Upon Feathers of Change

Chapter 2

I was woken up by collective hissing. I looked up and added to the choir, for there was a huge scientist staring at me in amazement.

"Come look at this one!" he called to the other scientists who were in the room. "She has feathers!"

"That was the one hatched from Crystal Kunz, the human with wings," said a different scientist. "Looks like her feathery DNA came through. Too bad there was only one human with wings. She really is beautiful."

At that, I hissed my best hiss at them, not liking the stares. I felt something on top of my head stand up. I swear if I have a crest of feathers on my head I'm gonna flip.

"Crystal Kunz is here?" Someone said over the general mindlink, obviously listening to the scientists talking about me. "I wanted to meet her so bad when I was human!"

"Well, I guess now's your chance," someone else said dryly. "Really puts into perspective that saying 'be careful what you wish for.'"

I blocked out the general mindlink, not wanting to be distracted by the fanclub I apparently had as my cage was being taken to a different room like Jake had said.

My heart was pounding. Obviously I was still different from everyone else, despite having a new body. This made me even more anxious.

My cage was put onto a metal table that had what looked like torture devices on the top of it. The scientist who had brought me to the room opened up both sides of my cage, then reached in to grab me. I backed up, hissing, and didn't realize I was backing out of the relative safety of my cage until it was taken away. I immediately grew scared again and looked around as another scientist walked into the room to join the first. They were both wearing heavy duty gloves, to protect them from my claws, probably.

One of the scientists started speaking into a voice recorder. "Specimen X. Female, seventeen years old. Special case group. Collected November 1st, using tranquilizer dart with blend A4. Metaforming completed on February 24. Egg case finished formation March 13. High heat hatching method C5 used. Hatched late evening April 12."

She looked up at the other scientist in the room and nodded at him. He came towards me and I spread my wings and attempted a take off. It actually worked, though I nearly lost purchase on the slippery metal surface of the table. It wasn't that different from flying before, but I was a bit put off by my tail.

The female watched me. "Flight muscle memory seems to have transferred over from the original, as she is flying already."

I flew up to the top of the room, way out of reach of the scientists, and landed on top of a filing cabinet. I took a breather for a minute, as my new wings weren't quite used to such exertion yet.

I glared down at the two scientists and growled at them. The female stared emotionlessly back, then after a few moments told the male to grab me. He grabbed a chair and placed it by the filing cabinet, aiming to climb on top of it to catch me, but I'd had a sufficient breather since my last flight and so jumped off the filing cabinet, bounced off his head, and resumed flight around the room, looking for another high place to sit on. I glanced over at the window and saw it had netting in front of it. The holes were too small to fit my arms through, but I could still grab ahold of it. I flew towards it and grabbed hold of the very top of the net and looked back at the male, who was coming towards me again.

I hissed at him, and right as he was about to set the chair up to grab me, I let go of the net and winged over him to go back to the filing cabinet.

As soon as I landed, I was grabbed by the female, causing me to squawk in surprise. She put me in a wobbly basket, and I spread my wings to keep my balance.