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Jay had always found birds interesting.
They were her namesake after all, and a golden eagle made up the Ferin’s crest. Birds had always held a kind of importance to her, ever present in her life. Her mother's affinity of being able to speak to them, the legacy of magic coursing through her veins. There were even whispered stories of members of her family having mystical wings splayed out behind them, blessed by Aster herself. She wasn't sure if those rumors were true, having never seen someone with wings. Jay would like them to be true.
Those stories always piqued her curiosity.
That led to her fascination with birds.
She remembers watching the birds on Featherbrook with Ava, when they were still kids. Observing the small creatures hop around on thin legs, bright feathered bodies light as air, spreading their delicate wings and taking to the sky. It looked like an impossible thing. She could vividly recall the dazzling cerulean of a blue jay, how it matched the cloudless sky and the gentle sea. She could have sat around staring at the birds for hours, dancing and singing sweetly to each other. Gliding gracefully into the air, free to go where they pleased.
Jay had sought out that sensation, that feeling of soaring, of the air whipping across her face. She had once followed a bird into a tree, as a child, watching it skip up branch after branch, and she had climbed after it, easily scaling up the great oak. As she reached out, the bird startled suddenly and flew away, leaving Jay clinging to the tree. She looked down, thinking it wasn’t that far of a drop, and imagined herself flying like the bird. Wondering that if she fell, would wings sprout from her back, like in the stories she had heard? She pictured herself untethered to the earth, feathers brushing against her skin. Gravity losing it’s grip on her and letting her go free.
Jay felt her fingers loosen, and she dropped.
Her stomach lurched, and there was one startling moment of terror, but then she grinned. Jay laughed loudly, limbs spread out and feeling the cold rush of wind that flowed around her. The exhilarating sensation made her heart race and it was then she knew that this must be what flying felt like.
And then she hit the ground with a sharp jolt of pain.
Later, once her mother had found her in a crumpled, tearful heap outside, she would learn that she had broken her arm. While she was tended to, she still smiled and giggled excitedly about her brief time soaring, her wingless flight. Her mother had just sighed, the faintest trace of amusement dancing in her eyes.
That would not be the only time she’d fling herself out of a tree to chase that sensation.
She would spend many hours and days fixated on the birds around her, feeling something like envy curl in her chest, longing to be able to lift herself off of the ground on feathery wings.
Maybe that was why she adjusted to life on the sea so easily. Living out on the sea, as a pirate, obviously wasn’t in any way like being a bird, but there was a wonderful freedom to it- one she had never known. Even when she had still tied herself to her family, when she had still been a spy, it was a freedom the Navy had never afforded her.
She loved the feeling of the salty wind rushing past her, stood proud at the bow of the ship. When no one else was looking and she was all alone, she’d spread her arms wide, imaging that they were her wings and that she were floating on air. Her eyes would follow a solitary bird darting about on the ocean, and she would grin- until its path cut in front of the sun and she'd have to look away, blinking, the glare stinging. Jay, idly, would stretch, scratch at her back after its pop, then hold her arms out again.
Other times she’d climb up the mast and sit in the crow’s nest- if Chip hadn't beat her to it- perched high in the clouds, looking down at and admiring the busy world below. The swell and spray of the waves, the creak and groan of the ship, the quick movements of her crew underneath her, and the beat and flap of distant seagulls and albatross.
Jay had always felt at home with birds around her. She had always loved them, wanted to join and be one with them. And perhaps that was why when the opportunity to get a tattoo came up, she jumped at the chance to get the markings of elegant wings inked across her back and shoulders. Even more so when she learned they could later be enchanted, could sprout her magical wings of light- and that with them, she could really, truly, fly.
Her dream wasn't as much as a fantasy as she once thought.
After an hour of laying stiff across a table in a busy All-Port tattoo studio, nearly blinded with pain and only the half-torn flier proclaiming the Pirate Code to keep her mind busy, the magic infused re-inking was done. She had nearly fallen asleep.
Jay was a little dismayed to learn that in order for the magic to work the tattoo would need to fully heal. Silently she resigned herself to a walk back to the Albatross, not gliding back as she had gleefully hoped. Each step sent a twinge of pain up her spine.
Once back on the ship, she flexed her shoulders, watching the way fresh, dark ink rolled across tender skin. It was her old tattoo traced over, more elaborate than it used to be, and now newly imbued with powerful magic. Spots of blood dotted it, the lines raised and warm. "What do you think?" She said, looking towards her co-captains.
"I think it looks stupid." Chip said with a smirk, because of course he did.
Jay rolled her eyes. "And so do yours." She said, nodding to the whorls of deep orange flames that painted Chip's chest and shoulders.
He laughed at that. "Nah, I think yours are really cool, actually."
"They make you look quite spectacular, Jay!" Gillion added.
"Thanks Gill." She smiled as she carefully ran her hand over the puffy lines, marveling at the intricate detail that went into creating the design. Each curve of feather, each individual barb, each vane, looked real, far more real than they had before. "I wonder how long it'll be until it heals completely."
"Then you can use it, right?" Chip asked. "Just like-" He imitated wings, flapping his arms around wildly.
Jay snorted. "Yeah," She said, grinning. "Once it heals, I can fly."
The tattoo would not heal.
