Wings

Coming Down to Earth

What Lo forgot to tell you, besides the fact that she served as inspiration for the Nordic character Loki, is that she spends most of her time in male form. She doesn't like the way women are treated, so she makes herself male so it becomes really weird for anyone who's suffering a bout of misogyny. Sometimes I wish I were a shape-changer, since it does get annoying being called a whore :( But what am I supposed to do? Deny that I have feelings? Sorry, I didn't mean to turn that into a lecture, but humans are so... sexually ignorant. It should be just as socially acceptable for women to have sex as it is for men to have sex. Well, more on that later. I'm sure you want to read more of Lo's story.

- Felicity

***

A few minutes later, I teleported down to the surface of the Earth. I wasn't entirely sure where Althea was in relation to Earth, but judging from Orvin's lengthy explanations, Althea was in a sort of bubble universe, kind of off to the side from the universe that contained the Earth. Althea's universe only had the one solar system in it, along with some pinpricks of light that Orvin said were the embers of other stars that died when the bubble universe collapsed. I wasn't sure he was right about that, but Althea's universe was pretty small. And the space was shared by all the different Wings, most of them hating most of the others, or at least looking down on them. Earth was utterly fascinating, especially since most humans didn't have magic and had to survive using other means. I learned much from them, especially from those that lived on the fringes of society.

There was a flash of light and Thom appeared beside me, eyeing me warily. He always did that whenever we teleported because he claimed I 'teleported weird'. But his style of teleporting was strange too, though I was told it was fairly normal for Cloud Wings. That flash of light I thought was far too ostentatious and drew attention. Fortunately, the place we teleported to seemed to be free of human life.

"Where to now?" I asked Thom casually, knowing that the modern human cities were probably distressing to him. He was used to the preindustrial human cities that were filthy and smelled to high heaven, not these shining steel behemoth buildings and hard, smooth tarmac that had replaced dusty, and often muddy, dirt roads.

Thom shot me a look. "I can't ever ruffle you," he muttered to himself, probably not intending me to overhear. I did anyway and couldn't help but grin. Its crookedness was reminding me that I hadn't changed form yet, so I did. When the flickering flames that raced over my skin faded away, I was back in my Trueform, appearing to be around sixteen or seventeen, though I was far older than that. Thom could easily be twenty-five, and in fact most Wings looked twenty-five when they stopped aging. I seemed to be an exception and I wondered if it was a Fire Wing thing. Sjanka looked about thirty to me, so perhaps the 'enemy Wings' aged differently.

"Did you give me an answer?" I asked innocently, my change in voice catching him off guard.

"Holy feather, Lo! Don't do that!" he commanded, but it was light-hearted and not serious. But there was a flicker of fear in his eyes. Even after all this time, he was still afraid of me. "Perhaps we should head in that direction."

He pointed to the left, where the narrow street we were on came to an intersection with a more major road. I nodded and we began to walk down the street, remaining alert. Wings aren't the only intelligent beings to walk on the Earth, besides humans, and most of those were unfriendly to say the least. Thom had one hand on the hilt of his blade, carefully hidden with Cloud Wing glamour that gently guided the eye away from the glamoured object. Fire Wings didn't really have glamour, but we had something better; my own sword was currently in pen form in my pants pocket. Though, strictly speaking, my sword's shape-changing ability had been forged into it, especially since it had been made with a few of my feathers from my wings. Usually the feathers of a Wing would go unused and would lie around for a few years until their sparkle faded and would then be dropped on Earth. Occasionally a feather that wasn't quite done yet would get dropped and the humans would have a field day. But I quickly found that no one would touch my feathers, not even one of the elves. So I teleported to another bubble universe, one that I had heard about from Felicity, and tried to get the metalworkers there interested in my feathers. But even they had been reluctant at first and it was only when I forged my sword from three of my primary feathers that they decided my feathers were worth the risk.

"Do you have your sword?" Thom asked me casually.

I snorted. "Of course. I don't invite trouble without bringing something to beat it off with. You know that."

"You've done crazier things," was Thom's response.

I decided to ignore this and focus on the road. There were a few humans milling about, but they didn't pay us any particular attention. I made a mental note of their dress and decided to go and find the nearest clothing store as soon as I located some lost money. Wherever there were humans, there was money that inevitably went missing. And I had a knack for finding it.