ArchivedLogs:Spread Your Wings

Spread Your Wings
...and don't die
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Isra	2013-07-02 A lesson in flying and falling. (Set just after Isra's news.)
Location <XS> Roof
The view from up here is phenomenal, a panorama of the expansive Xavier's grounds, forest and lake and rocky cliffs alike. Even without the view outwards, the rooftop itself holds its own delights, in the form of the tiny jewel of a flower garden tucked away up here, tended by one of the school's teachers. From the edge of the roof, with a veeery careful jump, it looks like it just might be possible to reach the treehouse in the old oak tree. Clouds still loom in the sky, but the sun peers through now and again on the warm and humid afternoon. Perched on the rooftop, wings mantled slightly to provide shade from the admittedly indifferent sunlight, Isra has not moved in several minutes. A casual observer might have mistaken her for the statue of a gargoyle, but then that observer might have to ask hirself why anyone would dress a gargoyle statue in a red-and-gold lehenga choli. Or why a gargoyle statue would have a smartphone in one hand and a stylus in the other. There is a rustling of wings, beating the air heavily from down below. Down below but climbing steadily upwards and at Dusk's size it is difficult to /miss/ the spread of his enormous dark wings as he rises to land -- kind of gargoyle-pose himself in his crouch at the edge of the rooftop. A more casual gargoyle, in denim shorts and a blue-and-white striped ringer tee. His wings fold in against his shoulders when he lands, hands braced on the roof between his feet. He looks a little flushed, a little damp in the heat. His dark eyes fix on Isra, for a moment just looking her over. His wing stretches out, wide, to brush against one of her wingtips with his own before folding back in. "Magnificent!" Isra breathes as she watches Dusk alight on the rooftop with the same unguarded wonder as she showed when she first met him. "Good afternoon, Dusk. Thank you for coming all the way out here--I could have gone into the city to meet you. I am going to have to make that trip anyway, as it turns out." Some of the joy abruptly fades from her eyes when she says this. "Though I suppose that is a task better reserved for another day." She snaps the stylus onto the case of her phone and stows it in the satchel now hanging from the side of the rack that holds the flower garden above roof level. "I have been exercising at every opportunity, but..." Glancing past Dusk at the direction of his ascent, she looks slightly doubtful. "Hey," Dusk greets with a small quick flash of fangs in a smile. "S'cool, it's nice to stretch. Thing was bound up so long I feel like I can't get out /enough/. And the city's nooot a great place to fly at the /best/ of times." His head tilts, at the change in Isra's expression. "What's up in the city? I drove, if you need a ride later --?" Isra mirrors the fangy smile. "I can relate; I bound these for so long..." She flexes her wings by way of illustration. "Oh! I suppose...I guess it would make a lot more sense to drive, all things considered." Eyes darting toward her satchel, Isra shakes her head. "I have some business at the university. I appreciate your offer, but I...should probably give it a couple of days. It will make little enough difference in the balance--you know bureaucracy." She manages to smile again, a faint echo. "I heard all kinds of griping from my --" There's a slight hesitation before the next word, "-- roommate," comes out stiff and kind of almost /choking/ on the word; the rustle of Dusk's wings is distinctly uncomfortable, fidgety. "-- about the nightmare of bureaucracy up at Columbia. I never really had to deal with any of that academia red tape myself." His smile this time is a little wry. His wings tighten against his shoulders. "If you do. Need a ride. Just let me know, I -- I mean," he continues with a faint blush, "taking the trains lately has been basically an exercise in misery so." He glances towards Isra's wings instead. His own stretch. "How've they been feeling? Have you gotten much chance to work them out?" Isra's ears press back a little, and she stretches out one wing impulsively--and clumsily!