Chapter Text
So. Shen Yuan was now a bird person.
As in an actual bird-person, not someone who liked birds. Because he’d been mostly ambivalent towards birds his whole life. Before that morning, he’d rarely thought of them at all.
He hadn’t wanted to go down Shanghai’s Bird Street. His health had never been the best, and the tight bustling market full of cramped cages and bird crap seemed like a one way ticket back to the hospital.
But his meimei had begged, and now, here he was.
One minute feeling bad and vaguely wishing he could let the poor animals fly free and the next hearing a rattling crash only to open his eyes to THIS.
This, being, of course, his own feathers.
There were a lot of them. And they were very attached. To him. Almost all over.
Shen Yuan was an avid reader of transmigration stories, and he’d always vowed to not sink into the tired tropes of panic. To just adjust and get a move on.
But. But really, he’d been expecting to have a System - some direction, some plot or purpose. Or to at least be human! Or even a full animal, like a cat!
Not this, this weird uncomfortable mixture!
After a few minutes of lying down and pretending to be dead, Shen Yuan slapped his own cheeks and ended up with a mouthful of feathers and sharp bursts of pain the shape of tiny claw-pricks on his face.
Right.
Right!
So!
Starting from the bottom, he had bird feet. Like a giant chicken. They were darkly scaled, three toes in front and one in back, all tipped with large talons. He could walk relatively smoothly, yet when he lifted one and flexed it, it closed into a tight fist much more like that of an owl than a yard bird.
Okay. Weird as hell. But moving on.
The scales transitioned to feathers around his (backwards??!) knees, and his legs were more human than not with the exception of being covered by feathers. They faded out again above his hips, leaving the pale skin of his human stomach and chest mostly exposed. A toned, lithely muscular body that Shen Yuan would have been glad to have if not for the - everything - else. It got strange once more with his shoulders and arms.
His arms were wings. When resting at his side, they were somehow folded back at the hinge, yet when he opened his arms wide, the wings stretched out to take up so much space.
He still had hands, black scaled and clawed, at the hinge of his wings, and up until that point they FELT like normal arms, but at his wrist was an extra long bone or, or something, that he could bring up and lock into place to open the wings into what he determined was Flight Mode. Then he could relax it, and the whatever bone would tuck back parallel to his forearm into what he decided to call Inactive Mode.
But more important than the possibly added bones was the bone that was apparently missing.
Silent System? Gods? Anyone who was listening?
WHERE WAS HIS ‘LITTLE BROTHER!?’
He wasn’t wearing pants. He was just staring at a smooth expanse of feathers with mounting horror.
He didn’t have boobs. But, would a bird female need them? Wasn’t that just a mammalian thing? But he had a belly button? And nipples? Was this like one of the hack-author fantasy novels he read? A world with no consistency or logic? Was he in a female body now or not? He could kinda feel something really weird going on when he tensed those muscles. A lot of weird things, both familiar and very much not so at the same time.
Shen Yuan decided to just not think about it. Or how he would pee. Or from where he would. He would have to be dragged kicking and screaming to that bridge when he needed to cross it.
OKAY! On to other things!
Like where he was.
It was a cave. Just one large room. The entrance let in bright sunlight that managed to permeate nearly the whole thing, and even in the darkened corners, Shen Yuan had little trouble seeing. Some sort of night vision, maybe? To be tested later.
There were some bolts of silk hanging on the walls, seemingly at random, and the stone walls themselves were clean. The whole cave was free of dust, which Shen Yuan was pretty certain wasn’t usual. But what did he know. The only caves he’d ever been in were the ones in video games.
He looked at the ceiling to make sure no hidden slime monsters were waiting to ambush him, and scanned the room again for the other cave-trope of bears.
The only other things in the room were miscellaneous objects that shimmered, interspersed in places to catch light, and--
Well, a small bear COULD be hiding inside of That Thing? Maybe?
Shen Yuan went onto his tip-toes, which reminded him, oh yeah, bird feet, when he unbalanced.
But with the glance over the brim, he didn’t get jump-scared by any beast, so he’d still count it as a win.
The Thing took up much of the center.
It was as high as his waist and built in a large circle, made entirely of stones stacked together interwoven by thick flowering vines. When he drew closer and looked inside, he found more bolts of material, odd cotton-looking piles of fluff, and various small animal furs.
It was a nest.
And what a nest it was! The stacked stones were perfect, the way they -- hmm, no, something was wrong. No, see, THIS rounded stone didn’t belong in that spot, it would be better next to the dark reflective one over HERE. And the vines weren’t quite right, anyone with taste could see that if he pulled it free HERE and weaved it over THERE at a 3 degree higher angle, that it would be better.
...But then that threw off the balance of THIS rock, and that whole row needed to be reshuffled, and-
The sunlight dimmed and painted the cave with dusk’s colors by the time that Shen Yuan stepped back and admired his ‘quick fixes’.
Only then did he realize he’d somehow spent hours rearranging rocks like a child given building blocks and adderall.
...What the fuck?
But the setting sun glinted warm colors juuust right off the newly organized nest, lighting up his brain with a similar burst of warmth.
Good nest. Pretty. Mine. Pretty. Nest. Perfect. Mine. Nest. Mine.
