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Getting bitten by a magical creature and turning into said magical creature was not something Marc thought would or could happen to him. He has the suit, which has some degree of magic resistance, and he did not believe such creatures existed, thus his current conundrum.
Well, not even, because it wasn’t a vampire or a werewolf or a zombie or… he doesn’t know, a banshee? None of those bit him. He didn’t turn into anything like that. He wasn’t cursed by a god or a witch or a fairy to be a frog. By all means, this should not have happened.
But it did.
He’s a magic bird thing now. What kind of bird thing can bite without teeth? Who knows. This one, apparently, and now he’s a bird. Khonshu has been utterly unhelpful by not answering his squawks for help, and the others?
“Erm… how??”
Steven.
“Fucking hell, Marc.”
Jake.
“What the—”
Layla.
Marc’s small enough to hop around the table, slowly bobbing his head in a failed attempt to speak because the bird body has no human muscles, which means that while he might be physically capable of imitating speech, he has no idea how to. Can falcons or magic-falcon-bite-victims even talk? That’s what he assumes he is, anyway.
“Marc?”
He nods. Then blinks. Then tilts his head upon realizing that he blinked vertically, and he has an extra eyelid. Weird. He blinks again and chirps. Upside is that Marc’s eyesight is much clearer now, and there are lights and colors he’s never seen before. It’s pretty once he got over the what-the-fuck-ness of it all.
“What’s going on?”
He wishes he knew. He also wonders whether Steven and Jake can hear him, because he’s been ranting for a solid three minutes in their head now, and they haven’t reacted. After another minute, he decides that no, they cannot. Wonderful. Truly spectacular. What the everliving fuck.
He shakes his head then tilts it, gently prompting someone to take over since he can’t exactly voice out a please take the body from me before I combust. Who knows, maybe the bite is only affecting him. There must be some kind of upper being out there that loves screwing him over. It would be great if it does affect only him, that way they can still function as a human while they figure out how to reverse it, but again, screw him over like that why not.
Steven presses forward, curious and hesitant. Before Marc can relinquish control and sink back into the peace of their mind, an audible snap breaks from his back, like his spine is being ironed flat and their body being quartered and torn.
He shudders back to the front, squawking (oh look at that, he made noise) and forced to stay lest their body reject their soul or vice versa. The pulling and stretching and sharp stabbing remain, persistent, insistent, and it wouldn’t stop stop st—
Steven pulls away, and the feeling stops. There’s nothing save for the faint tingle in his wings and the urge to stretch them out.
“¡A la madre!”
“Sorry, sorry!”
“The fuck was that?”
“I don’t know!”
“Marc?” He jumps at Layla’s voice, startled. “Are you okay?”
He blinks at her, looks over himself, and turns in place until he’s facing Layla again. He feels fine, minus the bird bit, and more awake given the massive jolt.
“What happened?”
He tilts his head the other way in a crude approximation of a shrug, then snaps his beak and gestures at Layla’s hand. When none of them understand, he moves his feet in a wiggle. Layla brings her hand down with her index finger curled as an offering, and that’s sweet, but he shakes his head and mimes again.
“I hate charades.”
“Are you conducting?”
No. He’s—
“Oh, a pen?”
He hops in affirmation. Yes. He needs some way to communicate. If he can get a pen and notebook, then he can write out… something.
But obviously, he did not think this through. Layla passes him a pen to use, and he’s stuck there looking like an idiot because he has no motor control over his feet or talons or whatever, nor his beak, nor his wings, but he expected that last one.
Layla laughs lightly and runs the side of her finger from his head to his wings, and it feels great but kind of… humiliating. He leans into it nonetheless, chirping quietly until she gets up again, taking the soft petting with her. “I’ll get you a keyboard if you promise not to peck out the keys.”
Easy deal, and smarter than paper/pencil. As soon as a blank document is opened up on her laptop, he hops over and types out agonizingly slowly.
,magic bird bit me
There’s a comma in the beginning that shouldn’t be there, but Marc doesn’t care enough to delete it. He hits enter and looks up at Layla, who rereads the four simple words several times and still raises a brow at him.
“You got bit by a magic bird.”
He nods.
“And you got turned into a bird.”
He nods again, ignoring Jake’s boisterous laughter and Steven’s resigned “mate.”
“Can’t you… ask Khonshu to change you back?”
Marc rolls his head, an alternative to rolling his eyes when he can’t, and hops back to the laptop.
he;s not answering me
mayb tower
He stops and blinks at the text. He’s never had to spell her name before, but he can already tell it’s wrong. He can’t ask Steven either, and Steven’s too busy arguing with Jake about how “no, we can barely function as just ourselves, how are we supposed to switch with a bird body?”
“Venga, Steven, you cannot tell me flying doesn’t sound fun.”
“Marc can fly with the suit!”
“Si, yes, but you and I can’t!”
Jesus Christ, these two. Okay. He deletes the line and retries when Layla cocks her head, mouthing ‘tower?’
maybe hippo lady can help. can u call her?/
Fuck question marks. It’s difficult to hold down shift and press the key at the same time. Being a bird is hard.
“... You mean Taweret?”
Yes. Towerette. Taor-ret. Tah or eht? He’s losing focus.
“I can try, but her method of presenting herself is very DELIGHTED! Oh, what a beau-tiful day, Layla! —ugh ’m still not used to this— And what have we here?” Layla grips the table and rubs her eyes. “Taweret, wait, give me a second. Oh! Yes. Apologies, my dear.”