--to touch Dusk's, the way he had done before. "I catch a ride with a coworker when I can, but lately they have been /strongly discouraging/ me from entering the City at all." She punctuates this with a shrug that is little shoulder and mostly wing. "So, I may take you up on that after all. As for these..." Her wings stir the air around them, a little less uncertain than before but certainly by no means impressive. "I have been working them out as best I can, but it is hard to discern how they are supposed to move. I suppose I did not come hard-wired with any instincts on their use." She looks down briefly, but, catching herself, stops. "I will learn." Dusk's wing stretches to meet Isra's, brushing up against it but then stretching a little further, slipping underneath hers to press slightly upwards as if holding hers up. It withdraws after a moment, mantling back into his crouched gargoyle pose. "I don't blame them. The city hasn't been --" His wings rustle. His fingers clench, fists tight as his knuckles press to the roof. It takes a moment, but his lips eventually curl up into a smile. "Oh /man/ you have no idea how much I got banged up and cut up and broke freaking bones when I was learning -- there's not really any /guides/ for this shit. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Using Your Giantass Bat Wings." His stretch out, spreading to their full wide width and for a moment with the large flex the stress in his expression dissolves into brief quiet bliss. The wings snap back in. "You'll learn," he agrees. "And until then, I'll be here to catch you." "Perhaps," Isra muses, "I will write a book like that someday. I might have a lot of time on my hands soon! Not sure about that title, though. It probably infringes something or another." She waves a hand vaguely to the side, as if dismissing the entire concept of intellectual property laws. Then she looks off at the school's well-manicured lawns again. "Do you just...jump, and try not to crash?" She does not sound particularly horrified by the idea. "I have found they will joint-lock to an extent..." This she demonstrates by stretching her wings out to the full length, skin taut like sails between the phalanges. "...but I have not really tested how well--er, not against /gravity/, anyhow." "Maybe." Dusk's head tips down, sharp-fanged smile remaining. "You can take good notes while you learn. Pass it on to all the other struggling gargoyles out there. It's not an easy field to break in to. Why more time on your hands?" His fingers curl around the toes of his Vans sneakers, and despite the downward tilt of his head his eyes lift, watching Isra still from behind a thick fringe of dark lashes. "Preeetty much, yeah. I spent a while on the ground trying to take /off/ but that took hella more effort and coordination than I knew how to manage so. I just. Got up on high places, jumped /down/." His grin spreads wider. "Looot of hurting myself. But even before you've managed /keeping/ yourself up --" He rises slowly out of his crouch, wings spreading again; at full extension when he stands one hovers in dark canopy over Isra, throwing the woman into shadow. "Even if all you manage is keeping them locked out, they'll do a lot to /slow/ your fall. More, uh, hanggliding than flying. But they'll get stronger doing it." He stretches up onto his toes, looks down over the roof's edge. "-- I started only a story or two up," he says with some amusement, "-- is Eloise around school for the summer?" Even if he jokes about needing a healer on hand, he doesn't seem /overly/ concerned. "I had figured that gliding would probably be more tenable," Isra says, withdrawing her wings and meticulously pinning the hem of her skirt up and out of her way. She wears black cycling shorts or something similar underneath. "At first I thought I was being unduly influenced by that show, but no: my life /is/ a cartoon. I just hope I don't start turning into stone by day. That would be hell on the class schedule." She turns to the roof's edge and tests her footing--secure enough, as her talons seem better suited to perching than standing on level ground. "I was ejected from my graduate program," she explains, abruptly, as if she only just remembered herself why she might have free time, or only just decided she should mention it. Her expression is stoic, almost stony in its determination. "Fighting that sort of thing...involves a lot of waiting." "It feels pointless," she adds, "since the odds are quite against my winning, but..." Isra crouches down closer to the rooftop. Her wings stretch out again, half way, and her tail lashes the air behind her. She turns to look up at Dusk, a winged shadow against the brooding sky. "Then again, here I am getting ready to /jump off/ of a four-story building. Any final words of advice?" Dusk's smile morphs into more of a grimace, teeth clenched and lips peeled back but not quite /up/. A sharp hiss pushes out through his teeth. "Well, fuck." His head shakes. "Columbia, right?" Even the grimace fades, teeth clenched and his eyes focused outward. He turns