Shen Yuan brushed away those cloying thoughts, but they stuck to him like sap.
He’d wasted nearly the whole day and found out so little! Who’d been so high and mighty reading those transmigration novels, ah?
Before it became too late, Shen Yuan made himself venture outside. What good would the perfect nest be if it was in a dangerous area?
What he found directly outside of his little cave was a view influencers would die to post to broadcast their perfect vacation. It was like that moment in Breath of the W*ld when you first left the shrine of renewal and the piano music kicked in as the camera panned out and you saw the gorgeous land of H*rule spread out before you. Stirring the hell out of mankind’s wanderlust, or something.
But, like, even better! Because instead of the ghibli-esc graphics, this was REAL LIFE pristine wilderness!
...That actually made it kind of worse, but it was a nice view anyway.
He was up high, high, high on a sheer mountain cliff, with only a small shelf of rock, about half as long as the cave, as his entrance-way.
Basically, unless it had wings - it was not going to jump him at night.
Shen Yuan could see the sea in the far distance, its dark colors painted like a bruise with the setting sun. Then some rocky plains that transitioned into mountainous forests as it drew closer to his location high above it all. All around the closest area looked like the famous Zhangjiajie stone pillar mountains, or the kind of thing you’d see in the highest budget cultivation c-dramas.
No civilization anywhere.
Shen Yuan had always been the type to get bored by the scenery on his family’s vacations after just five minutes. Returning to his phone after getting his fill of the ~wonders of nature~. (His fill being the size of a child’s happymeal cup)
But somehow now, he felt a little... Prideful? Possessive? Like he wanted to do - something. He didn’t really know what, but it itched under his skin.
He wanted everyone to know that everything the light was touching was HIS kingdom. HE was the king of this jungle. Er, forest. Mountain. Thing.
Shen Yuan scraped his talons against the ground. He must have lips and a nose cause he could feel himself sneering in irritation. He paced the border of his little porch, experiencing the weird feeling of his feathers all fluffing in agitation. He could even feel it along his scalp, and realized he had a lot of feathers there too.
A sound was building up in his stomach, rising through his chest. He wanted to let it out. Wanted to scream.
It felt like a song, but Shen Yuan wasn’t a singer.
He wasn’t the type of person who could even humm in public without dying of shame. And he cringed into himself when people yelled just to hear their own echo on mountains. Cough, cough, Shen Yuan’s dad.
So with an angry hiss, that sounded more savage than Shen Yuan could have imagined producing, he clamped a hand over his mouth and stormed back into the cave.
It took a long time for that feeling to fade. For his metaphorical hackles, and literal feathers, to relax.
Sinking into his, er, THE nest made it better. It sort of felt like pulling the blankets over your head as a child. Like he was safer. Tucked away.
Compared to his comfortable bed at home, this assorted pile of soft-ish things shouldn’t have been passable, but his body seemed more than happy to settle down. It took a while to figure out how to nestle himself without his long tail feathers getting in the way, but eventually he settled slumped forward on his belly.
If only it didn’t remind him of the viral image of a baby owl sleeping!
------˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚------
If there was a certainty of transmigration, it would be that the newly transmigrated person would conveniently find a reflective surface nearby. Shen Yuan had gotten too distracted by rearranging the nest the day before to have found it, but he rectified that mistake early the next morning. There was a large slab of some kind of dark and smooth rock that acted like a mirror. Or at least like a laptop screen when it went dark, revealing the horrors of your own face at an unflattering angle.
Of all the horrors it could be, Shen Yuan’s new appearance wasn’t really the worst.
As a patented monster-fan, maybe it was even kind of cool.
He seemed to be the kind of creature generic fantasy stories would label a ‘harpy’. Not the actual definition from ancient Greece, but the kind nabbed by monster-waifu fans.
He had a human enough face, pretty similar to what his own had been, just sharper and more handsome. How typical! Human-like monsters always had to be conventionally attractive in the human bits, didn’t they? Seemed this world followed that trend.
He did have fangs, though! Two sets, and they gleamed white against the dark black color of the inside of his mouth. His eyes were a striking green, the pupil able to adjust from slit to round at will when he focused his vision - which was extremely good. Like a hawk, he could even zoom in on distant things.
His hair was long, trailing mid back, and had long feathers that blended into it every now and then. After just a night it had gotten tangled, though he’d luckily found a roughly made wooden comb while exploring.
He was tall and slender, though toned with muscle. Which was obvious from his naked chest and waist, with only some very short feathers trailing up his sides. It seemed like this body had had some nasty run-ins with violence in the past, with a multitude of slash-like scars of lighter skin scattered around. They all seemed long healed, which was at least a relief. Hopefully whatever caused them was long gone.
When he stepped out into the morning sun, dragging the large slab with him, he received another shock.
What he’d thought were inky black feathers were actually all different shades of iridescent green, shockingly vivid in his hair and on his tail and wings. He shifted from side to side, marveling at the way the light refracted. It reminded him of the hummingbirds he’d seen once on a documentary.
Pleasing. The shine was. Pleasing. The way his feathers glinted. Caught the light and played with it. Shiny. Good. Mine. Mine. Pleasing.
Smugness filled Shen Yuan’s stomach. He found himself spreading his wings wide and strutting the perimeter of his shelf.
