Chapter Text
“the key to everything is patience. you get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.”
- Arnold H. Glasow
“Crow father?”
Phil rolled over on his bed with a sigh. The clock on his wall was almost too dark to make out. Tangerine colored sunlight, warm and glowing, had just barely cracked the surface of the misty horizon outside his balcony window. “Yes?”
“You have to promise not to be mad.”
Those were not exactly the words Phil wanted to be hearing out of his youngest’s, Tommy’s, mouth at seven thirty in the morning. He sat up, glancing towards his bedroom door, which was still shut tight. He could hear Tommy shifting back and forth on the other side, his little feet making the wooden floorboards outside creak.
“Come inside,” Phil sighed.
The door hinges squeaked as Tommy, Phil’s six-year-old son, cracked open the door and stepped inside. He had his head down and hands behind his back, as if he were ashamed, and that would have been a bad enough sign on its own except that, Phil knew, Tommy never acted ashamed. Not even when he had good reason to. Not even when he captured a baby chicken and hid it in a box inside the Pube for a week. Not even when he got into fist fights with the neighbor kid, Ranboo, and had to be dragged home kicking and screaming. Not even when he drank one of Phil’s speed potions two months ago, and had to be rushed to a village healer because he was far too young to be drinking that shit.
Tommy was, quite frankly, too much of a little shit to be embarrassed by his actions. So the fact that he was acting shy now, his chin still tipped to his chest and his arms pulled tight behind his back, like he was a prisoner—or about to become one—immediately set warning bells off in Phil’s head.
“Fuck,” he muttered, pulling his sheets aside and sliding off the bed. His slippers were there on the floor, and he automatically slid them on. “What happened?”
“You have to promise!”
“Tommy—”
“Promise!”
Phil sighed. He walked over to Tommy and crouched down, getting on eye-level with the tiny boy. He was still in pajamas—little, red and white striped ones that were still just a tad too baggy around his arms and ankles. His wings, still snowy-white and downy, twitched anxiously where they poked out from behind his back. They were just barely visible. Tommy’s wings were significantly smaller than most other avian hybrids’, even at this age. It was something Phil had been meaning to talk to the village doctor about, but hadn’t yet. He didn’t want to ask with Tommy in the room. Or maybe he was just afraid of what the answer would be.
“I will try not to get mad,” Phil said. It wasn’t quite what his son wanted, but he wasn’t going to lie to him, and warning bells were still ringing in his head. “But you have to tell me first. Tommy, look at me...”
Phil raised a hand to find Tommy’s chin underneath the mop of curly, golden blond hair obscuring his face. He brushed his jawbone gently, and tilted Tommy’s face up. As he did, the sun finally crested the balcony railing and warm, honey-colored light brightened on his son’s face.
Phil gasped. On Tommy’s forehead, just above his right eye, a bruise the size of Philza’s fist blemished Tommy’s face with dark lavender and ugly green. Smeared blood had crusted around his nose—not a lot, but enough to be concerning—and Tommy’s eyes were both red-rimmed and teary. Upon making eye-contact with Phil, Tommy’s face crumpled, and he brought his hands out from behind his back.
“I wanted to try flying again,” he hiccuped, and Phil stared in horror as Tommy opened his palms, revealing two fist-fulls of pure white feathers. “Even though you told me not to, that I wasn’t ready, I thought... I thought I was.” He was rambling now, tiny voice stuttering as he fought back tears. “S-So I went up to the perch, and I jumped off, but I didn’t fly I just fell. And then my feathers really hurt, 'cause I crushed some of them when I fell, so I tried to preen them like you taught me, but they kept coming out and I think I broke them and—” Tommy cut himself off with a whimper, tears bubbling up, and Phil hurried to pull him into his arms.
Feathers scattered the floor around them as Tommy dropped them all, choosing to cling to his father instead. He buried his face into Phil’s chest, letting out a tiny, heartbroken sob, and Phil’s heart lurched.
“Tommy,” he crooned, pulling his boy closer, “you didn’t break them. Feathers come out easier when you’re stressed, and after taking a fall like that, you probably just preened them a bit too hard.”
Tommy shuddered in his arms. Phil continued, “It’s okay, it’s okay. How does your head feel, though? That bruise looks terrible.”
He didn’t say what he was really worried about, which was whether or not Tommy had gotten a concussion from the fall. Instead, he forced Tommy to look up at him again, watching his eyes to make sure they focused. Thankfully, they did. Tommy stared up at him with wide, sky-blue eyes, tears still rolling down his cheeks.
“It hurts a little,” he said, sniffling.
Admitting to it hurting even a little was quite a lot coming from Tommy, so Phil scooped him up, ignoring the six-year-old’s confused look as he toed open the door and headed down to the kitchen.