his head sideways, watching the flick of Isra's tail. "The odds are against us pretty much across the board." His wings stretch, one slipping beneath Isra's to hold it up, flex in strong support to guide hers into proper position. "But what else can we do besides keep fighting? Sure beats the alternative." This time when his teeth bare it is a grin, sharp and fierce. "Keep your wings spread, and don't die," is the advice he gives her. He doesn't jump off the roof so much as topple off it, keeping his wings stretched wide to catch the air as he simply falls forward, letting their wide expanse catch the air and buoy him. A bend of one wing angles him back slightly so that he can keep an eye on Isra. "Wings spread," Isra echoes, "don't die." She leaps from the roof, looking for the barest fraction of a second as though she actually knows what she is doing. This illusion fades when her forward momentum flags and her wings begin bearing her weight. The left wing immediately starts trying to fold in, causing her to bank sharply. When Isra adamantly thrusts it back out, she viers in the other direction like a drunken cyclist. Whether instinctively or intentionally, her tail whips out to the right. Instead of restoring her balance, this causes her to /slide/ much further to the left than her initial drift, then suddenly stall. Dusk does not go far, watching Isra's chaotic aerial maneuvers with steady observation but no alarm. He is much smoother in the air, flexible bat-wings allowing even sharper turns than feathered ones. When Isra veers, he glides along nearby; when she stalls, he slips along underneath. "Feel the wind," he says, a beat of his wings bringing him just a little higher; one wingtip stretches, pushing against the underneath of Isra's to angle it /just/ so much differently. "Don't fight it right now. Just pay attention to where it's trying to take you and coast with it." The correction helps Isra restore some lift. She nods, which proves a mistake, as the motion throws off her precarious flight path and stalls her again--still to the left. This time, however, she is so close to Dusk that her sudden loss of altitude threatens a mid-air collision. This time her reaction /is/ pure reflex; unfortunately, it is the reflex of a land-dwelling creature, which involves pulling limbs in close when bracing for impact. The drag on her wings actually prevents her from folding them in altogether, but now her stronger right wing succeeds in withdrawing further than its twin. Isra wobbles violently, then careens off wildly to the right--towards the old oak tree. Dusk backwings quickly when Isra starts to drop towards him, narrowly avoiding a rather unpleasant collision between talons and face before her limbs pull back in. He pulls /his/ wings in, too, when she starts to careen -- not fully but just enough to speed his quick dive after her. He swoops in from around, between her and the oak tree, and this time his path towards her is intentional. His arms are wiry but /strong/, reaching to curl around her -- a rather close hold as his wings beat to pull them both higher, above the branches of the tree. Isra has enough of her wits about her to /not/ avoid Dusk this time, though she still grits her teeth and sucks in a sharp breath when he takes hold of her. Her wings have no idea what to do with this /going up/ thing, and sort of just flail. She pulls them closer to her body so that they will not smack into Dusk's wings even as she clings to him. There are a rather large number of limbs gathered in a very small space. Dusk's wings pump twice more, each powerful beat pushing them up higher. "Spread your wings," he says, close to her ear before his grip starts to loosen. Another few beats bring them higher still and then /he/ angles Isra against the wind. He folds his wings halfway, to give Isra's room. They start to drop -- far more than four stories high now, with only Dusk's half-mantled wings to slow the fall. Isra almost nods again, but catches herself and instead just does as she is bade. Her wings stretch wide and instantly catch the wind like sails. The sudden lift pulls a surprised gasp from her, and she becomes very still, concentrating on keeping her wings even. "How...how high /can/ you fly?" she asks, sounding significantly less terrified than she looks. Dusk waits until Isra has largely caught herself before letting go. He falls a little bit farther before spreading his own wings; at his angle this sends him into a precarious half-spin before he balances it out. "-- High," he answers, "but it gets cold as hell. You need to go thousands of feet before the oxygen -- uh, lack of -- will kill you though. You