Chapter Text
Up until about five minutes ago, today had been a relatively pleasant and uneventful day.
Kaveh has just wrapped up a relatively large project, and he had been able to snag himself a whole night’s worth of sleep—an occurrence that was a bit rarer than he would’ve liked. A lazy morning, a slow breakfast, before heading to the Akademiya in time to meet with the sage in charge of the project to finalize the plans. All was well—a day of wrapping up things in a nice little bow and getting paid enough that he probably wouldn’t have to fret about rent for a month or three.
He’s just finished with his meeting with the client and is almost out of the Akademiya doors, looking forward to a nice lunch, when his sleeve is suddenly yanked back by an unknown voice.
“Master…Master Kaveh…” He hears someone wheeze, clearly awfully out of breath. Surprised and a bit startled, Kaveh whirls around to find a young woman he doesn't recognize, bent over with her hands resting on her knees as she struggles to catch her breath. His eyes catch on the Amurta symbol emblazoned on her standard-issue Akademiya hat. She winces up at him, her brow glistening with sweat and her cheeks flushed with exertion. “I finally caught up with you! I…I…”
"Are you alright?" Kaveh immediately drops his belongings by his feet in favor of gently grabbing the woman's shoulders and guiding her to the nearest place she could sit—on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the large hall. Passers-by have started giving them strange looks.
The stranger nods, her breath slowly evening. “I…I was sent by the Bimarstan –”
“Bimarstan?!” Kaveh echos. The woman nods and looks up at him. There’s a certain worry in her eyes, one that makes Kaveh’s stomach turn even before she’s even said another word. “Master Tighnari told me to send for you. There’s something wrong with Scribe Alhaitha–”
She does not get another word in before Kaveh dashes away and out the main doors, leaving his belongings behind and completely forgotten in the middle of the Akademiya main hallway.
* * * * *
Kaveh does not remember running to the Bimarstan. He simply remembers the pure, unadulterated worry that had made his chest go cold, and his feet fly over the streets of Sumeru City as he sprints as fast as he physically could all the way to the Bimarstan.
Alhaitham, at the Bimarstan? Surely there is nothing terribly wrong. Surely he needn’t worry so badly, and perhaps it is simply a minor accident, like a broken finger. Most likely nothing is wrong with him, and he is simply there to visit someone else—not that Alhaitham has anyone that he’d visit in the Bimarstan. It is nothing at all, and Kaveh is terribly overreacting.
But it’s the “what if”s that keep him sprinting and sprinting with little regard for how his legs have begun to scream at him to slow down and stop and how his heart seemed to be bent on thudding its way straight out of his chest. He tries his best to think back to earlier that day and the night before, racking his mind for any signs that anything had been wrong with Alhaitham. Cursing to himself, he recalls how Alhaitham had been cooped up in his room all of this morning and deeply regrets not checking up on him.
Kaveh’s heart nearly jumps out of his chest as the Bimarstan finally comes into view. His body screams for him to stop, but he doesn’t; he leaps over the railing and dashes inside, only stopping for the briefest of moments to ask a nurse passing by where he could find the Akademiya scribe before he runs towards the room Alhaitham was in.
But what greets him isn’t some sort of variant of the worst-case-scenario that has been floating around in the depths of Kaveh’s mind all the way from the Akademiya to the Bimarstan – no. In fact, to his absolute relief he finds Alhaitham sitting upright on a bed, with all four limbs intact. Save for the fact that his torso is bare, he looks as he always does; mildly perturbed. Even the way Alhaitham looks up from his book is a bit edged with annoyance over being disturbed – implying that he is just fine.
“Ah, you’re here.” He drawls, gazing straight into Kaveh’s eyes.
All is well, save for –
Save for the pair of gray wings that seem to be spouting out of his back. Kaveh thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him until they rustle slightly; pretty greens and blues reflecting off of the downy feathers.
“Wha –” Kaveh chokes on his question before he even gets the first word out. “Are those…are those real?”
“I believe so.” Alhaitham says, a sardonic edge to his intonation. As if to prove his point, he flexes his wings before letting them relax, resting them against the bed he was sitting on. Kaveh whirls around to face Tighnari, and the fox gives him a small nod. Kaveh looks back at Alhaitham, still stuck in disbelief.
The wings aren't nearly large enough to function as substitute wing gliders, as their span was probably half that of his arms—let alone strong and large enough to lift the scribe off the ground—but they are quite beautiful. Each soft-looking feather seems to shimmer an iridescent shade of blue or teal every time Alhaitham so much as twitches.
