I've Embraced The Grain Between My Wings

fly lil birdie

TWs: Referenced suicide, self harm, poor self care (as a form of self harm)

It's easy, now, to not notice when his wings are dirty. When they're in need of a good preening to get the dirt and gravel and sand out from between the feathers. There wasn't much time in the chaos of 3rd life for him to preen them, and he was filled with a constant paranoia that meant nobody could do it for him. So, for the full time of them being there, he would have sand between his wings, dirt, misaligned and missing feathers, everything that made him look like a crazed mess amongst the chaos.

Once Season 8 begins, he loses himself in the work of getting the dragon egg, founding Boatem, getting things together and building his starter base that within the first few weeks, he hasn't even bothered to preen. Barely bothered to shower, actually.

His hair is greasy, and he's almost always covered in spots of dirt. His sweater has definitely seen better days, but he has bothered to clean that at least. His wings, however, are the worst. He can barely fly with them, resorting to curling them up under his elytra. It's not so much forgetting, at that point, as being scared.

Having those grains between his feathers, the pinprick spots of pain that fill them, it's familiar. It feels grounding, he feels like he shouldn't just forget everything that happened in 3rd life like everybody else seems to have. Or at least is pretending to have. He knows it isn't healthy, but he doesn't really care anymore.

It isn't until the peace tree-ty that people start to say something, almost a full month after Grian starts visibly deteriorating.

...

"I'm waiting for you because- I, I need you to sign the peace tree-ty, the treety."

"The tree-ty?" Grian grins, staring down at Mumbo from his rooftop, "Is the war over?" his voice is full of excitement, because that means he won.

Mumbo sighs, "Yes. I mean,"

"Cease fire?"

"It kinda has to be, doesn't it?" Grian adjusts the elytra fastened over top of his wings, barely even reacting to the way a small pebble falls from between the feathers and tinks on the rooftop, gliding down to the front step of his home, "There's nothing that I can do that really competes with what we have going on here. And, frankly, there was no way I was going to remove it, I don't know if you've seen but I've turned it into my base. So it's now my base."

"I have! It's beautiful, I love what you've done with it. In fact, I think this has worked out brilliantly."

"Yeah! I mean, y'know, who would've thought that I would– yaknow, this whole tree war would've started, and then ended with me getting a free base out of it!" Mumbo laughs, following Grian as he ambles over toward Treeresa, pulling on the elytra straps to get an extra boost, "Even though technically, on paper, you've kind of one because you've played the last move, I feel like–,"

"I feel like you've won," Grian replies, hands over his mouth and arms resting on an azalea bush to look up at the tree monster build. Mumbo laughs, quick to agree.

"I feel like I've won!" he grins, his potato skin curling and wrinkling oddly under the movement. Both of them burst into light laughter, "Oh! Right," Mumbo turns back towards Grian, drawing the avians attention, "Will you sign the peace tree-ty?"

"Tree-ty," Grian echoes, still snickering, "Yeah, sure! Where is it?"

"Uhhhm," Mumbo spins on his heel, looking between both sides of Treeresa, "Somewhere! I think it's back here? Hopefully?" he leads Grian around the side of his new base, "It's somewhere around here, I mean," he gestures at a hole that Grian almost jumped into, "There's all sorts of, like, various different–,"