Jay had anticipated it taking longer than most tattoos, given it's large size and sensitive location, but it got to a point where Jay knew that it should've at least started healing somewhat. Especially given that it was magic.
In the initial days that followed their fleeing All-Port, the skin had been raw and inflamed, a hot, bruised feeling. The lines continued to bleed. It had been horribly uncomfortable, so much so that she hadn't been able to bear wearing a shirt over it- the brush of fabric causing a flare of pain- and instead settling into a makeshift backless top she made by tearing up one of her shirts. Airing out wounds were supposed to help them heal, she thought, and yet nothing about the tattoo seemed to get better. Honestly, it seemed to be getting worse.
It oozed and crusted and flaked as it had the first time around, as any tattoo she had previously gotten had. It swelled and the skin puffed and turned red. All in the first several days. As expected. Then a week went by. And another. Another week of slow, lazy sailing, and no significant improvement to the tattoo.
At the very least, she knew she hadn't gotten scammed. She could feel the magic coursing through the ink and into her skin, something warm and prickling in her veins. If it weren't for that, she'd of thought that she'd been tricked out of her money and given an infected tattoo. Which she probably did have regardless, now that she thought about it. She eventually just chalked up the delay to the reopening of old wounds, the preexisting lines in her skin being torn back open to allow for new ink.
It was still irritating.
One night, as she lay on her stomach, she felt the sharp prickle of pain stab at her back, quick precise jabs and the sensation of her skin being pulled tight. Jay groaned, unable to even sleep in her awful discomfort. Chip's snoring didn't help. Feeling all sweaty and gross, she kicked the thin blanket off, letting it fall unceremoniously from her cot.
Jay sat up, thinking she might as well go do something else rather than waste away her sleepless hours. At the very least she could get some fresh sea air and hope it may soothe her skin. She tugged at the curtain separating her bed from the rest of the captain's quarters, and froze when, despite the dim light, she saw a set of damp blue eyes; a very awake Gillion, staring back at her.
Gillion was stood up in his barrel, only half submerged. He looked haunted, dark rings lining his eyes, and his hair splattered across his face in wet tangles. Spilled water pooled around his barrel messily, the lid flung to the far side of the room, as if he had burst from it violently. "Jay?" He called out, his voice a dry rasp and uncharacteristically quiet. His mouth was pulled down into a scowl. "You're awake?"
"Yeah," she said. "Couldn't sleep."
His expression seemed to soften. "Me neither." Jay tried not to look at the puckered wounds lining Gillion's abdomen, knowing that and the horrific dreams it created was the reason for his insomnia. Tilting his head curiously, he asked, "Is it your back?"
Jay nodded slowly.
"Is the pain severe?"
Jay hesitated, and Gillion took her silence as an answer. Sluggishly, he pulled himself out of his barrel. "No, Gil-" But Gillion was next to her in an instant, kneeling himself down beside her cot.
He held out his hands. "May I?" Jay, knowing that Gill would only continue his insistence, didn't object, only turning slightly to give Gillion better access to her back. He laid his damp hands against her skin, the clamminess sending a chill down her spine, and she shivered. She felt his cool touch warm as the magic began its spread, tendrils of electricity twining hotly through her skin. It ate away at her pain, softening the sharpness of the infection into a dull throb.
She nearly breathed a sigh of relief, only stopping herself when she felt the twinge of discomfort that still radiated from between her shoulders. Underneath the layers of hot pain, Jay noticed now that there was the uncomfortable sensation of pressure building beneath her skin, something like a horrible itch, which did not go away with Gillion's magic. Prodding at her back, she noted that the lines of her tattooed wings laid nearly flush and uninflamed, no swell to be found.
"What is wrong?" Gillion asked, noticing her puzzled expression.
Jay let her hands fall into her lap, lest they start picking at her skin in a desperate attempt to find and release the cause of the pressure. She described to him what she felt.
Gillion frowned. "That is strange." He held up his hands again. "Would you like for me to try again?" He offered.
"No, don't worry about it." Jay said, shaking her head. "I'm sure it'll be fine."
It was not fine.
"Jay, you good?" Chip asked the next morning, while she tried to claw at her irritated back. Despite Gillion's best healing efforts, it had gone right back to being annoyingly painful within a few hours, much to her dismay. Her scratching at her back, renewed with a new kind of viciousness, managed to do away with the delicate scabs that had formed over her tattoos.
She grit her teeth. "Never better." Her dull nails connected with skin and she hissed, the scratching only managing to make her feel worse, drying and inflaming wherever was attacked.
The rising sun shimmered across the waves, occasionally spraying salt up onto the deck- which hurt when it connected with her raw skin. Still, Jay did not get up from where she was sat on the deck, ignoring Chip and continuing to silently observe in the distance Gillion and Ollie running around each other playfully. She would have joined them, wanting to participate in their goofing around, if not for the hot pain radiating from between her shoulders and along her spine.
"Right. Yeah, no, you're going to go lie down or something."
Jay rolled her eyes. "Yeah as if." She was still scratching at her skin. "I'm perfectly fine Chip."
Chip crossed his arms. "Jay, I'm serious."
"Wow, that's a change."
"I'm- Jay, you really don't look okay. Gill, shouldn't she go lie down?" He called out.