Then he was a little mortified.
...Then he did it for a few minutes more.
That same, annoying, impulse as last night sat heavy in his lungs. Swelling and ebbing along with his breaths.
Like a song, trapped inside, desperate to come out.
Hello? What was this?? A D*sney film?!
Shen Yuan stubbornly bit his lip--ACK. Oh yes. Fangs. Right. Fuck.
Sullenly, he licked up the beading blood.
To his annoyance, the coppery burst against his tongue seemed to spark his stomach into life.
...
How the fuck was he supposed to get food???
Another search around his cave revealed nothing to eat, and there was no path down the sheer cliff, nor up to the peek.
Unless there was some sort of well-hidden fantasy elevator somewhere, all things pointed in one direction.
Shen Yuan stared over the edge, down past the wispy clouds.
Impossible!!! Simply impossible!!!
Human shaped things couldn’t fly! His wings weren’t nearly big enough! Rules of aviation, or something!
Nope! No. Nada. Not gonna!
...
He lasted two days.
Hunger wasn’t an unknown feeling to him. Shen Yuan’s stomach had always yearned for what it couldn’t handle. Even being rich couldn’t solve the stomach issues that came with his chronic illness, made all the worse when he’d started living by himself. He was used to the cycle of hunger - eating - nauseous and unable to eat until he felt starved again - eating, nauseous, ect in a loop.
But this hunger was even sharper than he recalled, like it had hooks. It made him hangry. Grinding his teeth and scraping his claws together.
What was he, a feral animal? He just wanted to bite! To snap! To crunch! Something! Anything! He was an inch from plucking his own feathers!
It didn’t help that his vision was so superb from this height. Like a heat-seeking missile, his attention would lock onto movement below. Rugged mountain goats defying gravity on nearby cliffs. Birds in flight. Some soft slow-moving smudges in the trees that really set his stomach growling.
It couldn’t be helped!
Even if it was against logic, this was clearly a fantasy world with fantasy logic, ah? So surely, if this creature had wings, the creature could fly!
He could attain some lift flapping his arms like mad, though his cave was an awful place to practice. He would collide into walls as often as not. However, his ‘porch’ was too risky.
Shen Yuan knew he must have been doing something wrong - he felt like a cuckoo in a videogame. He knew he would be able to flutter down at the very least, but then what if he couldn’t fly back up? What if harpies were at the bottom of the food chain, and the only safety was in the cliff?
In the end, it was instinct that made the decision.
One moment he was staring at one of the smudges of movement in the distant trees, and the next moment he’d leapt.
His human mind was shitting itself and dying!! Fuck!! Fuck, fuck!!
But it got tucked neatly behind the shield of his new instincts as his wings spread open at just the right spot to catch a thermal that buoyed him upwards and allowed him to recalculate his angle. His brain was still hiding its eyes and screaming as his body tucked into a controlled dive, sending him down at a breakneck pace towards the world below.
It felt like he was breaking the sound barrier. Like he would shatter every bone in his body if he tried to stop suddenly.
Yet? Somehow? It worked?
You couldn’t ask Shen Yuan how. He wouldn’t know how to answer.
The distant smudges on the branches turned out to be some sort of sloth-type creature, but somehow much cuter, like it was mixed with a squirrel lemur. At least, it had seemed for the instant before, um...
...
...
It was hard to tell what it was supposed to look like now, with it so...split open.
It turned out his bones, despite feeling light, wouldn’t shatter upon a strike going at that speed. However, whatever his talons had collided with wasn’t so lucky, as if all the inertia made the blow into something from One Punch M*n.
Shen Yuan hadn’t landed gracefully. The momentum kept him shooting forward, and he’d fluttered and flapped until he’d fallen through a few branches and clung to a thick one with his clawed hands. Then, shooting a furtive look around to make sure no one saw such an embarrassing sight, he’d been able to examine the...thing in his talons.
Shen Yuan had never killed anything before.
Even spiders that startled him by putting up webs above his shower got captured in take-out containers and brought outside.
Oh well! Laws of nature, ect, ect. Circle of Life! Ect, ect. Ect.
He really shouldn’t be bothered about it. He was a monster now, after all.
He shouldn’t wonder if this pathetic thing had a family that would miss it. Or if having its head exploded was at least painless.
No, what he should be worrying about was - WHAT WAS HE SUPPOSED TO DO WITH IT NOW?
The process of food preparation in Shen Yuan’s life had always been linear.
His family’s Ayi brought home meat from the marketplace -> the cook cooked it -> they ate it.
In the hospital: the nurses brought in the cups of unappealing limited diet food -> he ate it (begrudgingly).
When living on his own: he bought the yogurt or ordered take out -> he ate it.
Looking at the dead animal now, Shen Yuan felt certain he was missing knowledge of a lot of steps needed.
How would he get the fur off? And how was he supposed to start a fire? There hadn’t been a pit in the cave.
Was he... Was he supposed to eat it raw?
The signs all pointed in that direction, but Shen Yuan really would rather be illiterate.
His mind was telling him no! But his body, his body was telling him yes. Yes, and hungry, and his mouth was watering, and man, he really just wanted to sink his teeth in and crack the bones under his--
UGH!
