nearby, and I need to get something from it. Don’t come with me you’ll slow me down.” He said, all of us except for Raven looked at one another confused.
“You say he came from Heaven” Isaac asked scratching his head. “Maybe he’s an alien, wouldn’t someone from there have a miracle to pull off instead of needing something a human made?”
“Maybe he IS something a human made. The broadcast said the fix would be unusual.” Raven pointed out. “Plus I believe someone said he doesn’t look exactly like a bird should?”
“Michelle said that yes.” Clark answered, trying to meditate as he was starting to buy into the spiritual from this.
“He’s so cute! When he comes back can I play with him?” Anne asked, that broke the tension a little, but it didn’t take long for us to go back to our confusion.
When the bird finally returned he had a small satchel in his talons and gave each of us a syringe, picking them out carefully. Additionally he had a belt that seemed somewhat familiar, one I knew I had seen before and recently. Then it hit me, it was the exact same kind my attacker had worn when he tried to rape me. “...Where did you get that belt?”
“I’ll tell you AFTER you are each injected with the fix and spared from the dying world. Trust me, you must or you will surely die. There’s just the one belt so go one at a time and.. well obviously help the kid, the blind girl, and that guy sitting on the steps, it looks like there’s something wrong with his legs.” The falcon pleaded with us, ruffling his feathers as he waited patiently. None of us were sure if we should trust him, but we caved and did what he asked. Once we finished injecting ourselves he simply said. “Wait”
So we did, after a few minutes I felt something strange happening in the lower half of my stomach and my headache from hormonal withdrawal began to go away. Though we all felt this could be in my head, it wasn’t until Raven started screaming that we all realized something was up.
“Ahh… it’s too much.. I.. I can’t…” Raven forced her eyes shut and covered them, removing the shades she normally wore from her face in the process. “There’s… too much… light… I..” she began to hyperventilate as I walked up to her.
‘Raven… why would the light bother you? Your eyes don’t work…” I reminded her.
Raven turned to face me, her eyes open and for the first time in years they were a blueish color instead of being completely pale. “They do now… I… I’m just not used to… Michelle why do you have a beard? Did you run out of razors?”
“Yeah.. I… I did…” I said grabbing my throat which burned a little. “Ahh… what’s going on!” my voice was higher pitched than normal, and when I looked at my arm the remaining tumor I had was shrinking. “Was… was this the fix? Is it… is it making a woman?”
“It’s healing your bodies in preparation for Stage 2.” The falcon explained. “I got you one of the syringes meant for women Michelle because I felt like I owed you an apology, a stronger one than I gave you before. For the next twenty four hours, you’re going to be a regular woman.” Apology for what? What did a bird do to me?
“And then what?!” I marveled as my hair was growing fast and my skin was clearing up of all of its blemishes and rashes. When I took off my mask Clark noted that my face was growing back to the way it used to. I knew he was telling the truth because my eye began working again.
“Stage 2.” The falcon said, stretching his wings out as if posing. Even Anne was sure what this bird was implying.
“COOOOL!” Anne said cheering. “I’m gonna be a bird!?! Daddy, does he mean it.”
“I have no idea.” Isaac said unsure what to make of this as he held his daughter close.
Piet stood up and began stretching his legs, he was limping, but still moving. “I think we need to go inside and start breakfast… Today’s going to be an interesting one…”
-Epilogue-
The day was spent marveling over our bodies being cured of the plague, within five hours all of our bodies had regenerated completely. I even had my legs back! None of us had ever felt this good before. The falcon remembered to tell me and Isaac to remove our prosthetics to allow our limbs to grow back. Isaac had been flexing his fingers for thirty minutes straight when his came in. It was almost a shame as I had felt the hook added character. I remember I always used to joke with him that if his face ever started deteriorating like mine had that he should get a fox mask to match this hook.