Gillion nodded his head vigorously from across the deck, barely turning in their direction. "Yes!" Jay pouted.
Ollie did turn, the small furrow of his brow clear despite the distance. "Is Ms. Jay sick?"
"Yeah."
"No I'm fucking not." She was starting to get annoyed with Chip's persistence, and so she stood up quickly. "Chip, thank you for your concern, but this is nothing I can't handle." As she turned to walk away, to find some other part of the ship to haunt while she ignored her tattoos, she nearly lost her balance, tipping forward dangerously. Ollie shrieked. The sway of the ship was strangely disorientating today, she found.
Chip caught her by the arm just before she would have wound up sprawled out across the deck. "Jay-" He paused, then smacked his other palm against her forehead.
Jay tried to pull away. "Chip what the fuck-"
"You're burning up Jay."
She scoffed. "Bullshit, no I'm not. I've been sitting in the sun, of course I'm-"
Chip wiped his hand against his pants, frowning. "You're literally running a fever." He started forcefully trying to push her in the direction of the door leading to below deck. "You are resting. Now."
Jay, still adamant that she was fine, would not be going down without a fight.
Or so she thought.
She was embarrassed to admit how easily Chip had wrestled her feverish body over his shoulder and dragged her into their sleeping quarters. The slowly building nausea she was starting to become aware of certainly hadn't helped.
"You stay there." Chip insisted. "I'm going to get Earl to make you some juice or something." He disappeared up the steps.
Jay, loath as she was to lay down and waste away a day, found that some unfamiliar exhaustion pulled at her bones. Maybe a rest couldn't hurt, she thought.
So she tried to nap.
Jay shifted in her cot, the threadbare sheet underneath her scratching uncomfortably against her skin. Something, that wasn't her back, didn't feel right. She turned on her side, squirmed some more, and decided that the sheet would not cease to be irritating. The blanket, if it could even be called that, was bundled into her arms and shoved forcibly to the side, crumpled between the wooden wall and her shoulder.
She paused, staring at the tossed sheet. With her hands she adjusted it, having it curl and scoop partially around her, like a lover hugging one from behind. It felt, interestingly, nice, a barrier between her irritated back and the wall.
Thinking for a moment, she pulled the floppy pillow out from under her head, and laid it gingerly at her side. Jay leaned down again, finding this new wall separating her from the rest of the quarters to be somewhat comforting.
It wasn't right yet, though. Her legs still hung loosely, exposed. She glanced around the room, in search of something to add to her makeshift fortress, and found Chip's pillow, dropped on the floor. Jay hesitated, feeling ridiculous for even considering it.
"What the hell," she huffed under her breath, then lunged for the pillow. Beside it she saw a hardly worn coat of Chip's, along with a salt crusted towel of Gillion's, used to mop up the water that spilled from his barrel. Almost without thinking she scooped them up, adding both to her now growing walls. To her odd delight, they faintly smelled of her co-captains. One of her own shirts was added into the mix.
She arranged all the items carefully, patting and adjusting where it was needed, building her own personal barricade.
Jay blinked, suddenly pulling her hands away.
What was she doing?
Her face flushed in embarrassment. Quickly she pulled it apart somewhat, returning both Gillion and Chip's things to the floor- though she kept Chip's pillow. She was left putting the remains of her walls together in some poor imitation of what they had once been.
She leaned back, stiffly, chest down, inside her now rather pathetic pillow fortress. Her head was laid gently across her folded arms, and she sighed. It was soothing, enough so that Jay could relax her tense shoulders, easing some of the growing pressure in her back- which, in the time she had spent building her fort, she had completely forgotten about.
That was nice.
Enveloped within the plush walls of her fortress, Jay didn't notice Chip creep back down the stairs, jar of juice in hand. "Old Man Earl specialty. He said he hopes you feel better." Chip said, then a moment later added, "He didn't really, but he kind of did. In his own Earl way." A brief pause. "Nice pillow fort." Jay only hummed, eyes still shut.
He held out the jar to a half asleep Jay, only to swipe it back just as she was reaching out for it. "Is that my fucking pillow?" He asked incredulously.
Jay felt her face turn red again, and she very much appreciated the fact that her head was currently pillowed in her arms, hiding it from Chip's view. "So? What if it is?" She mumbled.
"Why'd you take my fucking pillow?"
Lazily, she opened one eye. "Mine now." She snatched the juice from his hands in one quick movement. "This too."
"Asshole." Chip grumbled, though there was no bite to his words, a small smile, even, tugged at his lips.
Jay propped herself up slightly, in order to drink without spilling the jar's contents everywhere. Her back twinged uncomfortably as she did so, and she hissed.
Chip gave her another concerned look. Jay glared at him as she downed Earl's juice. It was flavorful and fresh, something cold to appease her feverish body. "Stop doing that." She said to Chip, wiping at the corner of her mouth.
Chip threw his hands up in the air. "Okay, okay! Jeez." He plucked the now empty jar from Jay's hands and threw shut the curtain around her cot with a flourish. "Just get some rest and feel better." He padded his way out of the room, then turned and shouted back, "And stop touching that tattoo! You're making it worse!"
Jay shut her eyes tight again at the sound of the door to the deck clicking shut. Tucked within the walls of her pillow fort, Jay drifted into a restless sleep.
