Work Text:
Something felt… different. He wasn’t really sure what, but something was definitely off. Wait, ‘he’, singular? ...Well of course ‘he’ singular, he was a singular being… right?
He stretched out his arms and looked at his hands. They looked a little more bony/plump than usual. Wait… He blinked his eyes rapidly in bewilderment. The words ‘bony’ and ‘plump’ had crossed his mind at the same time, colliding in the middle of his brain with an explosion of confusion. Something was definitely off here. He looked out at his hands once more and watched them curl, tighten, stretch out, wiggle. He was extremely baffled; they were his hands and they felt like his hands, but there was also something about them that looked and felt foreign, he just couldn’t pinpoint quite what.
After staring at his hands for a lengthy period of time, he sat up. Where was he? Shelves upon shelves of books encircled him, a musty yet cozy smell drifted up his nose, and everything around him was lit up with a warm and comfortable glow. Ah, the bookshop! He owned this bookshop, right? Part of him cheerfully said yes and another part of him scoffed out a no. This mixed up reaction caused him to wince and clutch his head with one of the hands he was previously engrossed with. As soon as the tips of his fingers came into contact with his hair, his brain finally had a definitive, singular reaction.
‘That’s not my hair!’ his brain thought in unison. Panicked, he got up and rushed to the closest mirror. When he saw the reflection he yelped in shock. This was not a face any part of his brain was expecting to see.
A pale complexion that was almost an undead grey, four bright eyes that were slitted like a goat’s, a pointed nose that flicked upwards a little at the end, sharp teeth with particularly long canines, a forked tongue, and soft pink hair that shone with and orange glint in the light. He raised a hand to the end of the hair, just below the jawline where it characteristically flicked outward. This was something new and unknown; it was clear that whatever he had been previously, he was no longer it. Some remnants of what he was before still lingered, but right here and now something new had been created, so he better quickly get used to it.
Once he had gotten over the shock of this new face, he finally realised that his back felt a lot heavier than it usually did. He looked behind himself in the mirror and saw not one, but two pairs of wings, all of them a soft, mousy grey in colour. He took a couple of steps back from the mirror and stretched all four wings out, spreading every feather to the tip of it’s reach. He gazed at the mirror in awe at his own body, at the magnificent display the four large grey wings created. Gingerly, he gave the top pair a flap… followed by the second pair. It was going to take a little bit of time to get used to this. Feeling more confident, he flapped all four wings at once. A great gust of air was launched forwards, pushing him back and causing him to stumble, as well as causing many of the books lying around to flutter open. He couldn’t help but wince a little through his euphoria upon seeing the books getting blown about like that, so to put that part of his mind at ease, he folded his wings. He told himself that maybe a small bookshop was not the best place to be learning how to fly correctly.
His attention turned back to his face in the mirror, and he walked up close to the reflection, staring at it in an intrigued manner. If he was going to go about looking like this then he better come up with a name for people to give this face. Not feeling very inventive, he looked around and grabbed the first book his four eyes focused on. Ironically, it was the Bible, causing him to chuckle a little. He looked away and opened the book to a random page, before turning back and looking at the first name he could find.
Raphael.