Weeping, Julien makes a noise half like a child's whine, half a wail. There just isn't a more articulate answer he can give. Far away it seems, he lets his curled feet tuck and droop, then kicks up again as they encounter the alien softness of the feathers on his underside. He closes his eyes, inner lids then outer. He has to try twice, his lower eyelid suddenly becoming larger and mobile.

Feathers, spiky and hard-shafted at first but unraveling into slick softness, insert themselves between his face and Aaron's hands. His nostrils become a fuzzy-textured, vaguely heart-shaped operculum perched atop his beak. The structure of his skull rearranges. Matured feathers smooth out the look of his face. It doesn't look like anything else is happening, and there isn't much that could, but his eyes are still closed.

Julien's eyes are huge, far larger than what shows, but his head is quite removed from that of any pigeon stumbled across now. Wider across, with proportionally smaller eyes with a more forwards set and a far larger skull. The dye he'd used stays, somehow, and some of the feathers on his head are longer than the others. That doesn't mean he looks at all the same.