The sun beat down on her in a dream, where she stood on a cliff face, fully exposed to the impossible heat of the star. It was a powerful, overwhelming presence.
Something like hot metal dug into her back, but when she pressed her hands there, she found nothing. She swore the throb of pain pulsed in beat with her heart.
There was fear as the sun sent lashing licks of flame forward, striking and burning her. There was anxiousness, panic- but she pushed that aside, overtaken by a sudden steely determination. Her feet moved, knowing what she was supposed to do.
Jay stepped into the heart of the sun.
It overcame her, swallowing her. Burning, melting heat welcomed her, pulled her in until she spilled and splattered like wax. She screamed, white hot pain blinding her vision.
The sun, wrapping Jay in her loving embrace, was no longer the cause of this torture.
Agony is what woke her.
Jay writhed where she laid on her cot, something wrong, something hot, something burning its way across her skin, starting at the spot between her shoulder blades. The pressure had built up, leaving her back feeling swollen and stretched tight. In her twisting, her pillow fort had been kicked to pieces, scattered across the floor of the storm dark cabin.
It was the goddamn tattoo.
Tenderly, she prodded at it, feeling the angry lines of it reaching across her spine and shoulders. To her horror, she felt a sort of mass, sunken into the flesh of her back, right where the ink twined into feathers. Sweat beaded down her face, a raging fever coursing through her body.
Jay pressed a little harder against the bloated skin, morbidly wondering if it were pus and if the swell would pop in a satisfying release. The moment her fingers dug a little harder into her back she cried out in pain, hand jerking away.
There was rustling in the other corner of the room, Chip waking up. "Guh- who- what..?" A yawn, as he, she assumed at least, blinked into awareness. "Jay? That you? You decent?" He didn't wait for an answer, reaching an arm across the tight cabin and pulling aside the curtain. "What- give me a second, I can't see shit." He fumbled for a lantern, lighting it quickly. Warm orange light burst across the cabin, illuminating the worry on Chip's face. "What happened?" A rumble of thunder outside.
Jay only groaned.
"Okay. It got worse. Nice." Chip scrambled out of his cot, tripping over the tangle of pillows and sheets on the floor in the process. Jay would have laughed, if she hadn't been so narrowly focused on the pressure in her upper back. "Motherfucker- Gill? Gill wake up."
Gillion was, oddly, half leaned over his barrel, and with a quick nudge from Chip and a blinding crash of lighting he darted up, reaching to his side for his not-there sword. "What happened?" He asked, voice thick from sleep. Jay felt a pang of guilt, Gillion having hardly slept in the days since being gored by Kuba Kenta.
"Go- go back to sleep." She grit out. "I'll-" A hiss of pain. "-be fine."
Chip glared at her, then to Gillion said, "Her tat got worse. Can you do your heal-y hands?" He asked.
Gillion looked exhausted, bleary eyed, but still nodded. "O-of course." He crossed the room, kneeling at Jay's side. "I'm guessing it is the same as before."
Jay nodded weakly.
She flinched as Gillion rested his clammy hands against her skin, and he noted the way she trembled, the way feverish heat radiated from her body. Cooling magic poured from out of Gillion's hands.
Something moved under Jay's skin.
She screamed.
Gillion jerked away like he had been burned, long before completing his healing. There was a look of horror on his face, having felt the twitch too.
"What!? What happened?!" Chip shrieked. "Did it not- what the fuck."
Chip and Gillion both stared in a kind of horrified fascination at her back, where Jay could feel the skin shift as it moved, pushing outwards. The canvas of her back drawn taut. Fiery pain, unlike anything she'd felt before, shot through her. The ship rocked violently, heaving, and with it so did Jay, almost retching.
"Jay I think there's something inside you." Chip said in a small voice.
She breathed heavily, trying not to scream again, to not empty what little was in her stomach. "Thank you Chip." She huffed, hands fisted, white knuckled, in the sheets of her cot. "I didn't- didn't notice."
"What do we do?" Gillion asked, frantic.
"I don't know- who do you think might know?"
"Drey?" Gill shrugged. "Earl?"
"Do not get Earl." Jay snapped. "Don't- don't get anyone."
Chip threw his hands up in exasperation. "Jay, what do you want us to do then?!"
"I don't know-" She cried, gasping as another wave of searing pain rolled through her. There was a horrible heat to it, not unlike that of the sun in her dream.
Gil tried Lay on Hands again. It did nothing. "I don't understand!" He said in frustration. "That's supposed to help!"
"Gill it's okay- AH- nhh-" The strange sharp movement again, trying to force itself out, Jay realized with growing dismay. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, drawing blood. Pushed her face against the mattress with a whine.
A cold damp thing was blessedly laid against her forehead. "Does that help?" Gillion asked, having soaked a small cloth in the water of his barrel in his attempt to find anyway to help. It felt nice against her burning skin. Jay tried nodding confirmation, making a short, stuttering movement that felt all too impossible. Gillion smiled a little.
"Then we'll keep doing-"
But he was cut off when the skin beneath Jay's shoulder blades was pulled tight, too tight. Jay realized in horror a moment too late that her back couldn't take the pressure anymore. It was building and building and- it broke all at once. A wrench of skin, a sudden, simple release. An agonizing rip as the skin gave and seemed to unravel at its seams.