The Pube had been Phil’s home for the past six years—ever since he’d found Tommy’s egg out in the forest. It stood on top of a floating island, water spilling out from the rocks and giving others besides Phil, who could fly, a way up and down before Phil installed the rope ladder. He’d built the entire place himself—the shiny wooden floors, the overhead beams that held up the second story, the bar area with the swiveling chairs that Tommy loved to spin around on during breakfast. There was green moss dripping down from the ceiling, spotted with pale pink flowers that smelled just a tad sweeter than vanilla. Warm lamplight spilled from the single lamp above, left on all night to keep the mobs away from the windows, and there was the perch—the wooden overhang that jutted out from the wall—that Tommy had jumped off of that morning. All the flower pots that normally lined the top had been moved.
Phil hopped off the last few rungs of the ladder, carefully carrying Tommy over to the bar and setting him down on the counter. He left to get some water from the sink, filling up a small cup with it and grabbing a hand towel. When he returned, the six-year-old avian was kicking his feet back and forth off the side of the counter, still sniffling, but the tears had dried on his cheeks.
Phil smiled at him softly, dipping the hand towel into the cup of water and then bringing it up to Tommy’s face. Carefully, he began to wipe the blood away from his nose.
“I know you want to fly,” Phil said slowly. This was a sore subject for Tommy, and he knew it. “But don’t you think there are better ways to practice than flinging yourself off of whatever high structure you can find? I took you to the meadow yesterday and you did great!”
“But I didn’t fly,” Tommy whined, kicking his feet against the back of the counter. Phil brought a hand down to still them; Wilbur was still asleep.
“Your wings aren’t ready for flying yet,” Phil replied. “You’re still little.”
“Am not!”
Phil exhaled a chuckle, finishing off Tommy’s nose with one last dab. He flipped the towel to a new corner and dunked it in the water again, then brought it to the bruise on Tommy’s forehead. There were little bits of dirt from the floor there, and he gently cleaned them away as he spoke.
“Okay, you’re not little then. But you need pin feathers to fly, and you don’t have any of those yet.”
“Why not?”
Phil hummed. “I don’t know, Tommy. I guess they just need a little more time.”
Tommy didn’t respond. He started kicking his legs again, and this time Phil let him. The boy was filled with restless energy, and he knew how it felt. It was common, especially with avians, to want to fly from a young age. They called it the “Call From Heaven,” or “Call From the Sky”: a yearning to be in the air. Phil had dealt with it when he was younger, though he only knew because of stories his mother used to tell him, back when she was still alive. She’d told him he tried jumping off of everything: trees, hills, tiny cliffs out over the pond; and more dangerously: second-story windows, the fifteen-foot loft he’d used to sleep in, and the roof.
“Dad.”
Phil blinked, pulling himself out of his memories and back to the present, where his six-year-old boy was looking down at his knees and fiddling his fingers in his lap. He set the hand towel and cup of water down, giving him his full attention.
“Yes?”
“How much longer do I have to wait?”
Phil sighed. He reached out, taking Tommy into his arms and balancing him on his hip as he walked to the balcony. It wasn’t really a balcony, just a grassy area outside the house with an overhang that overlooked the meadow below. Phil had placed potions of protection around the open walls to repel mobs, but, if Tommy kept leaping off of things like he’d been, he was going to have to think about putting in a lockable door.
He sat down on the grass with Tommy in his lap, and pointed out at the sun peeking over the mountains to the east.
“You see the sunrise?” Phil asked quietly.
Tommy nodded, golden hair softly brushing Phil’s chin. He smiled.
“The sun sets every night, but every morning, without fail, it rises again,” Phil continued. Tommy’s wings were pressed flat to his chest; he could feel how small they were. They shouldn’t have been so small. They should have spanned at least to Tommy’s elbows by now, but the fluffiest feathers only just barely reached his shoulders. Phil needed to ask the doctor about this. He should have asked the doctor about this months ago. He didn’t. He couldn’t. If he got the answer he was dreading, he wouldn’t know how to explain to his son that no matter how desperately the sky called him, he wouldn’t be able to answer.
“It’s bright,” Tommy said.
Phil reached down and bopped his nose. “Just like you!”
Tommy giggled, and Phil let the weary, bone-deep sadness and premature grief slip away. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Tommy was just taking a little longer than other avians to fledge. Maybe Phil was just jumping to conclusions too quickly, like Tommy off the side of the perch, and paining himself over nothing.
“Just like that sunrise,” Phil said, “your wings will come. It might take a little while, but be patient, and soon you’ll be able to fly just like me. Alright?”
Tommy nodded again. His fingers had started absently playing with Phil’s sleeve, tugging it to wrap around and around his pudgy knuckles. Phil smoothed his son’s hair back with a small smile as the sun rose in front of them.
Patience. It would just take a little patience.