The worst bit was it didn’t taste bad, past the part where the fur was ripped off.
No, wait.
The worst...
It took him a minute to realize what it was. He’d checked out of what was going on. Like, little ol him?? Eating raw flesh?? Nah, couldn’t be. Not happening, not happening.
But. But. Then he realized as he brought the next bite to his face, his eyes met the gaze of a smaller pair of eyes.
He blinked. Stared at the tiny creature clinging to the back of his meal.
Turns out, the sloth-creature DID have a family that would miss it.
------˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚------
In the following days, Shen Yuan figured a lot of stuff out. How to let himself sink into instincts for important things like flight or unpleasant things like hunting. How it was better to give into the weird impulses like singing and displaying his wings, or else the neurotic compulsion would grow and grow until he was plucking out his own feathers. How eating fruit or veggies could perhaps pad out meals, but seemed to offer no nutritional value or relief compared to meat.
Also, he was learning how to care for baby animals.
By far the easiest prey to hunt were the strange, sloth-lemur-ish creatures. Prone to hanging from high sparse branches that made even their slow movements easy to spot from a distance, the first few meals Shen Yuan hunted were all such creatures.
But, what they lacked in camouflage, defense, or speed was made up for in one other way:
EMOTIONAL DAMAGE!!
Why did they all have babies clinging to them?? Surely not all of them were mothers?? Were they like kangaskhan, all prepackaged with a little mini-me upon birth? The males? The spinsters?? The elderly?? Where were they?? Was it just his luck??
Shen Yuan had a strong feeling he wasn’t supposed to care. In fact, he’d explored the land under his cliff and had found plenty of tiny skulls, like his body’s past occupant had found no qualm crunching on the old OR young.
He could admit sometimes he drooled a little when looking at them, but really, weren’t they too pathetic? How could one look into those tiny dark eyes and not feel moved? He wasn’t made of stone!
So. The little habitat.
A lot of his time went into building it. Gathering branches and using his claws to make them into the right shapes to make a sort of mini jungle-gym for the helpless little things to cling to while he was out. Thankfully, two were old enough to have moved on to eating leaves and fruit (when he mashed it up).
The one who was still dependent on milk...
Well. He was a bird person. Not a cow.
There was nothing he could do, in the end. No matter what berries he crushed or goats he scoped out from afar in hopes of spotting something he could try to milk. He found out quickly that such goats were, in reality, twice his size and weight when approached, with hog-like tusks alongside their wickedly curved horns.
As the dawn rose on his fourth day, Shen Yuan flew to a peaceful grove and dug a hole with his claws.
He stopped hunting the sloths after that.
------˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚------
In exploring the bones on the land under his cave, Shen Yuan had noticed a large amount of fish skulls.
With his easy prey no longer an option, it was that discovery that eventually sent him flying in the direction of the distant sea.
He could feel when he left the boundaries of what his hindbrain considered ‘his’ territory; an anxious, twinge in his chest. When he came back through later that day, soggy and unsuccessful, Shen Yuan took his frustration out on the trees at the edge.
He clawed fresh marks over old ones, like a bear marking its terf.
He could only be thankful his instincts didn’t want him to pee on them like a dog.
No, but there was something missing. Some other kind of way to get his scent pressed back into the wood. He dithered for a long time, unable to figure it out. Eventually, with an angry huff, he gave up.
He got better at fishing, learning to not let his feathers get soaked in the briney water, and to just snatch fish from near the surface. When a bad dive or a hidden wave DID manage to flop him in, it took a lot of energy to get back out. Plus, then he had to spend hours going over his feathers to remove the salt. Considering he already had to spend a large part of the day smoothing the weird oily stuff that came out from a gland above his tail all over to keep the feathers in flight shape, it meant he would have little time to do anything else.
He discovered there were more of his kind early on, though he could only spy them from a distance. If he tried to approach, they would take off like they had hell snapping at their heels.
Once, Shen Yuan tried to disguise his approach with stealth. The harpy, with rather dull grayish brown feathers, had screeched so loudly at his ‘Hello’ that Shen Yuan had staggered back and fallen from his rock. By the time he’d gathered himself together, the other harpy was a distant smudge fleeing over the ocean.
Be honest, did he smell? Did he have some hideous deformity only other harpies would recognize?!
His little sloth babies were endearing, but stupid enough to confuse their own arms as branches sometimes. No spark of intelligent life there.
He was bored.
Shen Yuan had always thought of himself as someone content with being alone. He’d rarely ventured from his room, being a high level elite NEET.
But, even then, he’d had his forums full of idiots to educate on their bad takes. The group family chat where he would drop memes and get roasted for them because, aside from his sister, they were all a bunch of normies with boring taste. Deliverymen at his door.
Not this full blown solitude.
Mantou had gotten just large enough to cling to Shen Yuan’s neck, which made it easier to cart it around while he was doing other things. The only problem was that it meant that poor Nugget, still small enough to fit in his palm, would have to be left alone in the branch jungle gym. He had no choice but to roughly fashion one of his bolts of fabric into a sort of sling.
How ridiculous! An apex (hopefully) predator carrying around prey like a reality star carting around a dog in a purse.
