the arrival of Seren, perhaps not. Higher and higher until he was naught but a speck against the blue above, Remi left the songbird to her own devices. ~FIN REMI I wish I could discover something that doesn't expire