Was that confusing? It seemed confusing. At least Jake also finds it confusing, but Steven doesn’t, and Jake isn’t all that bright anyway—no offense, but it’s not like Jake can hear Marc—so he’ll chalk it up to having a literal bird brain and let it confuse him while Steven helpfully explains that “Taweret must be possessing her body. I suppose not all gods would be able to travel to our world like Khonshu’s bog roll arse.”
“Bog roll?”
“Toilet paper.”
“KHONSHU’S TOILET PAPER ASS.”
“I said what I said.”
Fucking hell, these two. Marc ignores them—or tries to when Jake’s breathless hyena laugh echoes in his tiny bird skull—in favor of Layla, watching for the slack in her shoulders as she both adjusts to the possession and considers the wording.
“Marc was bitten by a… by a magic bird, and now he has turned into a bird. Has this ever happened before?” The shift between them is instant but obvious. Marc wonders if this is what he and Steven looked like in Cairo. “Sure, plenty of times!”
“¿Ja?” // “Not concerning at all.” // That’s good. Precedent is good.
“Let’s see… we’ll need Khonshu to turn you back, and it seems he is not here?”
He wouldn’t fucking answer Marc’s summons, if they even work. Can Taweret hear Marc? Can Khonshu?
The goddess moves their hands a lot when she talks, so Layla’s attempt to cross her arms looks conflicted and awkward. She settles with one around her stomach while the other continues to hover in the air. “I haven’t seen him since… I don’t know how long. Since whatever mission we had last. Marc?”
He shakes his head and types out,
same
Jake huffs. “Oh yeah, where is Big Bird anyway?”
“Well that’s a shame,” Taweret hums, although her voice is light and she looks unbothered enough that it can’t be that bad.
“There must be some way to summon him. I highly doubt that he does not know about Marc’s… predicament,” Steven adds. “He’s always close by.”
“Marc, dear, see if you can reach the connection between the two of you. If you cannot, perhaps Steven or Jake can.”
“Well, we can try.”
Marc feels them both going quiet, concentrating on whatever connection they can find while inside their head. He closes his eyes to do the same, focusing more on finding Khonshu than on shouting for him to answer this time. As he does, Layla pets him again, and he chirps in delight. It’s nice.
It’s also distracting, but the nice outweighs that.
It takes a while, but there it is, as if he somehow switched on a compass and it’s pointing south for the winter. He shoots his head up and looks around, nodding outside and flapping his wings. Layla startles back and stops petting him, which is unfortunate. He likes how it feels.
“Did you find him?”
He nods and flies over to the balcony door, only stumbling once in the air when he underestimates the distance between him and the couch. He reaches the door just in time to glare at the nearest reflection as Jake coos, “Attaboy! Aw, who’s a good boy?”
“He’s not a dog.”
Damn right he isn’t.
Layla summons her suit, the gleam of her golden armor as dazzling as ever. Taweret’s giggle ripples from her mouth, but it’s Layla that opens the door and unfolds her wings.
Marc concentrates on the mental compass and takes off, Layla close behind. Jake whoops and Steven sighs, but even he has to admit that the night air is refreshing. The air is cool, the skyline is stunning, and the sky is freeing. The world looks beautiful through the eyes of a falcon. It’s also very loud, but Marc can adjust.
He gets the hang of flying quickly and preens at the little note of praise from Taweret of all people. He still doesn’t know how to spell her name, but he’s making a mental note to learn it. Just for that.
It doesn’t take him long to close in on Khonshu’s location. It’s odd that he can in the first place when the god flitters around like the wind on a good day. He teleports once every conversation—at least once, dramatic shit—so it’s strange that he hasn’t strayed yet from Marc’s senses.
Of course, once he’s close enough, he squawks and screeches and knocks the magic bird that bit him off its perch before realizing that this is what his compass was pointing to and beats his wing against the bird’s head all the harder.
The magic falcon—Khonshu you fucking… toilet paper ass—screeches back at him, throwing a hissy fit as they tumble into the ground.
Marc tries very hard to convey how much he despises Khonshu right now, throwing all the angry sounds he can make at the bird, then shakes his feathers and cocks his head when Khonshu blinks at him. Steven’s doing his best to calm Marc down, and Jake’s actively trying to rile them up. Layla lands and huffs a laugh at the sight, but doesn’t do anything as Taweret switches back in.
“Oh dear, Khonshu. Who did you offend this time?”
This time? How often has this happened? Khonshu snaps his beak and gives what Marc interprets as a scoff. He mirrors it because hey, that’s still my wife you’re snapping at.
“Layla, darling, would you mind keeping an eye on them while I ask around?
Um, sure.” She looks down at them both with a raised eyebrow and successfully crossed arms. “He’s not going to bite me, is he?
Oh, I would hope not.”
Marc makes an oath to not let that happen. Of course, none of them understand him except maybe Khonshu, but he plans to uphold it regardless.
“Well then, I’ll be off. Worry not, you’ll all have your bodies back to normal in no time.”
Please and thank you a ton, Tourette. Tower ED. Tauret. He promises to also learn her name.
…
It doesn’t take long for Marc’s body to return to normal. His fingers are featherless, his height is back to average, and he can communicate again. His senses aren’t hyper focused anymore and he can blink regularly. Both Jake and Steven give him a mental hug while Layla gives him a physical one, and it’s a good feeling to be back.
All is well.
He even gets a break with Khonshu stuck as a bird for another two months.