Maybe it was better that all the other harpies avoided him like the plague. At least they wouldn’t be subjected to the sight of him rubbing the baby sloth’s tiny tummies when they were fussy or letting them suckle on his clawed fingers to fall asleep when they seemed to have nightmares.
He still wouldn’t bring them along with him when he went out to fly, unconfident as he was with his sling-making ability.
He also was getting really, really tired of fish. Sometimes he would hunt other things, though he tended to eat them outside of his cave. The babies looked like potatoes and were about as sentient, but Shen Yuan still couldn’t stand the thought of their little eyes seeing him peel apart an animal’s flesh.
HE didn’t even want to see it!
Hunting and eating were times he tried his best to let his body go wild as his mind wandered.
------˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚------
The sun was high in the sky, and Shen Yuan was lazing around, casually mushing a yellow fruit between his fingers for the babies’ lunch, when sharp cries pierced the air.
He scrambled to his feet and went to his ‘porch’ to cock his head from side to side until he was able to roughly guess the direction. It seemed to be coming from far off, along the distant edge of his territory that had the densest forest. He hesitated for a while, but his nosiness took over, and he winged down to check it out.
What he found was a surprise. It turned out that the cries reminding him of his own squawking made sense.
There were three harpies in a clearing, two of them a flutter of feathers as one chased the other around to beat with his wings and kick with his claws.
As Shen Yuan silently drew closer, he realized all three were much smaller than himself. Little harpletts? Fletchlings? Youngsters? Whatever the term.
Their colors were dull, the one standing away from the other two a greenish like bracken, the largest attacking one a dark brown, and the smallest one a dull dusty looking black. All of them had spots of white all over their wings, possibly a juvenile indication.
What Shen Yuan didn’t expect was for all of his instincts to light up like an inferno of agitation, like a hot poker directly against his nerves.
HIS territory. There were trespassers in his territory!
Before he could have a more rational thought, he’d tucked into a dive. At the last moment he jolted into awareness, like cold water drenching the fire, and he managed to curl his talons down and tilt his wings to lessen the blow.
Still, his kick landed hard, sending the attacking harplet flying off the other with a cut off screech. Shen Yuan angled his wings to swerve away and glide over to a nearby broken-off tree to land and look down upon the three.
Brain! They were children! Just! little! chicks!
Why did his instincts react with murderous rage so often, ah?! Chill out! Grab a snickers!!
Shen Yuan cleared his throat and folded his wings, keeping his face as neutral as possible because he didn’t know what to expect.
The one he’d clobbered staggered to its feet, tipping one way and another, whilst the one it was attacking turned wide eyes up to Shen Yuan.
First one, then the other, and then belatedly the one he’d knocked silly, all fell to their knees and bowed low, their wings outstretched before them and their foreheads touching the earth.
“Mighty lord of the Qing Jing peak! This Ming Fan beseeches you!” Squeaked the one he’d brained. He pulled off a handily made sling and presented its contents: various green leaves. “I bring an offering of the finest tea, to beg of you the honor of lessons!”
Before Shen Yuan could respond, the greenish brackish one also chirped.
“Lord of green melody and wind song, this Ying-Ying-er beseeches you!” She - and Shen Yuan was horrified to see the preteen girl was as topless as the other two, he swiftly averted his gaze to above her head - placed forth a basket of crystal chunks, unrefined, yet beautiful. “I bring an offering of crystals hand selected by my family from our territory, for the honor of lessons!”
She turned, and made a low encouraging chirp to the last harplet.
“Oh great w-wind dancer and songsmith, this Luo Binghe beseeches you!” The little one stammered. With clear hesitancy, he held forth a few large blue-shelled eggs, recently split. The yolk had made a mess of his hands, which shook with fear. “This worthless one apologizes for the inadequate gift, and begs you to spare his life!”
“Ming Fan broke them!” Ying-Ying-er said. Ming Fan’s pathetic juvenile headcrest (three pin feathers, really) shot up in alarm and agitation.
“Even whole they were unworthy gifts! I was trying to spare the mighty peak lord the effort of driving the unworthy away!” And then so quietly hissed towards the other two that Shen Yuan thought he wasn’t supposed to have heard: “And save the dumb beast’s stupid life before he threw it away!”
Shen Qingqiu was at a total loss. This was clearly the chance he was looking for to have interactions with life more intelligent than a root vegetable, yet he had no idea what the original good’s role here was supposed to be. From context clues, it appeared he’d been some kind of terrifying teacher, but of what? Shen Yuan snatched the context clues from the titles he’d been called.
Singing? Dancing?
Ah, this is why he needed a system! Or at least some knowledge of traditions baked in!
As Shen Yuan thought, the three youngsters seemed to be growing more nervous. The smallest one’s trembling had evolved into shaking, the yolk on his hands mostly forced off by the vibrations. All his feathers were pulled tight to his body, showing a shockingly skinny form.
It was painful to even look at! What was this pitiful scene? Right out of a tear jerker commercial somewhere!
Oh well, oh well, he still had to say no. It would be the safer thing to do.
“This master accepts all offerings on one condition.”
But how could he resist? Aside from the chance at conversations, the runt of the trio looked an inch from starving. Yet he’d intended to give away three plump eggs he must have worked hard to find? Aiyah, such a good little hatchling. Shen Yuan would just have to find a way to make it work.
