Selkie Peak, Saturday Morning

[wwiii]

Last night, Warren and Karla hadn't bothered to go back to the hotel room that he'd booked so that he could visit her for the weekend, no. They'd had their hot coffee and their cider and their blankets, and cold November night or not, they'd fallen asleep together, curled up in feathered wings and warming spells. It had been an excellent way to end an evening, thank you very much. And being on Fandom Island, it really stood to reason that this morning wasn't going to go near as smoothly.

It was Fandom, after all.

Warren was the first to stir today, troubled by the cool air and a sort of heaviness in his joints that left him feeling as though he was made of lead. And normally, he'd just wrap his wings more tightly around Karla and cuddle up to her even more closely, but today...

He sucked in a sharp breath as his eyes shot open, and he stared up at the sky above from the flat of his back.

"Oh no," he murmured. "No no no no no."

[For that girl!]

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[glacial_queen]

And while Karla normally would be sleeping right about now (really, when didn't Warren wake up first?), his distress would usually be percolating down through her senses, urging her towards wakefulness. Not his soft whimpers or insistent movements, but his emotions would flavor the very air around them, letting Karla know things were amiss long before she noticed the physical manifestations of his upset.

Not today however. The only things her senses were picking up was that it had somehow gotten colder and she should snuggle closer to Warren for warmth.

[wwiii]

Maybe the cuddling was a good thing. It kept Warren from completely losing his mind as he rolled over, putting an arm around Karla and clinging for all he was worth.

He couldn't breathe. He'd woken up without wings, stripped of something that had been the one driving force for the direction most of his life had headed for over a decade, and he felt heavy and inside-out and wrong, like someone had cut off his hands and had left him to deal with the fallout in the dead of the night.

But Karla in his arms, at least, meant that the other driving force in his life was still there, so he clung to her tightly, hands balled into anxious fists so tight that his claws pierced his palms.

[glacial_queen]

For all that Karla was the driving force in his life, never let it be said she couldn't also sometimes be counted on to make a bad situation worse. "Warren?" she muttered sleepily, still not bothering to open her eyes. "S'cold. Can I sleep while you fly us back to the hotel?"

A simple enough question, a variant of one that she'd asked hundreds of times already. But today...

Yeah, normally, she would have known better than to ask something like that. Also normally, she would have been a lot more awake by now, too.

[wwiii]

There really weren't many things Karla could have asked that would have been worse than that particular question. Warren drew in a sharp hiss between his teeth, shuddered, and then pressed his face against her shoulder, ignoring the wet stinging at his eyes that he refused to give in to right now.

"I can't," he murmured, trying to keep his voice calm, but edging somewhere halfway to hysterical already. "I can't fly. I can't fly."

But his hands were healing neatly in spite of his claws, which he might even have it together enough to be baffled by later.

[glacial_queen]

Karla was rapidly (okay, as rapidly as a still sleep-fogged mind could) coming to the conclusion that Something Was Not Right. From as upset and near-tears as Warren sounded, shouldn't she have...? Something. It was hard to grasp in the way that thinks taken for granted usually were and she was focusing on Warren's distress anyway.

"Huh?" she asked. "Wha?"

Such a brilliant conversationalist in the mornings, yessir.

"Can't fly?" And now she was pulling her eyes open, trying to figure out what the Hell was going on here. "Too cold?"

Did flight muscles need to warm up for something?

[wwiii]

"My wings."

He couldn't even explain what was up with those wings of his. He'd managed to choke out the word, and then he was letting go of her, curling himself into a neat little ball on the ground with the blankets half off, shivering. Wings didn't just go away overnight. It had taken them weeks to even start resembling wings when they'd manifested, months to fully develop. They didn't just vanish overnight like this!

He was trying to stay calm, taking deep breaths and raking lightly bloodied but completely healed hands through his hair. He was not going to panic. He wasn't. There had to be a reason for this. Of... some sort.

Had to be.

[glacial_queen]

"Wings?"

Now Karla was barreling fully awake, the sheer sense of loss evident in his voice in a way that she hadn't gotten from anything else. She rolled over towards him only to be confronted with the sight of--

His back.

His completely wingless back. There were still slits in his shirt and through them she could see the smooth skin, bumps of spine, and lines of his shoulderblades that made up a normal back. Sights she rarely got to see, not with sixteen feet of wingspan in the way. Sixteen feet of wingspan that were now just gone.

"Merciful Darkness, what happened?"

[wwiii]

"I don't know," Warren replied, his voice shaking and desperate and half growl, trying to cling desperately some bravado that completely wasn't there. "They were just- I mean. It was like this... I mean..."

