Day Two: Thrill of Flight

I yawned and rolled slowly onto my side, wiggling a little to get more comfortable on my bed. My body felt weightless for a curious half-second, and I felt the strangest urge to spread out my wings... then I hit the floor.

"Ow." I lay there for a long moment. The drop hadn't really hurt me, but I was still mostly asleep, and it had been an embarrassing way to wake up. It was easier to just lay there for a little bit.

It hadn't been the first time I had fallen out of bed like that, and it probably wouldn't be the last, either. It wasn't like the bed had anything to stop me if I rolled too far. And I had probably rolled around a lot with the strange dream I had just had.

I frowned as I thought back over the dream. That had felt really sad, for some reason... but at least it hadn't been scary. I didn't feel terrified by it, the way I knew other dreams had caused me to feel. Like the ones yesterday... or... wait, had those been scary? I could sort of remember Steffie being worried about me when I had woken up... or... had she?

Try as I might, I couldn't seem to be sure. She had told me about the cake and about making a wish, and... Steffie had said something about my dream being about that, hadn't she? But... I couldn't really remember much about that now. Maybe it had been scary?

This last dream didn't seem to have been like that, though. It had just seemed like one of Steffie's crime shows. Which had probably been where the dream had come from – Steffie had told me dreams tended to come about because my mind was still thinking about things that had happened, and Steffie had been watching tv shows before I had gone to bed last night. One of them had probably just been a crime show that I hadn't paid attention to while I was coloring. The only other thing that was unusual about the dream had been the man in the funny black robe mentioning Doctor Jean's name... but she had visited yesterday, so it made sense that I would have been thinking about her too, didn't it?

Though... the dream had been a trial about murder. When a human killed another human. And I was sure we hadn't watched anything like that last night. So... why had my dream been about something horrible like that?

I shook my head and climbed out of the clumsy pile of wings and legs that I had landed in. Thinking too hard about dreams was just going to make my head hurt, and right now my headache was just a nice manageable 'one', so there was no sense in ruining that. I could try and go back to bed, but I didn't really feel tired enough to. That meant it was probably close to morning, if it wasn't already. And that meant Steffie might be awake – and even if she wasn't...

I grinned to myself as I turned and pranced out of my room.

The living room was peacefully dark – the only light came from a nightlight Steffie had put in the kitchen, and the panel beside the door leading outside – and Steffie's door was still closed. That meant she was probably still asleep. I was a little disappointed that she wasn't there to say good morning to, but I was sure she would wake up soon. I would just have to make sure I was quiet until then so I didn't wake her up early.

I looked around in the dim light and paused when I saw the coils of my headset resting next to the television, right beside where Steffie left her tablet. There was a tiny blue light glowing just beneath the headset, and in the low light I could just barely make out that the headset was resting on top of something else, and not just sitting on the television stand... but I couldn't really tell what that thing was, aside from that it had a blue light at one end.

Steffie had said I could go outside whenever I wanted, as long as I brought the headset with me... but... I hadn't actually tried to put it on myself yet. The thought of going outside to play was a tempting one, but I didn't want to risk breaking the headset if I put it on wrong, or dropping it while I was flying.

Plus there was something else I wanted to do a little more.

I kept looking around the room until I finally spotted the remote for the television on the arm of the couch. I skipped over to it, taking care not to slip on one of the crayons I had left on the rug or knock my tail into anything, and picked the remote up. The buttons glowed softly enough that I could make them out even in the darkness, and I quickly found the buttons I was looking for.

Tapping the button at the top caused the television to light up, and I sat up on the rug to wait for it to finish turning on. It took a few seconds before the faint gray glow changed to a picture of a cloud-like symbol with a funny stick coming out of the top. Curved lines surrounded the top of the stick, and they lit up and went dark in a repeating pattern for a few seconds... then the symbol was replaced with a box asking me to enter an unlock code.

I didn't know the unlock code for the television – it was something Steffie had put on it a while back to make sure I didn't accidentally see something bad or scary – so I tapped the 'B' button on the remote with one claw. The screen flickered as the box went away, and a second later another box came up with the words, "PARENTAL LOCK ACTIVE".

More seconds went by... then the television finally went to a picture. There wasn't any sound, so I carefully tapped the volume button a few times until I could just barely hear noise – I didn't want to wake Steffie up – then went for the channel button. The television had been on a boring cooking show, and who wanted to watch that?