“It must be made aware this master no longer has an interest in teaching in the exact same method as before - nor does he intend to follow any traditional path.” There, was that enough wiggle room? It was the best he could come up with on short notice. He opened one wing and used it like a fan to waft his face lightly, before covering the lower half of it and staring down at them from the fringe of feathers.
“Consider your answers carefully and meet me here tomorrow when the sun is mid sky with your answers. Dismissed.” He waved his wing, and half turned. Then paused.
“You.” He said, pointing at Luo Binghe. “Remain.”
Luo Binghe fell back into a kowtow. The other two youngsters hesitated, Ying-Ying-er giving him an anxious look until Ming Fan took her arm and pulled her into the forest towards the border.
Shen Yuan glided gently down. Up close the little harpy was in even rougher shape, covered in pin and broken feathers and clearly malnourished. Shen Yuan reached to pull him out of his bow, but the boy flinched so violently that he pulled back to give him some space instead.
“Luo Binghe is not in trouble. He may rise.” Shen Yuan said, trying to maintain the impressive image the original goods clearly held, while really he wished he could just scoop this poor little kid up. Who gave him all those cuts and slashes, ah?
“Stay here. Arrange yourself comfortably. This master will return soon.”
Luo Binghe’s eyes were the size of dinner plates when Shen Yuan dropped a plump wild piglet at his feet and withdrew. He didn’t often have the heart to hunt piglets (their screams were disturbingly emotional), but Luo Binghe needed the nourishment.
He’d expected the other to fall upon the meal with enthusiasm, but the boy was frozen: a statue of skin and bone and feathers.
Shen Yuan’s advanced eyesight zoomed in on the subtle movement of his throat as he swallowed thickly, as if drool were pooling in his mouth. Yet he still didn’t move to tear into it.
A long moment stretched between them.
Shen Yuan frowned.
He wanted to pick up a stick and poke at the little bird boy until he did something.
With another sweeping gaze, he looked at the other’s skinny fingers and tiny cracked claws.
Could it be that he couldn't even tear the flesh of a succulent piglet?
With magnanimous dignity, and imagining cutting up his little sister’s steak, Shen Yuan delivered one graceful kick of his talons - slicing the meal wide. The clearing filled with the scent of blood and - and stuff that really shouldn’t smell good, but did to his new nose and Shen Yuan really didn’t like thinking about it, okay? Luo Binghe trembled like a leaf in the wind, drool on his chin, mixing with...tears? That ran down his face.
Shen Yuan felt his feathers jolt up in shock, and Luo Binghe flinched back in response, squinting his eyes closed and cowering under his arms.
“Ah, none of that.” Shen Yuan said, pulling the boy’s arms away so he could thumb the tears away from his cheeks. Which, he realized a little too late, was not as comforting as hoped when it brought the point of a vicious claw so close to a weak spot. Looking into Luo Binghe’s eyes was like looking into a lake at night, the dark waters reflecting bright stars that rippled with a liquid sheen as more sparkling tears coalesced and dropped warm past his thick lashes onto Shen Yuan’s thumb.
...
...
What a little ladykiller in the making! A baby bishonen! Past the bruises and dirt was the face of an angel. Shen Yuan had never felt the urge to coo at something adorable in his life before. It was probably his new bird body. He restrained himself to wiping away the tears, and then one of the smaller smudges of dirt on the other’s cheek before drawing back.
“Crying at your age, aren’t you embarrassed?” He asked, fanning himself with the curve of his wing and then hiding the lower half of his face with it (what expression was the original goods supposed to have?? Any info would be nice, non-existent system!).
“If Luo Binghe wishes to take lessons with this master, he must develop his strength by eating well. Starting with this.”
A little jolt of panic went through him, though he managed to keep his feathers from reacting.
...What if harpies didn’t actually eat raw food, and Shen Yuan had just been being a weirdo? Or-
“Unless Luo Binghe does not like boar?”
“No!” Luo Binghe interjected, so loudly that both of them were surprised. The harplet wrung his hands, gaze darting between Shen Yuan and the meat.
“Th-the lord brought me? Me, food?” He asked, voice small and unsure. He pointed at himself with a broken claw, and asked again: “For me?”
The way he said it, like he’d never once had kindness extended his way before...
Agh, what was this heartbreaking image?!
“Unless Luo Binghe wants something else.” Shen Yuan said, a little too quickly for the dignified gravitas he’d been trying to roleplay.
He wanted to punch a wall! Who made this little lotus so sad? Where were his parents, and what was this world’s cps hotline?
Fat tears dripped down Luo Binghe’s face once more, this time a flood instead of a trickle.
“S-sorry.” Luo Binghe choked out, roughly shoving the heels of his hands against his cheeks over and over in a losing battle against the tide of tears.
Shen Qingqiu could feel all the feathers in his crest and on his shoulders had ruffled in intense discomfort.
How awkward! His social skills weren’t high enough level for this.
“There, there.” Floundering internally, he reached out and patted the top of the other’s head like one would a little puppy. Unbidden, and certainly unsanctioned, he felt his throat rumble in a long crooning sound, almost like a purr and a trill combined. Luo Binghe’s eyes grew impossibly wider, and he peeped.