Her eyes went wide, tears pricking at the corners, and she screamed. Screamed and screamed and screamed.
Gillion and Chip started screaming then too.
The tearing, the splitting apart of her back, was excruciating, all consuming, like a hot knife ripping into her skin. Her vision splintered, going white- and she genuinely thought that she might die, this thing, this injury, lethal. She felt the quick spill of warm blood as it poured down her back, pooling into the sheets around her. Its metallic scent filled the air.
Jay was being torn apart, a wedge, a mass, a grotesque wet thing, seeming to cleave her in half. The minutes swirled together in a hazy, agonizing, blur. She was aware of nothing but searing pain.
That is, until Gillion let out a shout and cried, "Jay! There is a creature emerging from your back!"
Jay's eyes flew open, hot tears spilling down her face. She reached trembling hands behind her neck, feeling blindly at the tear, for the thing she could sense in the back of her mind. Raw and bloody flesh, curled and pulsing, separate from her body. She only gave a choked sob, shuddered all over.
Wet, slapping, footsteps, then the rush of air that came with the quick draw of a blade. "I will-"
"NO!" A thud, the clatter of metal. A grunt.
The voices were distant, faint against her heavy breathing, her quick heart pounding in her ears. "I need to slay-"
A panicked voice. "NUH UH." More wrestling.
"But it's hurting her-" Desperation.
"Gill I think it's a part of her!" Shrieking, followed by a still, horrified silence, save for Jay's groans of pain.
The wet things on her back twitched.
Despite the heat that radiated from her, the sun like fever burning its way through her veins, Jay shivered violently. Both from fever and chill. The biting cold she felt, she realized with a shock, came from the damp skin that made up the things that had just hatched from her back. They prickled with goosebumps.
Experimentally, Jay tried to move one, not with her hands but with her own conscious volition. It gave a small jerk.
Jay shakily rose to her elbows and twisted her head over her shoulder to get a better look, muscles straining, a sudden swirling dizziness running through her. Two pink and fleshy limbs spread down her back, huge, and likely bigger when not crumpled as they were. It bent in ways something human should not, too many joints, bony and made of lean muscle. Her once intricate tattoos were marred by torn flesh.
She didn't mind though, not once realization hit.
Jay gave a breathless laugh that teetered on a sob. "They're wings." She looked to her co-captains, who were sprawled on the floor in a tangle of limbs, and beamed. There was a stuffed with cotton kind of quality to her brain, everything spinning and bleary to the point that, for a moment, she had trouble actually finding Chip and Gillion's faces in the jumble.
Chip blinked. "Actually?" He asked incredulously. Both sets of eyes were blown wide, fixed on the wet things with a hypnotized fascination.
Gillion seemed to be thinking. "I thought they were meant to be magic, not flesh." He said slowly.
She nodded, the absurdity of all of this not escaping her. "They were- I thought. But this- I have wings. Real-" A stuttered gasp, another spike of pain. "-wings!" She choked out in a disbelieving voice. Swayed a little, where she rested on her elbows. Faintness washed over her. The adrenaline that had whipped unpleasantly through her body finally settled down and left lethargy in its wake. Pain, while still pulsing along with her heartbeat, seemed dulled now, a distant sting.
Her head drooped, and she yawned. The unfamiliar, heavy weight on her back and exhaustion pulled her down, lulling her into a blissful, dreamless, sleep.
She came to some time later.
Jay thought, for a moment, in her bleary, still half-asleep state, that maybe growing her own wings had all just been a wild and lurid dream, one born of wishful, childish, thinking. But then the pain along her spine, which had been dampened when she first awoke, came back to her with a viciousness. Bloodied towels wrapped the new limbs, swaddling them in some poor attempt to cover them up in makeshift bandages.
Reaching behind her, she peeled the stained towels away.
In the watery sunlight slanting through the porthole, Jay was able to study the wings and take in every little thing about them. They were somewhat ugly, naked and covered in goosebumps and mottled skin, two long appendages that did not much resemble wings, though she somehow knew that was what they were, had to be. The split skin along her back had stopped bleeding, stitched together by what she imagined must have been Gillion's magical touch. Combined with the twining ink still running up her shoulders and upper back, they looked a little ridiculous, a dual set of wings. She frowned, dissapointed by their frankly underwhelming appearance. Not yet did they look stunning, like the bright and dazzling wings of those birds who drifted along the crest of waves. Eye catching, but not in a good way.
Jay, knowing that this was not the final state of them, wondered what color the feathers of her wings might be. A bright, coppery red, like her hair? Muted white, like a sea bird? Or a deep, vibrant blue, like the churning ocean that hugged their ship? Amazingly, she did not have to wonder for long; after only a few long days, feathers started growing in.
It started with fluffy down, the fine feathers that coated her wings in a puffy, cloud like way. Often times she would run her fingers through it, simply to feel their softness. Jay learned to work the wings around her body, wrapping herself entirely in its velvety warmth.
These feathers molted rather quickly, loosing the fluff, much to her disappointment- though luckily were replaced with the small signs of new, sprouting feathers just as soon the old ones had fallen. Pale blue, black, and white.