can still breathe for a /few/ minutes even above around twenty thousand feet, but it's safest to stay under twelve --" For a moment, his smile fades into a distant look, a darker look, "-- but yeah. Cold. But if you need to you can get some serious -- it's not," his voice is a little distant, too, and for a moment his wings shiver, dropping him a few feet before he spreads them. "-- not the safest. I don't. Tend to do that. Anymore." Isra just watches Dusk for a moment, green eyes unblinking. "You carry so much pain with you." She raises her voice so that the wind does not sweep away her words. "I have been too fortunate in my life to understand that." A minute shift in the wind causes her to rock like a boat crossing another's wake, but she regains her balance quickly. "I truly have little experience for anything outside of research, but if it is ever in my power to help you, I will." The small pumps of Dusk's wings keep him more or less in place. His dark eyes meet Isra's green ones, and the small curve of his smile shows only a glint of fangs. "I don't carry it. I use it. It's like a whetstone. Kind of need it to stay sharp." For a moment his eyes close, and he draws in a deep breath. "It's shitty to say, but I think you're going to be learning. The world isn't getting /kinder/." "No, it is not," Isra agrees, frowning slightly and looking down the curve of her wing toward the bright patch of the lake. "I am sure to learn that in ways more personal and unpleasant than vandalism or letters from the Dean." She turns back to Dusk a bit too quickly and almost stalls again, but corrects by snapping her tail in the other direction to reorient her body. "But I have also learned that our greatest strengths are one another. That is why I want to fight this--the university, I mean. Though," she adds without vehemence, as if stating a mere scientific fact, "I think I will fight just about anyone to give my students the opportunities they deserve." "Sebastian wants to go to MIT," Dusk says this with a wry twist of his lips. "I did too, once." His wings are already curving in towards Isra when she stalls but they straighten out when she reorients herself. "I think there's a lot of ways the world might try and teach you," though he doesn't say this regretful so much as /fierce/ all the vehemence in his tone that Isra's is lacking, "but I think when it does you'll have people there to fight it /back/." "Sebastian /should/ have his pick of schools," Isra says, "In any sane world, he would. Perhaps I am naive for thinking that can change anytime soon, but I /am/ a scientist, and that hypothesis has not been disproven." She shrugs, and winces. "Maybe I am beginning to push the bounds of my muscular endurance." This she admits ruefully. "And while I seem to have a talent for losing altitude, /falling/ does not seem like an ideal way to land." "Not ideal, no. You kind of glide instead. I mean, you can fall and backwing before you hit but that's -- more tiring, not really great if you're /already/ overtaxing your wings." Dusk glances over his shoulder, back towards the school building below them. "I don't think it's naive. Change is going to happen. But we're going to /make/ it fucking happen. Because left alone they're -- just going to kill us." He angles a little bit closer to Isra, holding out a hand but then dropping it to his side. "Do you want to try landing this time or do you want help down?" "Then we will make it happen." Isra's statement does not sound like a reassurance, an aspiration, or even a promise. "That is my new hypothesis." Stretching out one hand and /sighting/ along it, Isra shakes her head very gingerly. She only viers off course a little, probably from the aerodynamic disruption caused by her arm. "From this altitude, I have zero confidence in my ability to /wing/ my way out of freefall. But I do want to at least try blundering my way through gliding down. You just gradually increase drag, right? Like an airplane..." Isra's idea of 'gradually increasing drag' is changing her angle of attack--not so far as to stall. This would probably work just fine for a stronger flyer. For her, it rapidly escalates from a shaky deceleration to a catastrophic spin-out as her tail and legs get wrenched aside by her own chaotic slipstream. Instead of just falling, she is /tumbling/ toward the ground. "Well -- yes, but you also have to really work with the current of --" Dusk starts to explain, quickly segueing into a "No wait try --" Except explanation cuts off sharply into action instead when Isra starts to tumble. "Oh, /fuck/ --" is probably not the most reassuring exclamation. Dusk starts to pull down sharply, diving to