I lifted my frills from my neck and grinned as I found a cartoon I liked – a show called 'Bertha the Blimp'. It was about blimps and trains and boats and planes, all with simple faces on the front of them, going about their usual day of carrying heavy stuff from place to place. The characters would talk and do silly things, which I didn't think real blimps or boats would do... but it was still fun to pretend. And I think most of the stuff I learned about trains and planes and so on was right, so it was a fun show to watch while I colored. The introduction was just starting, so I hummed along with the theme music as I reached for my coloring book and flipped it back open to the last page I had been coloring...

I had watched four episodes of the cartoon before I heard a click from Steffie's room and saw the light come on through the crack in her door. My frills spread out in excitement, and in a bit of relief - I had been starting to get lonely, but now Steffie was awake! I dropped the crayons and reached for the remote to turn the volume down a little, just in case it had been up too loud, then waited for my friend to come out of her room.

It was a long moment before the door opened. Steffie stumbled into the living room and yawned, looking towards me with eyes that were only half opened and missing their normal brightness. She was still wearing her nightgown, and she had fuzzy white slippers on her feet – she always said the stone floor was too cold to deal with first thing in the morning – so I could tell she had just woken up. I looked up with a smile and waved a wing towards her. "Good mahning!"

"Morning." Steffie mumbled under her breath as she fiddled with the lightswitch by her door. She stopped mid-motion and stared at what she was doing – her hand was near the small button above the lightswitch, the one Steffie said we were only supposed to touch if something really bad happened – then lowered her hand to touch the switch for the lights instead. She winced as the living room and kitchen lit up with light, then stumbled over to sit on the rug beside me and drape an arm over my back in a hug. "Good morning, Joy. You're up early today. You didn't have another bad nightmare, did you?"

"Nuh-uh." I shook my head and leaned into the hug. "I did have a dweam, but it wasn't scary. I just couldn't get back to sleep after I... um..." I winced a little and looked away from Steffie. "H-how did you sleep?"

"I slept okay." Steffie yawned, then squeezed me a little tighter in the hug. "Couldn't get back to sleep after you what?"

I pouted and kept staring at the wall. Stupid mouth, going around saying stuff. "I fell out of bed."

Steffie was quiet for a second... then she gave a sleepy giggle and rose back to her feet. "Aw, I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

"Uh-huh. Just woke me up." I looked away from the wall and nodded towards the television. "So I watched some cawtoons."

"I see. Thank you for keeping the volume down while I was sleeping." Steffie turned and started towards the kitchen, though she glanced back at me over her shoulder. "What was your dream about?"

I stood up and started following after my friend. "Just something silly. Tink it was because of the crime show you watched last night."

"Oh?" Steffie paused with the refrigerator half-open to look back at me. "Your dream was like a crime show?"

"Uh-huh. Somebody was in couwt, and they were in trouble." I tilted my head a little as I thought back to the dream. "Oh, and they talked about Dok Tor Jean. So I must have been dweaming about stuff that happened yesferday."

Steffie was quiet for a very long moment. I started to get worried that I had said something wrong, but she finally nodded slowly. "That's probably it." Steffie seemed to pause for another moment, then she reached for something in the fridge. "It wasn't scary though? Not a nightmare?"

I thought back to it, then shook my head again. "Nah. It just felt kind of sad."

Steffie went still again. "I see." She reached a little further into the fridge, then stood up and turned back towards me. My eyes widened as I saw the small plate in one hand – and the slice of cake sitting on it – and I watched as she set it down on the table. "Well, maybe some cake will cheer you up a little."

"Yay!" My tail swished behind me as I pranced up to the table and rose up on my hind legs. I started to reach for the cake, but Steffie stopped me at the last second by tapping my nose with a fork. My wings sagged at my side as I pouted, but she just pointed at the fork again. I pouted for another second just because, then picked up the fork and tried to stab at the cake.

The dumb fork missed the cake and thunked against the plate instead. I grumbled and tried again. This time I managed to hit the cake and pull off a piece, but it was a much smaller chunk than I had wanted. The fork wobbled in my hand as I tried to bring it up to my mouth, and the cake fell off the fork before I got it to my mouth.

I stared at the table where my food had fallen and pouted more.

"Aw, and you were doing so well yesterday." Steffie walked to my side of the table and looked down at my hand, then reached down to move the fork. "Here. Try holding it this way."