She paced around the deck in the dying golden sunlight of the day, stretched her wings out behind her. Alone with nothing but her thoughts and the crash of waves against the hull. It felt good to move, painlessly, after so long spent confined to her cot and quarters, feeling like she had been atrophying in her rest.
The budding feathers shined, catching in the light, and seemed to wreath the wings in an iridescent glow. She gave an experimental flap, marveling at the shift in colors as the skin pulled and rose, the new muscles working. Jay pushed her arms out, wings following suit, and felt the salty sea wind rush past. She grinned.
Jay soaked in every detail of every feather, feeling something like overwhelming joy.
Around this time she felt that odd urge to burrow herself into a pillow fort again, returning with a new, bright, enthusiasm.
The compulsion struck her suddenly in the middle of the night, one day, seemingly out of nowhere. Still adrift at sea. Blankets and pillows were sculpted around her body, the odd item of clothing occasionally woven in, rearranged as she saw fit. Clumps of fallen down joined the walls, tucked between layers of both soft and coarse fabric. It grew larger than it had the first time around-as large as it could be on a cramped cot anyways- more spacious, as she could move about and guide the sloping layers without being confined to bed, splayed out on her stomach, as she had once been. Now she twisted and scrambled about as she adjusted her walls, feeling the drag of feathers against her cot. She even felt emboldened enough to add items belonging to both Chip and Gillion, their things making her pillow fort (though at this point it was less pillow than, say, everything else) all the better; bigger, more familiar, strangely comforting. That embarrassment she had felt before did not return.
Eventually, she deemed it satisfactory, and stopped fussing over its arrangement. She laid down, chest pressed flush against the hard mattress. Her wings found a comfortable resting position, draped across her body like a blanket, and she relaxed into her soft, plush fortress.
Chip, finding his way into the room after one of his watches, having traded positions with Gryphon, paused at the sight. "We're doing pillow forts again?" He asked, a small smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
Jay shifted one of her wings over her eyes, effectively blocking Chip from sight. "Fuck off." She said. "Can't you see I'm sleeping."
Gillion looked up from his barrel, where he was evidently not sleeping, again. Tilted his head.
"Hey, pillow forts are cool." He squinted, then chuckled. "It's like your own little bird nest."
Jay froze. Seriously took in her piles of blankets and pillows and feathers. Sat up, blinking.
"Jay?"
She slapped a palm against her forehead, the realization coming quick once Chip had made his tease. "Oh my god you're right." She said. "It's a fucking nest. Of course it is. It all makes sense now." That would be why the bundling of fabrics and warmth around her body had been such a welcome feeling, it seeming to scratch some strange new itch in her brain. It only striking up when her tattoo had begun its swelling, the growing. She stared at it, the stack of pillows and sheets and downy feathers. "I made a nest."
"Wait. Actually? So you- you went all fuckin birdbrain?"
"Shut up."
Chip started laughing.
Gillion gave a sleepy, amused look.
"And you took all my shit again, the audacity." Chip said with mock offense.
"I- it just-" It reminds me of you both, she thought quickly, I think I like it- and tried to bury the thought. She hadn't wanted to explore that too much, that growing feeling towards her co-captains, warm and familial. It was worsened now by the addition of wings, of a new mind and instinct that acted out on its own.
The instinct, she realized suddenly, was pleading for Jay to bring Chip into her nest, because wasn't the actual person better than just their things?
She hesitated, not making a move until Chip turned to slump into his own cot, the birdish instinct panicking slightly at the distance, the separation. Jay shot out a hand, circling around his wrist in a tight vice like grip. Chip looked down confusedly, opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off when Jay pulled him in with a sharp tug. He gave a gasp of surprise. "What are-"
"Get in here, idiot." She said. Chip fell in with a soft crash, laying in a tangled jumble of limbs, squishing the nest's walls with his still hanging out legs. Jay gave a snort at his wide eyed, shocked, expression.
He blinked. "Seriously?"
Jay suddenly wasn't so certain, had never been certain actually, and she wanted to tell off the small birdish part of her brain that had desperately been begging Chip to join her inside the comfortable confines of her nest. She flushed, and the words seemed to get lodged in her throat. She coughed out. "I mean- obviously if you don't want to- I just thought. It'd be nice-"
Chip pulled himself in, crawling around her and settling within, making sure, she noticed, to not accidentally touch one of her wings. "Sure." He pulled his bony knees close to his chest. "Hm. Good nest. Comfy." He closed his eyes.
It was definitely birdbrain, she thought, it must be, some additional symptom of her sprouting a pair of wings. Nothing else could explain the absolute rightness she felt having her co-captain leaned against her side and tucked comfortably within her nest, something that she had never once desired before.
She coughed again, that strange strangled feeling creeping its way up her throat once more.
Gillion continued to watch in that uncharacteristically silent, sleepy way he had taken to recently when shadows stretched and darkness folded over the ship.
"Gill?" Jay leaned out of her nest, reaching out, fingers just barely brushing against his rough and clammy skin, and gave a gentle tap.
He didn't react at first, having that unfocused and glazed, red-rimmed eyes look of someone who was just barely conscious. Jay prodded a little harder, and Gillion lurched upwards like he had been shocked, gurgling out something incoherent. She gave him a sympathetic look.
"Hm?"
"Want-" A choked cough. "Want to join the nest?"