But still, the potential aesthetics did not negate the awful implications of suddenly growing wings out of nowhere.
“Well, I won’t lie, I hadn’t considered this possibility when you said he was ill,” Kaveh says, waving a hand in Alhaitham’s general direction.
“I never said he was ill, Kaveh –” Tighnari simply sighs, but he stops himself in whatever it was he was saying in favor of walking over to Alhaitham and pressing a hand onto the scribe’s forehead. “No fever. For all intents and purposes, you seem to be completely healthy.”
“Great. I’ll get going now –” Alhaitham begins to rise to his feet before the fox’s hand on his shoulder keeps him put. The scribe looks less than happy about this.
“Is there a cure? Anything that can be done to fix,” Kaveh waves a hand in Alhaitham’s general direction, “this?”
“Short of amputating them entirely,” Tighnari furrows his brows, looking worried. “There’s not much we can do. We’ll have to wait and see. Alhaitham, what do you think?”
Alhaitham simply shrugs. “I don’t think we need to do anything about ‘this’ at all.”
“Have you gone insane?!” Kaveh exclaims, making the other two men wince, “There’s wings growing out of your back, and you’re just going to sit back and see what happens?”
Alhaitham meets Kaveh’s gaze again, as cool as a cucumber. “Pretty much.”
“Nonsense.” Kaveh scoffs. “I won’t rest until you’re back to normal.”
“And what do you propose, O Great Master Kaveh?”
* * * * *
While Kaveh has never so much as seen the Dendro Archon up close, he is quite sure she'd at least point them in the right direction. Kaveh may be many things, but a fool he is not; he has long figured there is some kind of connection between her and the scribe ever since the old sages had been replaced (albeit he was never quite able to deduce exactly what had happened), so asking her for help wasn’t so much as a longshot, but more of the most logical course of action.
It's not difficult to make Alhaitham look inconspicuous. The worst of it had been cutting holes into Alhaitham’s shirt and then trying to fit his wings through them, but the rest was quite easy. The wings are small enough to be hidden underneath the thick black cloak he always has on and could easily be mistaken for a pack of some sort strapped to his back. And according to the scribe, keeping his wings folded for an extended period of time took the same amount of energy out of him as keeping his arm bent at the elbow would, so keeping them like that wasn’t a problem.
Therefore, all the odd looks they fetch on their way to the Dendro Archon’s abode are products of Kaveh lecturing Alhaitham about caring more and being more conscientious of the absurdity of certain situations, the scribe silently following behind him, occasionally chiming in with a quip that only set off the older man further.
However, when they finally reach the Sanctuary of Surasthana and step inside, they're not met with the small, fair-haired child that Kaveh has heard of in stories, but –
Round blue eyes and an impossibly large hat, the small man dressed in Inazuman garb looks a bit out of place inside the god’s abode, but his relaxed body language implies that he at least believes he belonged there.
“Hey, wasn’t he the Vahumana representative in the Interdarshan championship?” Kaveh murmurs, tilting his chin slightly in Alhaitham’s direction.
"I can hear you, you know," says Hat Guy, eyes narrowed at Kaveh.
“My apologies." Kaveh pauses briefly to clear his throat. “We’re here to see Lesser Lord Kusanali. A strange thing has happened with my er, friend here. See –”
Kaveh doesn’t get to finish his sentence. Hat guy simply walks away.
“Hey –” Kaveh starts after him, only for a hand on his shoulder to stop him. He glances behind him to meet Alhaitham’s gaze, and the younger man shakes his head.
“Let him go. Let’s just wait for Lesser Lord Kusanali.”
The Sanctuary of Surasthana is a strange, vaguely unsettling place, making Kaveh feel as if he were standing upon a precipice of some sort where, should he fall, he might lose himself to something beyond his comprehension, but he stays put. The lengths he is going for Alhaitham—really, could he have not taken more care to not get himself stuck with a pair of wings?
His curiosity about Alhaitham’s predicament finally gets the best of him, and in a feeble, half-hearted attempt to talk away the uncomfortable feeling that the Sanctuary’s strange ambiance was inducing, he turns to Alhaitham. “How did you even get those wings? Why didn’t you say anything in the morning?”
“There wasn’t anything you could’ve done about it.” Alhaitham replies simply, as if he were talking about catching a cold and not about how he had simply sprouted wings one morning.
“Welcome, Alhaitham and Kaveh.” A young girl’s voice floats past them before Kaveh can retort. Kaveh whirls to the side to find who he presumed to be the Dendro Archon herself, a stone’s throw away, slowly making her way over to the pair.
