lukeoutbelow | (no subject)

Julien had been feeling unwell for a couple of days. He'd spent all of yesterday in, doing nothing much but sleep and eat, feeling hungry almost constantly. Putting away the detritus left behind by that seemed unusually difficult. He had to leave some wrappers where they lay, and couldn't focus to cook, and that thing kept happening, where it was like he couldn't remember how to move his face, and somehow his resting expression was a Mona Lisa look.

He'd wanted to think he was just sick. It didn't happen much at all, his body wasn't used to it. But on some level, he knew. It was in the occasional paralysis of his face, and the thick warm feeling in his sternum, and the way both his hips clicked when he stood up.

So in a way it wasn't a surprise when he woke and that feeling was pressing out, hot and throbbing and painful, getting worse as he pressed his wing against his chest. It was a surprise when he tried to get up, and fell. He'd wanted, when he thought about this day coming, to do it alone, but he couldn't manage to heat water or pick athelas. It hurt. Eventually he couldn't take it. He had to call for help.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hearing Elvish now surprises Julien. There's no more expression on his face, though it can be read as having a Mona Lisa look despite the outsized eyes glinting with tears, the wide and lipless corners of his mouth. "It... it sounds really silly wh...when you've just got- there's the English in."

His body, now, is almost done. Rounder, wider. Deeper by over a foot, and muscle is still filling in around the keel arching over him. Somewhere along the line his thighs got included in the skin around where his waist had been, making the fit of his pajama bottoms very poor. He's already quite big, and the feathers reaching full length on his body make him seem very much larger. They're pimpling and pinfeathering and blossoming up towards his keel, around where his collarbones have almost finished fusing and curving into a furcula. Under Aaron's fingers his skin is shifting and goosebumps are forming.

Julien's noticed that his neck is getting longer, and even from a changing vantage point he can see his chest. He makes a choked sound and starts to struggle, enormous wings flapping against the floor, his head lolling. "I don't want to see this! I don't - no!"