come up below Isra -- though with her chaotic spin of taloned legs and wings and tail this is not the /safest/ place for him to be. This time, the collision is not exactly planned; he hisses sharp as talons scrape a gouge against his arm, but he resists the urge to dart /away/. His huge wings stretch behind him out of the way as he /lets/ Isra's hurtling body crash into his with a heavy /oof/ of breath. He is reaching for -- whatever he /can/, really, bloody arm curling to try and circle -- shoulders, both /legs/, he isn't all that /picky/ at the moment; his head turns to try and keep /it/ out of the path of flailing but the rest of him will likely not come out of this un/bruised/. Isra does not seem altogether in control of her body even after Dusk arrests her spinning. One of her arms does wind its way around his waist, talons digging into the point of his hip. Somewhere in this bloody mid-air rescue operation, her wings manage to snap open again--but they do this one at a time, which threatens to throw /both/ of them into a spin. Dusk hisses again, lean muscles tensing harder at that dig of talon. "Stop," he says, even as he curls his arm tightly around her, beneath her shoulders and around her back, "fold your wings. Tight. I can hold us both." His own are churning at the air, but only erratically; trying to stay out of the way of /hers/, primarily. "Ksssh --" His wings fold in close at that first unbalancing when her wing opens, and when he extends them again it is with teeth gritted as he spreads them. Angled first to /slow/ the torquing before beating to pull up higher from it. This is apparently easier said than done, if Isra's faint whimper-growl is any indication. With great effort, she pulls her wings in--the right one still quicker and more wieldy than the left. Then, perhaps unwisely, she looks down. She does not scream or flail or cry, but only clings to Dusk as though her life depends on him. At the moment, it does. Probably unwisely; the ground is approaching a lot faster than is really healthy. Dusk's teeth stay clenched, and he only looks /up/, his second arm joining the first to wrap tight around Isra once her wings are pulled in. His breathing comes kind of /strained/, whistling heavily through his teeth. For a moment his wings flutter somewhat frantically but then he closes his eyes, beating his wings harder and stronger but slower, to put a little more /evenness/ to their fall, a little more space between them and the ground. There's still a period of distinct /wobble/ before finally evening out and starting to /rise/ instead of hurtle. "There -- ok. OK. We're," he finally opens his eyes although he doesn't look anywhere much, just resting his forehead against Isra's collarbone instead. His wings still beat steadily, pulling them into a hover about a story off the ground. "Good. We're good." His /voice/ is still kind of strained, likely due to the fact he is still losing no small amount of blood from his arm and a little from his hip as well, staining Isra's choli. Isra opens her mouth, closes it again, and chews on her lower lip a bit more casually than someone with long sharp fangs probably should. "How...are you very badly hurt?" she says at last. The fingers of her free hand--or at least the hand that she can move without throwing them off balance again--touch the side of his face. "We should get you to a physician." The last word quiver a little, the first cracks in her strange, detached calm. "It'll heal," Dusk says, admittedly through hard clenched teeth. His wings continue to pump at the air, his head turning towards the fingers that she touches to him. "I heal pretty well, so long as I --" His cheeks have paled, kind of unhealthily, probably with the loss of blood, but a bit of colour flushes back into them. He presses his cheek against her fingers. His wings are beating slower; they are sinking, a few inches lower to the ground with each pump. "I told you I'd catch you. Are you alright?" "I am unharmed," Isra replies, no longer wavering still not entirely composed. "You are not as pointy around the edges as I." A beat. Two. "Not /most/ edges, anyway." She falls silent for a moment, staring past Dusk at the school grounds from this most unusual perspective. Her hand caresses his cheek, not as casually as she might if her fingers were not tipped with thick, sharp nails. "Do you drink human blood?" she asks, drawing back a little to study his pallid face with equal parts concern and curiosity. Dusk turns his face further at this caress, nuzzling gently against Isra's palm. His lips brush against it, his eyes briefly closing. Their descent continues, inch by inch. "Yes," he