Just as promised, my body regenerated even more female than before, I uhh… I didn’t tell Isaac what I was doing in his bathroom that took so long but. Well.. I’d been waiting for it since high school. Okay yes that too, but I also keep checking myself out in the mirror. This was it, this was what I had always wanted, and it was mine until I turned into a bird, a FEMALE bird. “Thank you God, thank you… I just… this was all I ever wanted… all I ever felt worth dying for.” I imagine Clark was more man than before too if I know had a, you-know-what, but it felt wrong trying to ask a man for sex in Isaac’s house. It felt like defiling Holy Ground. Though Piet did give me a few looks I probably should have followed up on.
When nightfall came we all decided to meet in the forest one last time. Isaac had begun to scratch his chest which began to grow white feathers. “Falcon, I fail to see how turning into birds is helpful…” he said to our bird friend. “You say the city for what we’re becoming is in the clouds, but, isn’t that where the acid rain is coming from..”
“Some of the highest mountains are above the clouds, we’re working on a way to purify the clouds from above. They turned as many as possible to ensure as many survivors as we can. There’s a rescue squad of birds that comes down to find people like you and get you up there. I volunteered so that I could repay Michelle for when I tried to rape her back when I was still human myself and you Isaac for giving me a second chance…” The falcon said looking up. “It’s great up there, we’ve got farms where we raise bugs… you don’t even have to cook them.” He said cracking his beak into a smile.
“Gross…” Anne said, already turning into the cutest blue jay I’d ever seen, a beak present on her face. “Daddy, I change my mind, I don’t want to be a bird.”
“Trust me kid, when you’re a bird your tastes change. It won’t be yucky then… Mmm.. I can’t wait to have myself a nice juicy worm.” The falcon licked the edges of his beak as though they were lips..
Isaac looked down at his sandaled feet noticing his toes fusing together and becoming webbed. “Looks like I’m getting dangerous.” he chuckled to himself.
“You’re becoming a seagull actually.” The falcon corrected.
The changes became faster as we assumed what would forever be our new bodies, the shrinking into a tweeting little thing in a pile of my old clothes. It was scary the world around me was getting huge and intimidating, worse still I was a hummingbird now, a somewhat humanoid hummingbird with purely cosmetic nippleless breasts mind you, but still smaller than everyone else. We all looked at one another and got a feel for who was who before we began our ascension. “Oh look, Raven became a raven, what were the odds!?!?!” I laughed. “....It’s going to take me sometime to get used to you guys being this way. Isaac the Seagull, Piet the Owl, and Clark the Red Cardinal.” I didn’t know Anne or Kelly well enough for that to be as weird for me.
“Well that syringe DID have her name on it…” The falcon chuckled, having done that intentionally. “Are we ready? Flying will come second nature to you if you don’t fight it. Try not to fall behind, that may be difficult for Michelle and Clark as they’re the smallest of us, but…. we’ll try.”
As we soared through the sky towards I knew home I looked back to the ground where I had carried my old prosthetic legs towards our usual spot as a sort of makeshift memorial. My feet would forever be firmly planted on the ground, but now it seems my head would be in the clouds. The flight upwards was hard on us all, but easier for some than for others. I wasn’t sure how I’d like being a hummingbird, but so far I was enjoying it far better than I h
ad being awkwardly stuck between two genders. I loved having a cloaca far more than I did having male reproductive organs. I knew I’d have to take a rest the second we got to the new world which according to the falcon had been a series of floating islands covered in birdhouses recovered by the rescue squad. Isaac’s would be taken up here eventually, but for now the concern was getting us away from the ruins of the human world.
As tired as I was, I couldn’t help but to smile when I saw my old friend the moon again, as full as can be smiling right at me. When we finally arrived I perched on an artificial log and took a look around, the place seemed huge but in my old body it would have barely been big enough to be a small room in a small house. I chirped happily as I stared up at the moon and quickly fell asleep. This time, I knew that if I had full control over my dreams, I’d choose to dream about something other than death. I was in a new world and from what little I knew of it this was a world worth living in. I’d have to explore it further to know for sure, but the island seemed inviting with its multicolored houses, birdbaths,