The Legacy of Dirty Birds

Names and the Power They Hold

In was a day in midwinter when Deadwing came to the startling realization that Calum transformation had finally tipped the scale between a winged human and a short welf.

Sure, his ears were a little short, but now they twitched when he was surprised or put off. Sure, his wings weren't as dark as Deadwing's, but they had grown so big they dragged along the floor behind him. Deadwing was constantly reminding him to pick them up. It was like he'd molded himself into this new body and the glue dried overnight. He was truly, the most un-welfling seeming welf Deadwing had ever met, and he got the feeling Calum had picked up on that too.

Except for reading. Deadwing's promise to him hammered in the back of his mind like a blacksmith's mallet, but Calum was just not a natural.

"This is cucumber, right?" He'd say, staring into Deadwing's neatly labeled seed drawers.

"Yes!" Dee cheered back. "You're getting the hang of it."

Then a foxy look snuck onto Calum's face. "Nah, I can smell them."

Deadwing was dumbstruck, until these practical jokes became all too commonplace. He would have never in all his years, even if a welf's nose was better than humans, thought to learn the distinction of smells between different plant produce? What in Otikka's sweet name was he supposed to do if his student always found loopholes in every exercise? Then that changed one session when Calum stumbled through the sentences in an English children's book Dee had found in Holly's things. It was much easier to start with, but still Calum managed to trip over every word with more three letters. 

"How do you stop them all from moving?" He asked, after spending a short pause staring at the decomposing paper.

Deadwing was ready to fall into another jest, but the look on Calum's face was too sober to be suspicious. "What from moving?"

"The letters?" He said it like Deadwing should already know what that meant. "Look."

Calum held the book up in front of his chest. Deadwing stared at the rounded, stagnant, boring English script. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. There was an ink illustration of said fox and dog, but otherwise nothing squirmed or jumped out at him.

"Like ants," he sighed, "kind of. They don't move exactly, they just—it's so hard to look at."

Deadwing's brow folded together. "Calum...the words don't move for me. They don't for most people."

His expression changed in a second, he glanced up at Deadwing quickly like he regretted telling him anything. It was that same curled, defensive tension in Calum's shoulders from the trip to the market, and that night in the lookout. Deadwing's gut recoiled from the sense of familiarity that washed over him. The sharp edges of all the questions he wanted to ask, softened under the threat of...both their tears? Yeah, come on Deadwing, you can't let this break you.

A horrible thought entered his mind, what if Calum was faking? What if Deadwing played into this and Calum turned around with a weapon craving the soft bits in their body. No, of course not. This was real. It was too real. There was a rug underneath his knees and he could smell their fireplace. He was home in the nest, and Calum was the one upset and vulnerable.

"No wonder you're struggling so much with welven." Deadwing shook his head, banishing his paranoid train of thought.

Calum relaxed slightly. "What?"

"It's a very complicated script. The letters look very similar. I can imagine it's a massive pain to have then dancing around like it's midnight on the summer solstice."