answers, quietly. "I need to, to live." "I see," Isra says quietly--thoughtfully. "How strictly do you define...'human', then? It does seem to be a contended word." She pauses, tilts her head a little quizzically. "Or, more relevantly, would you like to drink /my/ blood?" "-- I drink," Dusk offers after a moment of thoughtful clarification, "the blood of those who let me drink it. Their self-identification is up to them. But." His teeth flash briefly in his too-pale face. "-- The blood of people who carry the X-Gene tastes a lot /better/." Another beat and then another and then the ground is just below their feet, hovering a half-foot over the grass. "-- The thought doesn't bother you?" Isra seems to consider this seriously for a moment, smooth eyebrow ridges uplifted. "I suppose," she replies at last, "I would be interested to know /why/ the X-Gene affects the taste of blood. I do not think that counts as 'bothering' me. Unless...you mean your hematophagy /in general/." She drops one eyebrow now and almost smiles. "That would be a more /definite/ 'no'. If you ask for consent, then how is it different from receiving a blood donation?" They finally come to rest again on the ground with a soft /whumph/, and when Dusk's feet are on firm ground again he is far less /steady/ on them than he had been in the air. His arms around Isra seem now more for /his/ support than hers, lean frame leaning up against her taller one as his wings do not so much fold as /droop/ down along his back. "It's kind of like a blood donation," he agrees with a weak smile, dropping his forehead to rest against her. "I ask for consent. And medical history. Unlike the vampires on TV, /I/ still get sick from -- any number of things that might be in people's blood." Isra settles down to her most comfortable standing height--around 5'10"--and easily supports Dusk's weight. Her right arm remains around his waist, sans death grip or gouging talons now. "Most humans, X-gene or no, subsist on animal life to some extent, and few have the opportunity /or/ inclination to ask for permission. Feeding on consenting agents who walk away to tell the tale should be a fruitarian's dream come true. Though I do not have any data on that, either way." She chuckles, shaking her head. "My medical history is a fairly substantial book that consists largely of blood work, biopsies, and genetic sequencing. I still donate my blood regularly to science, but so far it has not divulged the secret of /exactly/ how the X-gene turns little brown girls into huge brown gargoyles." Her wings unfold loosely and drape around them. She adds, as an afterthought, "I do not carry any blood-borne diseases, though." Dusk breathes slow and -- slightly /ragged/; one arm stays curled around Isra, the other -- still dripping a dark sticky trail of blood in a streak all down his forearm to roll off the tips of his fingers -- hangs down limp at his side. "-- I do eat other food, too. And most of it doesn't consent. I guess there's a strong case to be made that the way I drink blood is way more moral than the way I eat, even if one upsets a lot of people and the other's considered normal." His weight settles against her more heavily when her wings drape around him, and for a moment he is silent. His lips eventually curl up into a small smile. "That could've gone worse," he says with quiet amusement, "we should try that again soon." "Much is made of normality," Isra says, not unkindly, "when really, it is only that which goes unremarked for whatever reason." She shifts and narrows appraising eyes at Dusk's injured arm. "Even if you /can/ heal like special-effects-assisted Hollywood vampires, would it not be best to get that disinfected and bandaged?" A single guffaw escapes Isra, and she covers her mouth. "Yes, it /could/ have gone worse! Perhaps I should work on that left wing a bit harder before attempting it again. But then..." She sucks in a deep breath and looks up at the leaden sky. "How could anyone settle for /walking/ places after experiencing /that/?" "Yeah, I think it's been a long time since I've seen normal anyway." Dusk glances down towards his arm, a faint shiver running through him as he watches the dripping blood. "Ugh no oh man I fucking /wish/. I totally need to get that thing cleaned up. A bandage at least." It is deep enough really to /warrant/ stitches, but he just grimaces, slowly -- rather /reluctantly/ -- straightening away from Isra. His eyes close, a faint wobble in his posture for a moment, but then his smile returns. "It's one of the best feelings there is," he agrees, tipping his head back to open his eyes and look up at the sky. "Next time, we'll aim for only bruises."