Chapter 355: Room to Fly [Bonus]

Chapter 355: Room to Fly

The crossbeam in Flicker’s stall was her favorite perch. On Tuesday morning, she landed on it, wobbled, and very nearly went straight over the far side.

She caught herself with a furious flap, sat there with her new wings half-spread for balance, and looked down at Jin with deep suspicion, as if the beam had shrunk overnight.

“It’s not the beam,” Jin told her. “It’s you.”

Flicker did not appear to accept this.

He lashed a thicker, rope-wrapped dowel alongside the old beam. She inspected it, sidestepped along it twice, and settled with a satisfied rustle, gripping now instead of balancing.

Then there was breakfast. She ate her usual measure in about thirty seconds and then stood beside the empty dish, staring at him.

“You’re joking,” Jin said, looking into the dish.

He added another measure. She ate most of that too, more slowly, and left a little at the bottom. He recorded what she’d eaten so Verrick could adjust her portions, then made another note underneath to budget for them.

A bigger bird eats more, he thought. Should’ve seen that coming.

The flight yard was empty at seven, and they had it to themselves for an hour.

Yesterday had been about finding out what Flicker could do. Today, Jin wanted her to return reliably. Gale Dash gave her a hard burst of speed, but she still needed space to brake and turn. Watching her avatar maneuver for hours had made him forget how much of this was new to the bird on his wrist.

He set her on the near perch, checked that the far one was secure, then returned to her end of the yard and held up his hand.

“Dash, then come back. When I call.”

She dashed. She hit the burst about halfway down the yard, eased off a good two meters before the far perch this time, and swept up onto it with room to spare. Then she sat there looking smug.

“Back,” Jin called.

She didn’t come back. She was busy preening.

He called again, louder. She looked up, considered him, and then dashed back down the yard toward him. The burst came too late, and she nearly overshot his arm and had to scramble.

“That’s not coming back,” he said. “That’s showing off.”

He left pauses between the flights and had her return without dashing. By the eighth repetition, she was coming back when he called at a sensible speed, though she still took a moment to finish preening first.

Ember Shot took more patience.

He raised a closed fist before walking out beside the target post. “Wait. Not while I’m out here.”

Flicker’s sun mark brightened. Jin stopped, kept the fist raised, and waited until she shut her beak. Only then did he adjust the target and walk back behind her. He lowered his fist and pointed at the post.

The shot went wide and scorched the sand. The next clipped the post. By the fourth, the fire ring on her forehead had dimmed and her breathing was quicker.

“Enough,” he said. “That’s your lot.”

She clearly disagreed, but she came to his arm when he held it out. He counted it as a win.

On the walk back, he cut across the low wall between the flight yard and the stables instead of going round by the path.

The wall was about the width of his boot, and he’d always walked it with his arms out a little, like a kid on a curb. This time, he was halfway along before he realized his arms were at his sides. He shifted his weight on purpose and felt his body correct without being asked, quick and small.

Huh.

He walked the rest of the wall with his hands in his pockets, just because he could, then jumped down on the far side and landed so softly that Flicker barely shifted on his arm.

On Wednesday evening, he took both of them to Coldwell.

Glitch couldn’t fit on the stairs, so the landlord had let them use the paved yard behind the building, where the bins lived and a single bent tree grew. Arthur had carried down two chairs. Elena had brought tea and an entire tray of sliced fruit, about half of which was clearly not intended for humans.

Glitch lay along the back wall of the yard, taking up most of it, and accepted pieces of melon from Elena one at a time with tremendous gentleness.

Flicker sat on Jin’s shoulder. Elena kept stopping halfway through sentences to look at her.

“She’s so big,” Elena said for the third time. “I remember her in that box. Under the lamp. You wouldn’t let any of us turn the lamp off.”

Elena held out a slice of apple, slowly, and Flicker leaned down from Jin’s shoulder and took it from her fingers. His mother laughed, a little unsteadily. “She couldn’t even hold her head up. And now look at that mark. Does it hurt her?”

“No,” Jin said. “It doesn’t hurt her. Verrick checked it too.”

“It’s beautiful,” Elena said. Flicker reached toward the tray again, and Elena looked at Jin. “Is she eating enough?”

