A personal piece I've been plucking at where I can over the last month or so! I guess I've always felt a particular kinship with birds. My good friend UnsavoryRepute was kind enough to write up a story to go along with it!

---

Here at the place where the waters of life cross, the world is quiet.

Each day I soar across the lakes which claim me as their own, watching the fish swirl and eddy, watching the frogs bounce in the reeds. My wings take me across the rolling hillsides where the willows sway in the breeze, and the birds hum and sing and preen.

Creatures thrive here. But today I spy a creature who is so clearly the wrong shape, at odds with herself. Seeking solace from the grey world beyond. She is curious, and I follow, looking at her this way and that.

I can help her, and so I shall. The beat of my wings goes unheard, and when I land before her I go unseen. I walk with her for a time, and though she does not feel the touch of my wingtips brushing gently across her face, she smiles nonetheless.

***

Becca let out a deep breath that she didn’t realize she’d been holding in for who knows how long. She felt light as a feather, like a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. That sort of thing was why she’d loved coming here for as long as she’d remembered, but today it was different, filling her with an airy sort of restlessness that saw her walk down the hillside begin to pick up speed. At first she was jogging, then running, her blonde hair flowing out behind her as she sprinted down towards the willows by the water’s edge.

As the young woman passed beneath the swaying boughs of the willows, her body began to change to match her heart.

Sharp claws slit through the tips of her shoes as she ran, the cut-loose soles flapping with every step.

She didn't care. The wind in her hair felt like freedom.

Goosebumps prickled across her arms, soft down fluffing out across her skin. Her fingers slimmed as feathers pressed out from the goosebumps, lengthening, her wings proudly unfurling and peeling her sleeves apart. Her jeans were both tight and loose at once, denim flapping around her ankles as they slimmed, drawing taut against wide, thick thighs. Becca closed her eyes, relishing in the changes rippling across her body as her nose and lips began to press out together into the beginnings of a beak.

Her next strides took her beyond the edge of the shore and onto the water. It didn’t slow her at all, webbed talons tearing through her shoes and pushing her impossibly off the surface of the water, ripples dancing across the lake behind her as she ran.

Her wings spread wide and her feathers shimmered in the morning sunlight, the colors of the sky above. Her neck seemed to stretch out to meet it as she ran, legs moving in long, loping strides that felt fully natural to her new body. Her earrings flew out behind her, racing along with her hair as it became long, flowing feathers – and then they fell away into the water, their anchors having faded away.

What had been her eyebrows stretched back into a sapphire crest that rivalled the length of Becca’s beak. She grinned as her shoes fell away from her slender feet, as her jeans slipped free and her tailfeathers fanned out behind her, catching the air.

And then, with a bound, the heron was in the air, wings wavering slightly as she caught the breeze. A moment later, they were as steady as if she had flown for her whole life.

Her legs stretched gracefully behind her as she soared upwards in a spiral, a squawk of pleasure crying from her beak. The sound filled her with butterflies as the lake pulled away beneath her. From here, she could see the forest, the twining rivers as they met, the place that had brought her so much comfort over the years seeming to take on a new form and meaning as she admired it from above.