It felt weird to hold the fork like that, but I tried again. This time I managed to get a decent chunk of cake to my mouth, and I spread my wings at my sides and smiled as I chewed on the yummy cake. I had gotten a bit of frosting in that bite, too, which made it extra yummy.

Steffie smiled a little as she walked back to the counter and began digging through the cabinets. She brought out the bag of coffee and began scooping some into the complicated machine at the end of the counter, then pressed some buttons on the machine. Water began to dribble into the pot in the coffee maker, and a nice smell began to fill the kitchen... though I knew from when I had tried Steffie's coffee before that the smell was cheating, and the coffee was bitter and not nice to drink at all. Steffie lingered at the counter long enough to grab my sippy cup from one of the cabinets and fill it with water, then dropped into a chair at the table. She covered her mouth as she yawned, then slid my sippy cup next to my plate. "Did you go flying any? You remember you can go flying outside with the headset, right? The workers all know how to reach me if something comes up; you don't have to watch cartoons or wait for me to wake up if you don't want to."

I eyed the sippy cup for a second before deciding I wasn't thirsty, then glanced over at the headset on its stand in the living room. "I wasn't suwe how to put it on. I didn't want to go flying yet anyway; the cawtoons were fun." I looked back up at Steffie, and felt my tail start to swish as I thought about flying. "Flying might be fun now, though?"

Steffie frowned, then seemed to wince a little. "Oh... I didn't show you how to put the headset on, did I? I'm sorry. As soon as you finish your cake I'll show you how, and then you can go flying."

"Yay!" I hopped a little beside the table... then dropped the fork and reached for the cake.

Steffie stared blankly at me as I stuffed the cake in my mouth and started chewing. Her eyes closed and she started to shake her head, sighing a little... then the sigh turned into a yawn, and she slowly lowered her head to rest on the table. I heard her mumble something about really needing to figure out the timer settings on her coffee maker, then she inhaled deeply. She yawned again, then lifted her head off the table and stood up. "Okay. Come here. I'll clean off your face, then I'll show you how to put the headset on."

I chewed on the cake and followed along as Steffie grabbed a napkin and stumbled back across the room. She spent a moment wiping my face clean of frosting, then sat down by the television stand and pointed at the headset.

Now that the lights were on, I could see that my headset was resting on the large pad that Steffie put her tablet on when she wasn't using it. The pad seemed larger than I remembered it being, though, and it seemed like there was a faint line running through the middle of it. Steffie's tablet rested on one side of the line, but the other side had something that looked a little like my horn stuck to it. My headset had been wrapped around the fake horn, with the end of it resting flat on the pad, and a steady blue light shone just beside it.

Steffie leaned up and tapped the pad. "This is a charging station, like the smaller one I used to have for my tablet, but this one will charge two things at once. If the light is blue then your headset is fully charged and ready for you to use. If the light is red, then it needs to stay on the charging station a little longer. Put your headset here when you're done using it, and rest the speaker piece up on the pad, and then you should see a red light come on. That will mean it's charging back up. If you don't see a red or a blue light then you need to move it a little until you do."

I chewed on my mouthful a few more times, then swallowed. "Blue light is weady, wed light isn't. Put the headset on the 'chawging station' and make sure I see a light."

"That's right." Steffie nodded, then pointed up at the coils of the headset. "Go ahead and take it off the charging station, and let's go to your mirror so you can see what you're doing."

"'Kay." I lifted the headset off the charging station – the light went out as soon as I picked it up – and used my wing to help me hobble through the beaded curtain and into my room. I stopped in front of the sink and stood up on my hind legs until I had a clear view of the mirror. In the reflection I watched Steffie slip through the curtain after me, with that same not-quite awake look on her face, and I grinned at her in the mirror.

Steffie blinked a little more of her sleep away, but she finally smiled back at me. "Silly." She joined me at the sink and motioned down to the headset. "Try putting it on; the coil part of the headset should feel thicker, and you can use that feeling to make sure it's tight around your horn. Do you remember how I did it yesterday?"

"Tink so." I tilted my head enough to get a clear view of my horns in the mirror, then felt along the headset. The antenna part definitely felt thinner and less flexible, and the microphone part was floppy and loose, so I moved my hands until I was holding the start of the bendable part. I reached up to my head and began bending the coils around my horn until the feeling of the headset in my hand changed back to the thinner, cooler metal of the antenna. I kept an eye on my reflection until the headset looked like it was all the way around my horn, then turned to look up at Steffie. "Like that?"