“Nearly twice what she was,” Jin told her. “Verrick’s checking the portions.”

“Good.” She nodded firmly.

Arthur waited until Elena had gone up for more hot water.

“Your message said it went well,” he said. “The boars.”

“It did,” Jin said.

Arthur settled back in his chair. “Tell me properly.”

So Jin told him: Lia’s warning about the big one in the ditch, the third boar coming a way she’d never seen, Glitch meeting the leader at the culvert, the patch of mud at the end of the plank, and the flare from the barn.

Arthur listened without interrupting, elbows on his knees.

“The follower at the bridge,” Arthur said, when Jin finished. “What was your way down from the roof?”

“Over the back,” Jin said. “I’d checked it before dark. The wall kept me out of its path.”

“And the landing?” Arthur asked.

Jin glanced at his boot. His ankle was comfortable now, but he remembered the jolt when he’d dropped. “I came down harder than I meant to. The medic wrapped it when we got back.”

Arthur looked at him over the rim of his cup. “You left that out of the message.”

“It was a sore ankle, Dad.”

“I’m glad that was all.” Arthur set the cup down. “You picked your way out. Good. Next time, try the descent before the fight, while you’ve got time to find a better foothold.”

Jin rubbed the back of his neck. He’d checked where the wall would shelter him and trusted himself to get there. A crate beneath the rear edge would have saved him that last drop.

“Yeah,” Jin said. “I could’ve made that easier.”

“You did well,” Arthur told him. “I don’t want you hobbling home from the next one because you were watching your beast instead of your feet.”

Arthur held his eye a moment longer, then looked away.

“Three of them. First time out.” He shook his head slightly, and something in his face softened. “I took six weeks to get my first paid job, and it was one rat-dog in a drainage pipe.”

Elsa had been waiting with visible impatience for her turn.

She came down the back stairs with Breeze trotting at her heels. He’d grown too. His legs were still slightly too long for the rest of him, and his pale crest stood up in a stiff little ridge. He spotted Flicker on Jin’s shoulder and stopped dead. Then he sat down very upright, with his tail sweeping slowly across the paving.

“Okay,” Elsa said. “I want to see something.”

She held a gray pigeon feather on her palm and frowned at it. The feather lifted and began to float upward in a slow, wobbling spiral, kept aloft by a current so soft Jin could barely feel it.

“Ten seconds,” she said, through her teeth. “In open air. Aldous says that’s harder than the circle.” Her eyes flicked to Flicker. “So. Who can catch it?”

Breeze understood the game before anyone else did. He sprang up off the paving, missed the feather by a hand’s width, landed, spun round, and tried again.

Flicker watched from Jin’s shoulder with sharp interest.

“Go on, then,” Jin said. “Gently.”

She dropped off his shoulder and flew a lazy half-circle around the yard. She didn’t dash. She came in on a slow, careful line and plucked the feather out of the air with her beak, a meter over Breeze’s head, just as he jumped for it again.

Breeze landed and stared up at her with an expression of pure outrage.

Elsa burst out laughing, and the current collapsed.

“That’s cheating,” she said. “She can fly.”

“You said who can catch it,” Jin pointed out.

“Breeze is going to be faster than her one day,” Elsa said. “You wait. When he’s big. He’s going to be so fast.”

“Probably,” Jin said, and looked at Flicker settling back onto his shoulder with the feather in her beak, smug as anything. “But she’s had a head start.”

Breeze stretched up Jin’s leg and sniffed very hard at Flicker’s tail. She leaned over and dropped the pigeon feather on his head.

Breeze sneezed, and Elsa laughed until she had to sit on the steps.

His phone buzzed as they were packing up.

[Meridian Cultivation Office — Foundation Review]

[Thursday, 14:00. Specialist O. Brand. Please bring your bonded beast.]

He read it once, put the phone away, and helped Arthur carry the chairs back up the stairs.

At the top, Arthur stopped to catch his breath, his brace creaking, and looked back down at Glitch, who was still licking melon juice off his own nose.

“Tomorrow?” Arthur asked.

“The review,” Jin said. “About the stripes.”

Arthur nodded. “Good. Get it done.”

He didn’t say anything else, but he put his hand on Jin’s shoulder for a moment before he went inside.