Gillion tilted his head, evidently confused. "Nest? What is this nest you speak of?"
Jay patted at the linings of pillows and sheets. "Here."
He let himself be pulled into the nest as well, first taut, body rigid, unsure, but then curving himself around both Chip and Jay. Upon hitting his head against the mattress, Gill started fading in and out of consciousness, eyes heavy.
Now with both her co-captains (flock, her bird brain supplied annoyingly, family) tucked safe inside her nest, Jay relaxed fully into it. She sighed contentedly. Seemed to choke on air. Her throat itched, like there was something stuck, trying to come up.
She made a strangled chirping sound.
Chip and Gillion, the latter of which now wide awake again, stared at her. She clapped a hand over her mouth. It had been almost like a strange little warbling noise, high and musical and completely new.
Jay tried opening her mouth to say something, anything, but all that came out was another piercing, delighted, cheep.
Night passed quick and bled into day, the Albatross still sailing along on the sea. They did not speak of the nest and the very bird-like behavior of Jay outside of their cabin, and one might assume the three co-captains were all going about ignoring the whole ordeal- or as much as one can when the very obvious wings were involved. Given that the following evening both Chip and Gillion climbed into the reshaped nest after her and curled up at her side, hesitation thrown out the window and building up this new, familiar routine, proved otherwise.
She would wake each morning blessedly refreshed, content within the confines of her nest with her co-captains (flock, the bird corrected), and Jay would beam. Her wings would drape across their still sleeping, rising and falling forms, the brush of feather against skin sending a tickle up the length of her wing.
Early one of those sleepy mornings, when a hazy grey darkness still enveloped the cabin, Jay, awake, carded her fingers through those feathers, wanting just to feel them, amazed still. Chip was still sprawled out at her side, a tangle of limbs, drool pooling into the sheets. Gillion was, almost unsurprisingly, nowhere to be found, having unsuccessfully chased sleep.
She felt a feather loosen in her hands, plucked from its follicle, and now familiar with this small molt, tucked it in between the layers of the nest. It felt right, the small addition, joining the ranks of down and fuzzy blue barbs.
There was a faint itch along the patch of skin that the plucked feather had come from, and so Jay sat up, now aware of it and determined to address it. It flared faintly along her right wing, something small and persistent, nothing like the previous itch of growing limbs but still enough to be somewhat of an annoyance. She scratched it, lightly, almost absentmindedly.
Feathers came away in clumps, a spike of panic driving its way through her chest.
She dropped them into a little pile, to add to the nest later. Surprised, she studied them closely, both curious as to why they had broken so easily and in a now diluted kind of awe at their bright color and their realness. Jay found the glittering of salt and the fuzz of collected dust, embedded into the barbs of the feather.
Jay looked at the patch of wing that had once been home to the clump of feathers in her hand. She found the same, right along where she felt the itch, feathers out of place and disheveled. That would explain the sensation, the irritation.
The pirate in her accepted this as a consequence of being on the sea, of a life of activity. The, now very loud and incessant, bird in her keened in response, absolutely dismayed at the state of her wings. Her fingers longed to correct them, smooth them back into their pristine condition, as rightfully intended.
She started to pick at them, drawing out the grainy detritus with dull nails, smoothing and straightening as she worked. Jay moved her way down the length of wing, as methodical and precise as she could be, reshaping and plucking at her feathers. It sent a deliciously ticklish sensation rolling through her, seeming to melt her brain into a slurry of delight. Chirps spilled their way out of her mouth.
Chip stirred, the sudden high cheeping pulling him into a bleary awareness. "What're we doin?" He slurred, face still half squished into the cot.
Jay in her preening had almost completely forgotten Chip's presence in her nest, letting out a squawk of surprise. "Chip- morning." She said, once she found her words again.
"Mornin." He squinted at her, gestured vaguely. "Doing wing shit?"
"Uh-" She withdrew her hands from where they were sunken into her wing, laying them palm up in her lap, almost twitching. "Kind of, actually, yeah. Noticed they were all messy, so, wing shit."
He sat up, glanced at the pile of feathers beside her, and gave her a confused, somewhat concerned look. "You're not. Like. That doesn't hurt, does it?"
Jay shook her head. "Nope. It actually feels weirdly nice? A bit like scratching your hair."
"Oh, cool." Chip studied her wings, extended a hand, retracted it. "Do- can I touch them?"
She mulled it over, just barely. There was a joyous humming in her brain, the bird cheering at the idea. "Yeah," she said, with just barely contained excitement bleeding through; swallowed down a peep, failed.
Chip prodded at a feather, using a kind of unexpected gentleness. "Is that okay?" He asked, smoothing it out and all the while petting it softly. The touch sent goosebumps running down her skin.
Jay chirped, relishing in the contact. Chip laughed. "Guess it is then."
He worked on the part of wing just out of her reach, those closest to her back, rearranging and handling with a soft carefulness. She melted into the touch, after a moment ceasing her own lazy attempt at preening in exchange for sitting passively and allowing Chip to take over completely.
"You're good at that." She said eventually, reigning her brain into some form of coherence.
Chip dropped a rumpled feather onto her slowly growing pile. "Thanks. You were right about it kind of being like hair."
She mindlessly took hold of the feather and added it to the nest, wedging it in between layers of plush fabric. "You're good at doing hair then?"
