Chapter Text
Muddied and exhausted, Diaval shook, adrenaline coursing through his system from his close encounter with the unsavory man, murderous hounds, and transformation that had saved his life. He looked down and studied what had been done to him. His wings had transformed into long limbs with appendages attached at the ends, similar to his old feet, but stubbier, talons flat and blunt and useless. Shiny black feathers no longer covered his body. He was soft and pink, fine dark hair sporadically covering his body with no discernible rhyme or reason that he could figure. Raised white lines broke the smooth skin of his chest and formed something similar in appearance to a footprint his previous feet might have left. Every nook and cranny exposed to the cool air felt raw. His feet had no calluses, and they ached where sharp bits of dirt and bark dug into them.
A vague sense of loss nagged at the back of his mind. He suspected that there had been other changes to his person, or bird self, that were not so easily detected. He quelled the urge to go into a full-blown panic and focused outward. Everything was much as he had last observed it, excluding the slightly different vantage point and the suspicion that his vision, hearing, sense of smell and touch had changed in drastic ways that he could not quite pinpoint and would perhaps never be able to. She, of course, was there, the forest spirit, fairy, whatever they were called. With surprising ease, he found himself unconsciously interpreting her facial expression as carefully controlled neutrality, that or boredom? He thought words and they emerged flawlessly from the pliable thing that must be his new beak. “What did you do to my beautiful self?”
He knew. Well, no, he didn’t. He had no idea what the mechanics were behind changing a handsome bird such as himself into a man, but he knew enough. He knew what she wanted, why she had saved him from the farmer and his filthy, mange-infested dogs. This act had not been of the kind and selfless variety. Every tree in the woods and rock in the river had its place. He was not an expert on the rules of the Moors, but he was fairly certain that altering him in this way was strictly against every single one of them. His life had been spared, damned and claimed simultaneously. He morbidly imagined the brittle snap of his bones between the jaws of the hounds and wondered which fate he would end up preferring in the end. He played coy to the best of his ability but gave in quickly and inevitably to her claim, promising his loyalty, his wings, and his life.