Illui was gracious enough to wait until Vitruvion nodded. Then a glow of appreciation came to the elf’s face and for the first time Stare could see clearly a colour in them. Copper, like the hue of a simple coin, but bright like a star. Giving her a sure smile he looked over to her wing. At which point he took in an excited breath once more and flourished his hands at it with the pleasure of a child at their first yuletide.
Coming close, right up close he grinned marvellously as he let his eyes flow over the general shape. Then he started gazing at feathers, tilting his head at some and nodding at others. He began to snake a finger out to touch one, then stopped before glancing at Vitruvion.
“How do they feel?” he asked, happiness plain in his tone. “Soft? Fibrous? Are they as-”
“The ones on the rest of her body, yes,” Vitruvion said. “Stare won't mind you looking at those.”
Stare threw back a dark look at him, as he smirked at her. You have demanded enough, girl. I need you to stop being stubborn, and get over the fact you have wings. I still don't understand your aversion to them fully, but I have been generous enough so far. Now, his hand tensed around her outstretched wing, sending a shiver down her spine. Now, my dear. Do as I say. He paused. Do I really need to make it an order?
She tore her eyes away from his with frustration, but lifted her arm, baring her elbow towards the elf. There, her glossy feathers ceased to grow, and the thick hardness of her turtleshell-like skin began. It was all black, matt and vaguely shiny. Illui bit his lip with intrigue as he moved, then gently pinched the quill between forefinger and thumb. A grin of delight came to his face.
“And the muscle? Nerves? All that?”
“All connected,” Vitruvion replied, “I watched it grow myself.” Or most of it, he thought. For part of the time he had knelt with his eyes closed and his body taking every ounce of the pain. He kept the serene smile on his face, however, back straight as he moved his other hand coming to support the underside of her wing.
“Hmm,” Illui sounded impressed, “So you say it grew this morning? How long did it take, and was it painful?”
“Excruciating,” Stare growled, as Vitruvion internally echoed the same exact notion.
Instead the god answered the first question. “An hour perhaps.”
“I see,” Illui began nodding as he took a step back, eyes running left to right over the span of the wing. Pursing his lips a moment he seemed to muse for a while. “This is rather peculiar, I must say. Not once in my three centuries have I heard of such a sudden growth … not naturally anyway. Pain receptors?”
At the sound of that Stare sucked in a surprised gasp, and then threw a wide eyed glance to Vitruvion. In response he smiled warmly at the professor, then began the process of attentively collapsing back her wing into a folded position.
“We presume so, though we will not test it. If the pain of them growing is anything to go by, then it can an applied assumption that they are.”
A more satisfied sigh left Stare's beak. She rolled her shoulders back and around a little as she felt the weight of the wing collapse back into her lone authority. It made her wince a little and she twisted to begin looking for the harness once more.
“Wait!”
Alarmed, she looked over to Professor Illui who was frowning. Vitruvion also had a brow raised at her. Her eyes flickered between them.
“Dear kenku - Stare,” Illui addressed her directly now, “You should not use them. Your body needs to get used to supporting them yourself. And your wings themselves need to build strength before they can be tested in flight.”
That word again. That idea.
“I've never left the ground,” she said quietly. “I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask for any of this.”
“And I never asked for you, specifically, but we put up with each other, don't we, dear,” Vitruvion's hand curled around her shoulder as he moved to stand right beside her. His lips quirked up into a smirk. “So, Illui?”
“Hmm?” the professor looked up at him with bright eyes, tearing them away from Stare's form. “Ah. Well. As I said I have seen or heard of a entirely natural …”
He paused, and held up a hand for a moment before his eyes lit up with a new brilliance. The god arched a single eyebrow and looked with as much curiosity as Stare felt as the elf professor suddenly swirled, excitement and stimulation in every footstep, in every hand movement. He bustled over to the wide array of shelves that he had, beginning to dart down a short row, before he reappeared at the other end. Dancing fingers brushed over spines, drifting eyes flickered from title to title. Moving sure and eager he was clearly practised in this, his kingdom.
After what seemed an age Vitruvion began to open his mouth, his hand finally slipping from Stare's shoulder. Her wings were dropping and loose and it was taking noticeable effort to keep them as closed as she was. It was tempting to ask if she could have the halter again, and she was about to ask at the same time as Vitruvion was preparing to speak, when -
“AH HA!”
Stare jumped. Vitruvion blinked. Both pairs of eyes focused on the professor as he was marching back over to them, a huge book in his hands, and him frantically flipping through pages. The writing on the paper was rough, written by a naturally enthusiastic hand. Possibly even this eccentric professor's.
“I … yes, yes,” Illui was agreeing with himself as he traipsed back to them, his eyes only for the book’s pages. A long finger slid down them. “Yes, here,” he now prodded the page proudly, then began to quote as he came to a halt a metre from them. “Ahem - 'a patient came to me today with a most unusual condition. It seemed that he had, quite unexpectedly, grown a tail overnight. He described the event as “painless” and cited that he had had a dream where the gods had turned him into a monkey of Fallien origin. This being unusual, I thus began research and found that indeed, a rare Fallien god had been known to visit individuals in their sleep, and grant them wishes. I call this phenomenon, “dream evolution” and …’ Well. He goes on,” Illui flourished a hand atop the page as he grinned up at the kenku and god.
An ugly, pregnant pause followed.
“Well, I didn't have a dream and it was not painless …” Stare muttered.
“Bah!” Illui waved her comment away on an unseen and unfelt wind with a dismissive gesture. “The experience is still similar. Clearly this is the work of the gods. You must - the temple, Vitruvion.”
The kenku's eyes immediately widened, her brow ridge rising high against her temples. Swiveling her head she gazed at her employer as the suggestion whispered over their heads and into their ears.
The temple. A temple. Illui wanted them to head to a temple of gods who worked, who answered prayers and were worshipped, gods who were not trapped in human form. A place where subjects could genuinely bring their complaints and pleas and find answers from mouths that truly could tell the future. Confession, sacrifices, offerings - a temple was a place that Stare had not dared to ever go since she had learnt who Vitruvion was. But now, here, Illui was suggesting that they … clearly he didn't know what Vitruvion was, she surmised.
“Perhaps.”
Shock. Utter disbelief, and entire bemusement. These were the emotions that powered Stare as she peered at the one she called her god. Her beak parted and she did what she did best. She stared at him.
“What?”
“Indeed, it may seem untrue, but your cynical master here enjoyed a journey out to the temple back when he was younger,” the professor smiled broadly. “When I knew him, why he was studying magic from books as I was, and despite his complaints about the divine he had quite a passion for visiting the religious houses.”
Vitruvion shifted oddly, huffing out a breath and refusing to look at her as his old friend explained his unusual past to her. The confusion was, why did he need to go to a temple when he was a god himself? And did not he hate the Althanas gods with a passion, for all that they had reduced him to? Why then would he be interested in the workings of a temple when such a place surely brought feelings of rejection and loss? She was surprised, in all honesty, that he had not attempted to take one over for his own use. Or build it.
“Well,” the secret god said stiffly, “As you said, it was a long time ago. A lifetime, some might term.”
“And yet - your answers may ultimately lie there. With a growth of this magnitude, that has not been created by magic, only gods have the answers here.”
