Upon Feathers of Change

Chapter 1

We're out of bananas. Again. I sighed, and headed for the door.

"Ma, I'm heading out to grab some bananas!" I called out as I walked out.

"Okay! Stay safe!" she called back. I happily took flight, humming to myself as I watched the sunset from the air on the way to the store. I've always loved the sunset. It's very calming.

I waited to land until I could see the sun no longer, lingering in the air until it had crossed the horizon. Walking quickly into the store, I headed straight for the banana rack in the produce section, grabbed a good-looking bunch, then headed straight for the check out, not wanting to stay too long in the store. Checking out through the 10-items-or-less line, I quickly headed back outside and took flight, heading straight for home rather than lingering in the air.

Putting the bananas on the banana stand, I stopped as I felt someone behind me. I rolled my eyes.

"Brother, must you try to scare me all the time?" I said, turning around to see him.

He grinned. "But of course!"

"Even though you always fail?"

That only elicited a wider grin. I rolled my eyes again and took one of the recently aquired bananas and peeled it, taking a bite and sticking my tongue out at my mischievous brother. He laughed and walked away.

The next day, I flew to school, as always. As I lost altitude to land in the parking lot, I felt a sharp sting on my neck. My hand flew to my neck to see what had caused the pain, and I found a feathered dart. I frowned at it before losing consciousness, crash landing on the asphalt.

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I went in and out of consciousness, comprehending that I was in an extremely tight space in sweltering heat, almost as bad as a hot summer day in Florida, but without the relief of a pool or air conditioning.

When I fully came to, I got scared of the tight space and the heat and the stale air and attempted to break out, pushing out with my wings and arms.

Crack!

The sound encouraged me, and I breathed in fresh air, which rejuvenated me. I took a short breather and then continued to push against the walls of the container I was in. Hearing more cracks, I pushed harder, and then suddenly I was flopping out of the container and onto my wings.

I opened my eyes to see myself looking into the upside down wide eyes of a.. silver dragon? My own eyes widened and I scrambled upright and flared my wings. Well. That's what I wanted to do, anyway. I managed to roll over, but when I tried to stand up I tripped over my own feet, and I could feel that my body was not the same as it used to be. I looked down at my feet, to see golden scaled paws with retractable claws.

What the heck happened to me? I thought.

"You have feathers?!" An astonished voice in my head spoke, startling me. I looked around warily for the source of the voice.

"Who said that?" I said, only to stop as my voice came out in chirps and whistles. What the heck is going on?

"Relax, it was me, the silver dragonet over here," the voice continued. I looked over at the dragon thing I first saw and it was waving a wing at me. "You're not going crazy, I promise. We were all kidnapped and brought here and transformed into mini dragons."

I chirped at him again, trying to figure out how he was talking to me. He got the memo. "We talk through the mindlink. There is a general mindlink, where everyone can hear, and then there is individual mindlinks where you can talk to a specific person. Here, try it. Create an imaginary wall in your mind, so that everyone else except me is on one side and me and you are on the other. That'll block out everyone you don't want hearing your message. Now, focus on me, and just 'think' at me."

I tried it out, shifting so I could see him better and ruffling my feathers. I stopped and looked at my wings, knowing that that hadn't felt right. I wailed in despair as I saw that my beautiful wings had been turned into a monstrosity of a mix between feathered wings and bat wings. The top of my wings had my old feathered coloration, which was white with a blue stripe on the leading edge, but underneath that were golden scaled bat wings that matched the rest of my body. I looked back at the silver dragonet. "What happened to my beautiful wings?!"

"You had wings before you were kidnapped?" he asked incredulously. I nodded. "That must've been why they took you, then.

"The scientists that did this to us take people who are incredibly smart, fast, artistic, or unique. You must've been taken because you had wings before the transformation."

"Why are they doing this to us?" I asked. He shrugged. I tried a different question. "How many have been taken?"

"Thousands. From all across the world. Not many survive the horrid procedures that get us to hatching. Counting you, there's only 95 of us."

I was alarmed. Thousands had been taken, but only around a hundred survived? It was horrible.

"You should eat something," the dragonet said, nodding at a couple small bowls that held fruit and water. "Don't worry, they never drug it."

I turned around to see where he was nodding to and saw my tail. It was long and slender, and it had feathers at the end of it. That's new. I crawled over to the food and began eating.

As I ate, the silver dragon told me more about what went on in this place. "The scientists have no idea that we retained all of our memories and intelligence, and if they find out, they'll kill us all. So, try and act like an animal, as that is what we are seen as. Most of us take our pointers from cats, as we are about that size.

"They feed us three times a day, and take us out of our cages twice a day to exercise and stretch our wings."

I finished eating, and before I fell asleep, I asked him what his name was.

"I'm Jake," he responded. "What is your name?"

"Crystal."

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There's the first chapter y'all. Again, this is based off of CrystalScherer's work Upon Wings of Change. It is different perspective telling of the same story, and no, the Crystal in the story has nothing to do with the author of the original work. Crystal Kunz is my OC that I put in everything lol.

Here's the first chapter again! I didn't need to change much with this one.