Steffie leaned to one side to look at me, then reached over to adjust the headset around my horn. She tugged my head a few times as she tightened the headset, then she nodded. "It was good enough that it shouldn't fall off, but try to get it tighter next time just in case. You shouldn't have to worry about breaking it; the material is very durable. And under warranty, too, if for some reason it's not as durable as I was told."

I wasn't sure what Steffie meant by her last sentence, but I turned back to the mirror and felt along my horn again. The headset was coiled tight enough that it didn't slip or move when my hand brushed it, and the antenna portion was sticking out straight just like it had before. I took another moment to try and fix the sight of my horn's reflection in my memory so I would remember how the headset was supposed to sit the next time I tried to put it on, then frowned as I looked at the microphone portion at the end. It was resting against my scales, but seemed awfully loose. Steffie had stuck it to the scales on my cheek yesterday... but when I pushed my hand against it, the piece wouldn't stay put.

"Oh, right. Let me show you the adhesive." Steffie turned and walked out of my bedroom, and I followed her back to the television stand. She pointed to the drawer just beneath the charging pad the headset had been resting on, then pulled the drawer open. "These aren't really reusable, so you'll need to get a new one of these each time. I'll make sure we always have plenty around, so don't worry about wasting them." Steffie fished something out of the drawer and held it out to me.

I took it and stared down at it. It looked like a really tiny circle of paper, but it felt smoother than paper usually felt. "Um... what do I do with it?"

"The sides will peel off to make it sticky. You peel one side off and stick it onto the headset. And then you peel the other side off, and then the headset will stick to your scales." She reached down and pulled at part of the circle, and something thin and clear pulled away from it. "Try it."

I turned the circle over and tried the same thing Steffie had done. It took some work, but I managed to peel the clear piece off just like Steffie had.

The smooth feeling was gone, and the circle was suddenly much stickier. I frowned as the thing stuck to one of my claws, and I shook my hand to get it to come loose. But no matter how I flung my hand about the sticker wouldn't budge, and I finally looked helplessly up at Steffie. "It won't come off..."

Steffie didn't seem to have woken up enough to notice my worried look, and she just nodded. "That's good; it's supposed to be sticky. Put the other side on the headset, then you should be able to pull your claw free." She reached for my hand and guided it back to the headset. "Then you can stick that part against your cheek, and you won't have to worry about it falling off."

"Oh." I tilted my head to the side and bent my neck to get my claw – and the dumb sticky circle that wouldn't come off my claw – to the headset. I felt for the circular part of the headset, then pushed the sticky circle against it... and then I spread my wings happily as I managed to tug my claw free of the sticky thing. I shook my hand a few more times just because, then looked back up at Steffie. "It worked!"

"It did!" The corners of her mouth lifted a little in the start of a smile that made my earlier panic over the sticker vanish, but I could tell from her eyes that she was still only half-awake. "Now put it on your cheek so it doesn't come off."

"Oh, wite." I nodded, then reached back for the headset. I pushed the circular part against the scales at my cheek, then tried moving the headset... and I smiled and spread my wings more as the headset stayed firmly in place. "It's staying put. I did it!"

"You did!" Steffie nodded, then reached up to pat me on the head. "Now why don't you go fly for a little while I eat breakfast and finish waking up? I've got another surprise for you today, and I'll come tell you about it in a little bit."

My eyes went wide as I stared up at Steffie. Another surprise? "More 'prises? Is it my birfday again?"

Steffie blinked at me, then shook her head. "No, silly. You have to wait another year before that happens; it's only been one day. Just go fly and have fun. I'll call you on the headset when I'm done getting ready, and then I'll tell you all about it."

"'Kay!" I nodded, then pranced up to the door leading out of the living room. I held my horn up to the panel set in the wall until I heard the 'beep' and the 'click' from the door... then I pushed the door open and slipped through it.

I paused just long enough to push the door shut behind me – Steffie said it was important for that door to always be shut unless we were going through it, and especially so when she was still in her nightgown – then I looked up at the sky. I rarely got to see it this early, with it having lingering traces of orange and red highlights towards the horizon. The canopy hung overhead, but beyond it were pretty shades and brightly lit clouds.

I flung my wings out to my sides, gave them a quick warm-up flap... then I ran forward and launched myself into the air, quickly rising above the trees to join the clouds in the sky.