There was a short pause for a shrug. "I guess? Used to do Lizzie's hair sometimes back when we were little. Braid it and shit."
"Hm, gonna have to ask her then."
"Oh yeah?"
Jay mimed a call, brushing a feather against the side of her face in place of a callnch. "'Hey Lizzie, is Chip any good at doing hair?'"
"I was like nine. She'll probably say I sucked ass at it." He hummed, massaged a particularly stubborn feather that was bent sideways. "You think Gill would let me do his hair?" Chip asked a bit later, as Jay started nodding off, head resting in her hands, elbows balanced on knees.
She blinked, waded through the syrupy mush of her mind and tried to remember what Chip had just asked. "Yeah." She said. "Probably. He'd like it. Would you do my hair?" Jay asked.
She knew he was grinning a stupid smile, all glistening teeth; Jay could hear it in his voice as he said, "Nah, you stink." Ignoring the fact that he was currently preening her wings.
The wing Chip was working on flapped out, suddenly, lashing out from where it rested against her back. She felt it whack against something, something heavy that let out a shriek as it was sent flying.
Chip was crumpled on the ground in a heap, groaning. "Asshole." He grumbled.
She stared at him dumbly. "I didn't mean to do that."
"Sure."
"No I'm serious."
They held eye contact, a little too long, and both broke into laughter. Jay's was different, breathy and interspersed with cheeps.
Gillion chose that moment to re-enter the room, and despite not knowing why they were laughing- though seeing Chip on the floor offered a very likely answer- joined in. Jay only laughed harder.
Once they settled, wiping the tears from their eyes, Gillion sat on the edge of the bed, helping to haul Chip back up to his feet. Crawled back into the nest after Jay shot them both a pout. There, Chip showed him how he had been working Jay's wings, and Gillion, delighted, let his thick calloused hands be guided and learned too, though with a clumsiness that lent itself to hesitance and carefulness. While Gillion preened, Chip braided his hair into messy plaits, which he did in fact like.
Jay only smiled.
Here she was, with her flock. She didn't think she had ever been happier.
Jay dug her fingers into the weave of the ropes that swayed before her, twirling up and into the crows nest. Her wings were pinched tight against her back, glossy blue, black, and white feathers getting tousled in the wind.
In the weeks that had followed they had grown in full, leaving her with long and bright feathers. She thought that they just might be the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, strong lean muscle and dazzling colors. They were, interestingly, blue jay like, stripes of black along the interior side of her wings and down the primaries, ends tipped in a snowy white.
It was her namesake, stretched behind her and melded into her body.
Gillion had called it Destiny and she thinks he may be right.
A few white clouds were suspended idly over the horizon, pale puffs against an otherwise clear sky. Jay still thought it was a perfect day, the sea calm and the breeze warm. Ideal conditions for what she hoped now to do.
Jay hauled herself into the crow's nest, navigating her wings through the thin hatch, lest they snag uncomfortably against the carefully hewn sides. She stood up, catching and steadying her breath. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, blood rushing loudly in her ears, as she looked down at the deck of the Albatross, dozens and dozens of feet away from where she perched. She could feel feathers raise involuntarily, fluffing out, like the startled hairs of arms.
She could see the dots of her flock pacing around beneath her on the deck, small pinpricks of barely discernible people. A voice carried from beneath her, a shout, sounding a lot like Gillion, but what was said was lost in the wind. There was another voice, sounding this time like Ollie, then Chip, then the low growl of Gryphon and the sing song cry of Queen. Jay did not hear her uncle or Old Man Earl, but both had given their encouragement (Drey did at least, Earl had simply huffed noncommittally) before she began her climb.
She wrapped her hands around the rough rope that led up to the waving Jolly Roger, holding it tight in a white knuckled grip. Jay leaned forward experimentally, just barely reaching beyond the railing. The excitement alone made her mood soar, though glee did not bury the sickening anxiety that curled in her stomach and abused her heart.
Jay spread her wings, giving them a quick flap, once, twice, making sure she knew how to work the muscles properly. Surely she could figure this out, surely it will come to her, instincts, something intrinsic and right. She wouldn't be just wildly splaying out her arms in a desperate childish attempt, now she had the means to really, truly, fly.
Flying.
Jay was about to fly.
She set her heel on the rail of the crow's nest, pulling herself up and over the side so that she stood on the narrow band precariously. One wrong step now would could send her careening into the sea. She held tight, hands never dropping from the rope, the coarse fibers scraping harshly against her palm. It was grounding, in a way, stopping her from getting caught in her head, from doubting.
Her feet shuffled against the rail, hesitant. Her wings stretched and pushed out, fluttering, angled and ready for the quick drop and dive. The birdish part of her brain hummed excitedly, ready.
As for Jay herself, she closed her eyes, and took a deep, slow breath.
And she lets go.
Wind rushes around her, sudden and roaring and whistling in her ears. She feels it stream past her, loose hanging hair whipping in her face and feathers ruffling behind her. Her wings open wide, giving a tremendous flap and beating the air around it. With one great push she soars upwards, carried up and into the sky. She gives a cry of delight, climbing higher and higher, away from the sea. Jay flies so high that she can see nothing but the blue of the heavens around her.
This, she thinks, must be what being a bird feels like.