Peeped. Like a little chick!
Then the child flushed as red as a kid who’d just called his teacher ‘mom’ by mistake and he hid his face in his wings again.
How could things be so awkward and yet so adorable at the same time? It was time to smoothly excuse himself.
“This master will be back.” Shen Yuan said, leaving the little one in the apparent tattered wreck of his dignity.
------˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚------
He may have gone a little overboard. When he landed back in the little clearing, he had three different types of fruit, an odd scaled snake, and a sturgeon from the river all bundled cumbersomely in his make-shift sling.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one to have gone overboard. Binghe knelt shaking over a pile of vomit, gasping for air.
“Ah.” Shen Yuan said, cursing himself out mentally. “Binghe shouldn’t eat so much so quickly.” Surreptitiously, he tossed the fruits over his shoulder and into the bushes before the boy could turn around. He clearly needed all the nutrition he could get, but delivered more carefully.
“This lowly one apologizes.” Binghe said, miserable, turning on his knees to bow low. “He didn’t mean to waste the food so preciously given!”
“Don’t worry about that.” Shen Yuan dismissed. He drew closer, movements slow after Binghe flinched away and looked to be preparing himself to take a blow.
Ahh! This might as well be one of those commercials with black and white shots of abused puppies in cages with sad crooning music in the background! His heart hurt! Donate to the cause, donate, donate!!
Tentative as a dragonfly landing on water, Shen Yuan placed his scaled hand down between Binghe’s shoulders blades and rubbed his back in the way his er-gege usually did for him during his worst nausea spells.
If anything, this just made Binghe cry harder, though he kept his lips tightly pressed together and just trembled with wide streaming eyes.
At a loss now, and since one arm was already reaching around the smaller harpy to rub his back, Shen Yuan considered trying to pull the other into a hug before he abandoned the notion and pulled completely away.
“Fish or might be easier on your stomach. You can bring these home with you.” He pulled the snake from his sling and draped it across Binghe’s shoulders and then pressed the forearm-size sturgeon into his chest until the little harpy had no choice but to take it.
Seeing his hands close around the armored fish reminded Shen Yuan of the state of his broken and cracked claws, and internally he winced. They looked painful.
“Would your parents be able to cut these for you?” He asked, unaware of the next tragedy landmine he stomped on to.
Luo Binghe’s shoulders hunched, his pathetic and messy feathers flattening tightly to his skin and making him look ever smaller.
“I, this lowly one, doesn’t have any- His mother passed away three cycles ago. And I’ve never had...” He mumbled.
“This master understands.” The shockingly horrible state he was in made more sense now, at least. “Binghe needs not speak upon it more, only answer me this: does he have a home to return to?”
“This lowly one has been staying with the mass flock outside of Cang Qiong flock’s territory.”
“Is that where Binghe picked up all of those wounds?”
There was a long pause. Shen Yuan watched as Luo Binghe seemed to steel himself for something difficult, hands balling into tight fists and throat bobbing in a heavy swallow. Then, after a deep shuddering breath, he spoke in a loud rush, as if he were admitting a horrible crime:
“This Binghe is the lowest in the pecking order!”
Then, despite the bravery the words obviously took, the young harpy closed his eyes and tensed, as if he were too terrified to look at Shen Yuan’s reaction.
Shen Yuan blinked, still shocked by the sudden burst of sound from the meek little lamb.
“Okay.” He said, reflexively. But that wasn’t quite right. “That’s fine.”
Binghe blinked open his eyes, his brow furrowing and lips pursing. Daring, he darted a gaze up at Shen Yuan that seemed to say ‘did you hit your head?’
“...So I deserve it.” Luo Binghe tried to clarify, when Shen Yuan continued to sit there non-violently existing near him.
“No.” Shen Yuan snapped, and winced when Binghe flinched again at the sharp tone.
“No,” he said, more soft. “I can tell Binghe is a good child.”
He probably was doing a very bad job of blending in as a native of this world and as whoever the original goods was supposed to be, but honestly, was he supposed to see a kicked puppy and be expected to smack it too? Without a system to drag him kicking and screaming, or even give him cultural context, he wasn’t going to be a plot point in someone’s revenge fantasy. He’d read too many xianxia books.
Shen Yuan didn’t expect his casual words to have such an impact, so he was unprepared when Luo Binghe’s knees gave out and he collapsed onto the ground.
The power of a potential mentor’s words were too OP! Shen Yuan had to take more care!
“Binghe is overwhelmed.” Shen Yuan said delicately.
Mess! You were being a mess!
“It is best not to linger so low to the earth. Let’s get Binghe settled in first.”
“This lowly one is sorry!” Binghe said, struggling to his feet, his legs quaking like jello flan. “He will not cause any more trouble! He will leave at once!”
“Eh? Didn’t I just say we were going to get you settled in?” Shen Yuan asked, amused. Thoughtfully, he hmmed and walked around the little harplet, mentally calculating. Binghe was a lot bigger than any prey he’d ever carried, caught in the awkward preteen gangliness, but his malnourishment and the hollow bones surely made him lighter than some. Plus, harpies had OP strength in comparison to what Shen Yuan had as a human.
