on a lark

[alicornucopia]

She combs and combs the world aside and there is another world, just ahead, and she steps in.

The combed-away hole closes behind her. She puts her comb in her pocket.

Thanjen (Unbitwise)

Blueberry (kappa)

Hivers (Rockeye)

Comments

[wind_on_my_face]

And she's flying. Or at least, the ground is approaching slower than usual.

If she figures out how to glide in a consistently straight line, then she can leave the island behind quickly and had better turn back unless she wants to try a water landing.

Thanjen follows her down, after making some shape adjustments so he isn't flying faster than her all the time.

[alicornucopia]

She tries turning. She flaps. She tries diving and swooping up. She does a lot of whooping while she does all this.

[wind_on_my_face]

The tricky part about flapping is that you have to do it just right or you lose more speed than you gain, but she's getting the right idea.

There's the beach again.

[alicornucopia]

She keeps her altitude as long as she can, until she's pretty sure she can flap well enough to get airborne again from a ground start - then land on the beach, fairly neatly for a first try.

[wind_on_my_face]

Thanjen lands next to her. (He's getting used to her being unexpectedly good at being a griffin.)

“Do you want to go up again, or try to take off from the ground?”

[alicornucopia]

"I'm going to try taking off to make sure I can. After that I want to be a mermaid."

She takes off, flies around in a big circle, lands again.

[wind_on_my_face]

(Aaaargh.)

“—I really think we should be getting you equipped to communicate now. Then you can read entire books on how to be all kinds of things whenever you want, better than I can teach you.”

[alicornucopia]

She peels her griffin open and sits up, sticking her head out of it. "Um, I'd rather you just showed me this one other thing, I can figure out the other stuff I want to do myself from there probably."

[wind_on_my_face]

“It's really important to be able to get help when you are out in empty places like this. How did you get here, anyway?”

(Maybe he shouldn't have asked that. But she is at least safer now, and some things he was resolutely not thinking about are getting more insistent now.)

[alicornucopia]

"I walked. Can you teach me the mermaid thing or not?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“I am birds all the time. I don't know that much about swimming creatures. I'm sure there are much better books on the subject.”

[alicornucopia]

"That'd be slower."

[wind_on_my_face]

“If you're in a hurry, why not just try doing it? Then you'll know what you need to learn.”

[alicornucopia]

"And then you'll help me with that?"

[wind_on_my_face]

“If I know how to help, I will.”

[alicornucopia]

She frowns at him, sighs, and then starts making herself a mermaid tail out of griffin parts that she thinks will be relatively easy to reconstruct later. When she has something that is appropriately shiny and scaly and fits over her legs well she makes a big globe of glass full of air and then attempts to compress it down.

[wind_on_my_face]

(Of course she wants to breathe, too.)

Some discreetly frantic research later, he teaches her how to make a pressure regulator so she can safely breathe from it, and warns her not to dive deep with regular air.

[alicornucopia]

"How do I make not-regular air, then?" she asks, making a pressure regulator as instructed.

[wind_on_my_face]

“You need special materials and a particular machine to filter the air. And you also need to watch how fast you go down or up. It's complicated and I'm really not qualified to teach you how to do it safely.”

[alicornucopia]

"I guess I just won't go deeper than swimming pools, then."

[wind_on_my_face]

“It would be pretty silly to make a swimming pool that was too deep, wouldn't it.”

[alicornucopia]

Blink. "Yes."

She sticks her breathing apparatus to her back, puts the end of it in her mouth, plugs her nose, and flops reasonably effectively into the water.

[wind_on_my_face]

He dry-suit-snorkels along at the surface to keep an eye on her. Not that there are any too-deep places anywhere this close to the beach, but just on the general principle of who knows what she will want to do next.

[alicornucopia]

She mermaids about quite happily and doesn't drown. She seems to find having human joints under the tail inconvenient, and at one point flops out of the water long enough to grab more material from the griffin shell and add it on so her tail is longer and she can get more propulsion without unsightly knee-bending.

[wind_on_my_face]

(He's not a big fan of swimming, humanly or any other way, but this is actually kind of relaxing, comparatively. He thinks.

He is not cut out for talking people into things. If she won't take his advice he should just give up and — leave —

This is no longer an immediately serious personal safety problem. This is a “who raised this child like this” problem. This is even less his field than diving. He should ask for help.

He starts composing an explanation of the situation.)