The Roof, Monday Evening

[not_a_parakeet]

One of these days, Warren was going to come up to the roof to do more than awkwardly stand there staring out over the island as the sun worked on setting. Really. In fact, tonight, 'more than awkwardly standing there' was essentially his whole reason for being up there

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[notyourpawn]

Alice should wander out to the roof more often, if this sort of thing was going on.

"Oh, how wonderful," she cried, clapping her hands. "Did you change just now or do you always have wings?"

[not_a_parakeet]

... See, Warren could almost get used to people giving him receptions like this.

"Well, the wings aren't exactly a new development," he replied, offering Alice a smile. "I'm just really good at hiding them."

Like the sneaky, freakishly flexible winged boy that he was.

"Uh... Surprise?"

[notyourpawn]

"That has to be dreadfully inconvenient, now and again," she noted, glancing them over with barely concealed delight. "However do you fit them under your shirts? I've never mistaken you for a hunch-back, so you must excel at binding them."

[not_a_parakeet]

"There's a little crease under my coat, if you know what to look for," Warren noted, almost humbly. "But I to tend to strap them back pretty tightly. It's not really comfortable, but it works."

Okay, seriously, if people were going to keep smiling and thinking that his wings were so awesome, he was going to develop a complex, or something.

... That was just what Warren needed. An ego to match his wingspan.

[notyourpawn]

"Like an illusionist," she said. "No one thinks to examine the back of your coat, so the subtle bulges fool the eye. Quite clever, I must say. I've been a great number of things before, but I can't recall ever having wings."

Some of her memories like to overlap one another and fight for her attention. How terribly immature of them.

[not_a_parakeet]

"Trust me, if you've ever flown, it's not something you're about to just up and forget anytime soon," Warren replied. He was smiling. He couldn't help it. He was still riding the high of his flight, and the positive reception that his wings were getting was more than welcome. "It's like... Free-fall, only you're completely in control. And nothing can hold you back, because it's just you and the whole sky."

[notyourpawn]

"Is it hard, learning to steer?" Alice asked. "One imagines if one had wings, it would be a simple twitch and turn this way and that, but as I haven't any, that's easier for me to say than you. I've leapt many times my own height before, but I was very small at the time, so it doesn't have the same claim on the sky."

[not_a_parakeet]

"Believe it or not, steering is the easy part," Warren replied, carefully picking at what she was saying, and storing it away for future reference. Of course she was alright with wings, if she'd ever been able to leap like that.

The extraordinary, around here, wasn't. He was learning.

"It's more complicated to explain, though. It's sort of something that you just... Do. Things like turning can be as simple as fine control over my feathers, or it might mean throwing my whole body into it."

For all the experience he actually had in this department. Come now, Warren.

[notyourpawn]

Alice closed her eyes for a long moment.

"I feel like I could feel them," she observed. "Where they are, how they move, that sort of thing. The way you know which muscles would move your tail, even though you haven't one. That is, I don't, at least. Perhaps you do, and your pants are as deceptive as your coat."

[not_a_parakeet]

"Nope, what you see is pretty much what you get, in that department," Warren assured her, his smile a little crooked.

He totally knew somebody with a tail. He wasn't sharing that fact.

"I used to pretend I had wings, when I was a kid. I mean... What kid doesn't think it would be awesome to fly, right?" His feathers ruffled a little, and he held his wings a little more tightly against his back. It was a little chilly to be just standing around with no coat on, but he didn't feel like harnessing himself in just yet. "So, I do know what you're saying. It's kind of like finding the phantoms of what almost ought to be there."