The only question was how to carry the other without harming him. He didn’t look capable of true flight yet - his wings not fully feathered regardless of the amount of broken ones.
He reached out and looped the odd scaled snake around Luo Binghe’s neck more firmly, then took the sturgeon from his hands (having to pull surprisingly hard for an instant) and tucked it back into his sling.
There were not many feathers yet near where Binghe’s arms met his shoulders.
“Hold your arms out to your sides for a moment.” Shen Yuan said, and took off into the air.
------˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚------
It took a while for Binghe to awaken from his faint.
When he did, he took one look around at the cave he found himself in, made a terrified whimpering yelp, and then took off like a bat from the gates of hell.
He stumbled and skittered to a stop right before the sharp drop off of Shen Yuan’s front ‘porch’, feathers all over his body fluffing up to their full height so he looked like he’d stuck his finger in an electrical outlet.
He turned, the whites of his eyes showing as he darted his gaze all around, taking in his new location with a fear Shen Yuan found both confusing and somewhat insulting.
Sure, his cave wasn’t as cushy as his high rise apartment had been, but it was pretty swanky for a monster den! His treasures caught the light perfectly and he kept it very swept with the broom made of his old tail feathers.
Apparently seeing no escape, Binghe fell into a kowtow.
“Please, great lord of Qing Jing! Spare this useless one his life! Don’t eat this Binghe!”
Shen Yuan choked on his own spit.
He hacked up a lung until his eyes streamed and his lungs burned.
Come on! Even the OG didn’t have any human skulls in the bone pit below! What kind of shitty reputation did he have, ah?! False! Surely it was false!
“Binghe!” He said, stern voice cracking like a whip, “This master has no intention of harming you in any way. What kind of ridiculous things are you thinking?”
Luo Binghe ducked his head, looking shamed.
“Apologies! The Binghe heard rum--” He cut himself off, looking embarrassed.
Original Goods, you needed a PR team. Now Shen Yuan had to clean up your mess!
“Hm.” He said, still a little miffed despite himself. It was like offering someone food and having them act like it was a knife.
But ah, the little lotus looked so sincerely regretful, even mixed in with a radiating fear and uncertainty that hadn’t faded away.
...Shen Yuan guessed from his point of view, it was a little odd... A grown man offering treats to eat, then snatching you up and carrying you home to his den.
AHH! It wasn’t what it looked like! He wasn’t some white-van candy-having child snatcher!
Could Shen Yuan cringe into his own body like an ouroboros and disappear forever please?
Fighting off a full body wince, Shen Yuan sat where he was and kept his hands in view.
“Binghe is free to leave, and this master can assist him down if needed.” He said. “However, this master brought him here to recover his strength. Binghe will be safe here, if he wishes to stay during his recovery.”
Binghe blinked at him, his starlit eyes like those of a fawn.
...
...
Earth to Binghe?
Oh no - he’d broken the boy’s brain somehow.
After a few minutes of waiting for a response other than blank doe eyed staring, Shen Yuan went about his afternoon routine, keeping his movements slow and careful.
He was rubbing Nugget’s lil tummy, trying to coax the stubborn little thing to settle after a meal, when he finally sensed movement in the corner of his eyes. He ignored Binghe’s approach like one would a stray cat, waiting for it to come to him.
Finally, there were tentative cracked claws against his arm.
“Hmm?” Shen Yuan hummed, indulgent.
“Is it real?” Binghe asked. The harpy’s voice was small.
Shen Yuan smiled and held out a hand, palm up. After a little pause, Luo Binghe placed his smaller hand against it.
“What does Binghe feel now?” Shen Yuan asked.
“...Warm.”
Well, Shen Yuan was going for textures - like scaly and rough, things hard to replicate in dreams, but that was probably close enough, right? He didn’t want to pinch the boy - he’d been through enough pain already.
“There is no rush. Binghe can take his time on if he believes in this master.” It wasn’t like he’d done anything yet to prove himself as anyone special. “But for now, I’ve cut up some fish, and Binghe should try some.”
Luo Binghe stared at him some more, his little face unreadable.
“En.” He finally said, and smiled - a small hopeful thing that squeezed Shen Yuan’s heart in a vice grip.
Ah, he thought in a flash of fondness, maybe this was why he’d been brought into this world.
BEHIND THE SCENES
SY: -drops slain piglet in front of starving LBH-
LBH, thinking: IS THIS A TEST?? THIS IS A TEST OF MENTAL FORTITUDE! HE’LL KILL ME IF I TRY TO EAT IT!
SY: -slashes the pig open with one kick-
LBH: HE’S THREATENING ME!! IF I MAKE A MOVE TOWARDS THE FOOD I’LL END UP LIKE IT???
SY: hmmm...maybe he doesn’t like pork?
SY: -brings LBH to his den-
LBH: -remembers all the nasty boogieman tales about Qing Jing’s peak lord dragging naughty fletchings to his nest and eating them- ゞ◎Д◎ヾ goodbye world
Readers: Dark gradient hands, feathers in hair, and fangs in a mouth with a black tongue and gums... Isn’t that the same as Mobei-Jun’s design in your wing-fic A--
ME: I’M SORRY, I’M BASIC, I LIKE WHAT I LIKE WHEN IT COMES TO HOT MONSTER MEN