He grabbed at the sides of his head and growled again, not quite capable of throwing together words.

"It was like this! Just... Just normal like this!"

He said 'normal' as if it was a curse.

[glacial_queen]

"Shhh, shh, love, shh," Karla soothed, wrapping her arms around him and trying to pull him to face her.

In no small part because looking at his featureless back was starting to freak her out, too.

"It's okay, take a few moments and let it all out. You don't have to be brave in front of me. It's okay...shhh, my love."

Even as she was soothing him, she was noticing something was a little off. But what...?

[wwiii]

"I feel heavy," he managed, closing his eyes tightly and burying his face in her shoulder and wrapping his arms around her. "Heavy and half-missing and like someone filled my bones with concrete and then shoved me halfway into the ground and I- I don't understand."

This was wrong. This was wrong and it couldn't be real. It couldn't.

[glacial_queen]

He felt heavy. Was the the weirdness she was picking up on? Normally, for all his mass and muscles, Warren weighed surprisingly little. But now, even just resting against her, she could feel a kind of...surprising denseness?

"It has to be a thing," Karla decided. "A Fandom thing. Maybe the island is playing tricks on mutants or something. Or maybe it's a reverse-pony thing, where everyone on the island becomes perfectly human-shaped for the weekend."

That being said, she slid her snake-tooth out from under her nail. That was still there, hmm. Too small to be noticed by Fandom, maybe?

[wwiii]

Warren shook his head a little.

"Not perfectly," he murmured, his mind going to a similar place as hers, even as he let his nails prick her shoulders just lightly enough that she'd get that they were still there. "If that's what it was doing, it doesn't make sense that it would take... take... but not..."

Words. Apparently the island had run off with his words, too.

[glacial_queen]

Karla clung to him. Clinging was all she had right now, between sleepiness, confusion, and that nagging feeling that something was off.

She opened her mouth to try and say something comforting. What came out was...not. "Dontcha worry boy/ 'Bout dem wings/ Fandom fixes/ Everything."

Have some extended blinking there, Warren. And a surprisingly good rap that I am not capable of writing, but yay Fandom magic to go along with it.

[wwiii]

And by the time that was done, Warren was too busy staring with his mouth hanging open to even be too traumatized.

...

"Yeah, this will be okay again by Monday."

It was the only explanation. It probably also neatly explained the urge he had to knit a scarf in order to burn off his excess anxiousness.

[glacial_queen]

...

...

"What the Hell was that?" Karla asked, grateful she hadn't given in to the urge to dance that had gone along with it.

[wwiii]

"You just put Dr. Dre to shame, I think," Warren offered. "Do you even listen to rap?"

This was just weird enough for him to cling to, yes. At least until it hit him again that his wings were missing.

[glacial_queen]

"Does he work at the clinic?" Karla asked, neatly answering his question for him.

[wwiii]

"I wouldn't be surprised if he did," came Warren's dry reply. "Not around here, anyhow. But right now I think Fandom's trying to mess with us. Big surprise."

He didn't have to like it, though.

[glacial_queen]

"So, you lose your wings and I suddenly pick up a song and dance number?" Karla demanded. "How is that even fair? That makes no sense at all!"

[wwiii]

"No kidding," Warren replied, good and aware of just how unfair this was. "And I have the weirdest urge to knit to make up for it."

Maybe he could knit himself some new wings?

[glacial_queen]

"Knit?" Karla's lip curled instinctively. "Now you sound like Rilla, ugh. Do you even know how?"

She leaned into him, closing her eyes and burying her face into his neck. "You're calming down, right?" she asked. "I mean, I don't feel you panicking...any...more."

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait.

[wwiii]

"I'm calming down," Warren confirmed, nuzzling back. "If this is just Fandom... it's awful, but it won't last forever."

A pause. There had been something about the way she'd finished that sentence.

"... Are you okay?"

[glacial_queen]

"You had been panicking earlier, right?" Karla asked, sounding puzzled. "Like, full-on emotional distress?"

[wwiii]

"I was having a bit of a breakdown until you woke up and started rapping," Warren confirmed, blinking at her. "You couldn't tell?"

He'd been on the verge of crying. That had been difficult to miss. Right?

[glacial_queen]

"Of course I could!" Karla protested. "...But only when I was looking at you. Or listening to you talk. When I closed my eyes..."

A long pause. A very long pause.

"...It was like you weren't even there."

Had Warren lost something else?! Besides his wings? Some kind of...emotional resonance?