He’s heard tales about how Lesser Lord Kusanali took the form of a young girl, but he isn’t quite sure what he expected. Her wide, kind eyes and the small smile on her lips do well for easing the uncomfortable feeling in his gut.
“Lesser Lord Kusanali,” Kaveh starts with a nod. He considers bending down to be closer to her height, but he doesn’t out of fear of accidentally disrespecting her. “We need your help.”
“I’ll try my very best.” The archon says, placing a hand on her heart, “But first, why don’t you two make yourselves at home?”
* * * * *
For how easy it was to get inside the Sanctuary of Surasthana, Kaveh is left with the feeling that not very many people visited the Dendro Archon. Still, they find themselves sitting at a green table and green chairs that seem to be made of pure dendro energy, and it’s then that Alhaitham finally tells the tale of his best guess as to how he had ended up with a pair of wings.
A couple days ago, Alhaitham had been out in the desert to check up on some research project or another, and on his way back to Aaru village, he finds a small exotic bird flat on its back in the middle of the hot sandy dunes during the hottest hours of the day. Finding it odd that a bird with the plumage of a jungle bird would find its way so far out into the desert, only to drop dead due to exhaustion, and yet there were no scavengers in sight, Alhaitham walks up and crouches down next to the bird. As it turns out, the bird wasn’t dead and had simply passed out from heat exhaustion.
Alhaitham picks the creature up, walks to the closest source of shade he could find, and spends an hour underneath the midday desert sun feeding the creature food and water from his rations until it is well enough to fly off on its own.
“I never took you for the type to care for anything but yourself.” Kaveh remarks in the middle of Alhaitham’s story. “Giving your rations to a bird that might very well be dead in the middle of a desert was foolish.”
“Didn’t you give all your supplies to a group of foxes during the Interdarshan Championship?” Alhaitham smoothly replies. Kaveh scrunches up his nose.
“So you’re telling me that the one time you thought of something other than yourself, you were given wings –”
Alhaitham promptly turns his attention away from Kaveh and continues with the rest of his story.
When the scribe wakes up the next morning unable to sleep on his back because of the two new limbs he had grown during the night, he makes an educated guess as to what had happened and spends the morning sifting through all the books on the topic of local legends and myths as he can, but is unable to find something conclusive. Either way, that bird wasn’t just a bird.
“Drastic outcomes require drastic explanations.” Alhaitham explains, crossing his arms in front of his chest as if he were preemptively defending his mythos-filled train of thought.
“Interesting.” Lesser Lord Kusanali hums, bringing a small hand up to her chin in a thoughtful expression. “From what I was able to gather from your story, the bird that gave you the wings was most likely a yazata of some kind, and your wings are gifts for saving it.”
“I see.” Alhaitham says, his brows already furrowed in thought.
Kaveh has only heard fragmented bits and pieces of stories of the yazata—enough for him to associate the name with mythological beings, but nothing enough to be actually useful to Alahitham’s predicament. All he knows is that they were powerful beings and had ties with divinity in some way or another.
“As for solving your problem, well,” Lesser Lord Kusanali blinks at the two of them, her green eyes wide. “Your best chance would be to find this yazata and ask it to take your gift back. It would also explain why the wings have caused you very little pain and discomfort. After all, it wouldn't be a very good gift if the recipient found it unbearable to receive, would it?”
“So you’re saying that the best solution would be to go to the desert, find one of the many birds that just so happened to be a yazata, and ask it to maybe take its gift back?” Kaveh repeats almost incredulously. Seemingly impervious to how unimpressed Kaveh was, Lesser Lord Kusanali nods with a cheery hum.
“But the chances of finding the same bird again are almost zero!” Kaveh exclaims. Alhaitham opens his mouth to say something—probably something along the lines of how birds that looked like that specific bird are rare in the desert—but Kaveh pays him no heed and turns back to the Dendro Archon, who is watching him intently. “Is there anything else we can do? Is there anything you can do?"
“I’m afraid not.” Lesser Lord Kusanali shakes her head, her side ponytail swaying back and forth. “I could search in my records for similar cases, but that might take some time.” After all, there are more pressing matters in Sumeru than the Akademiya scribe growing wings, is left unsaid.
It doesn't take much longer before their conversation with the Dendro Archon ends, and they get up to leave.
They find the Vahumana representative near the entrance to the Sanctuary of Surasthana again, idly fiddling with what appeared to be a cloth…doll? Kaveh frowns at the lump of fabric in the smaller man’s hands, but the doll disappears among the folds of his clothes as their footsteps grow near. Kaveh pretends to have not noticed.
He waits until Hat Guy is about a few steps away before he looks at him, and once the smaller man notices his gaze, he speaks up. “Say, you work with the Dendro Archon, do you not?”
Kaveh gets a glare in response, but Hat Guy doesn’t deny it, so he keeps going.
"I know we’ve barely met, but would you be so kind as to further inquire on our behalf? As you can see, we’re in a bit of a dire situation, and I'm going to need a better explanation than…that." Kaveh says, vaguely gesturing in Alhaitham’s direction. “No disrespect to Lesser Lord Kusanali, of course.”
"We all need a lot of things, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're gonna get what we want, does it?" Hat Guy says flatly, narrowing his eyes at him.
"Well, surely you can pass a message on to the archon –"
Hat Guy interrupts Kaveh with a snort. "Why should I give a fuck?"
Kaveh is absolutely flabbergasted by the audacity of this hat guy, and he lives with Alhaitham. "I beg your pardon?"
"Then beg." Hat Guy simply replies, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Alhaitham thankfully drags Kaveh away before a proper squabble breaks out between the two of them.
* * * * *
When Kaveh goes to check on Alhaitham the next morning, he finds his junior's bed empty. Save for a bright red blotch staining the sheets with blood, that is.
"Alhaitham?" Kaveh calls out, not really giving a care about how worried he must've sounded with that one name. He looks around, but there's no scribe in sight, which does nothing to ease the unsettling anxiety now gnawing at his gut. "Alhaitham, where are you?"
“Here.”
Kaveh follows the direction of Alhaitham’s voice. He finds him in the bathroom, shirtless as he stands in front of the mirror mounted on the wall. Alhaitham’s gaze is passive, maybe a bit analytical in the way he turns, looking over his shoulder at the mirror as he moves his wings with all the grace of someone who’s had them for no longer than a day. Kaveh winces as one of Alhaitham’s wings accidentally knocks a bottle of lotion down the counter it had been sitting on, sending it rolling across the floor.
Kaveh’s eyes fall onto the skin between and around Alhaitham’s wings, and the dried blood crusts on the skin. So that’s where the blood came from. There’s a wet rag in Alhaitham’s hand, partially stained with red, presumably from the younger man’s attempts to wipe the blood away.
“Come here,” Kaveh says softly as he wraps a hand around Alhaitham’s upper arm, tugging lightly. “Let’s get you cleaned up. You’ll never get the blood off like that.”
Alhaitham looks over at Kaveh, and he must’ve seen something on his senior’s face, because he doesn’t protest or ignore him; he simply tosses the rag he had been using into the sink. He’s surprisingly pliant with how he lets Kaveh guide him back to his bedroom.
"Turn around." Kaveh commands, and Alhaitham complies, wordlessly turning around. Sure enough, there's a fair bit of dried blood rimming where Alhaitham's skin has split for the wings. Kaveh winces. It looks like it hurts.
“Sit down.” He commands gently as he wraps a hand around Alhaitham’s upper arm and pulls him to sit down in his study chair. Alhaitham still says nothing and does as Kaveh says. Maybe whatever it was that gave him wings also made Alhaitham less frustrating. Not that Kaveh is complaining or anything.
Fetching a bottle of the strongest alcoholic drink he could find in their cupboard and fishing spare bandages and a clean cloth he had stowed away at the very back of his closet for a rainy day, Kaveh quickly makes his way back to find Alhaitham still in the spot he had put him in, but now with a book.
“This might hurt a little.” Kaveh warns as he uncorks the bottle, internally bemoaning the loss of a perfectly good drink as he wets the cloth and begins to dab at Alhaitham’s skin. The younger man flinches, his back muscles tensing as the cloth grazes the very edge of where his skin meets the wings, and Kaveh instantly pulls back. “Are you alright?”
Alhaitham gives a soft hum, and Kaveh continues his work of wiping away the dried blood, working slowly near the base of Alhaitham’s wings.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” Kaveh asks in turn, and Alhaitham gives a grunt that says it didn’t. He’s wiped enough of the blood away from his junior’s skin to now know that the skin around his wings doesn’t seem swollen, bruised, or irritated in the slightest—only the very edges that have broken to make room for his wings look slightly red. For a “gift” that added extra appendages to a grown human’s body, it was remarkably kind and gentle. Little blessings, Kaveh supposes.
“Are you done yet?” Alhaitham murmurs halfway through.
Kaveh scoffs, bewildered at the absolute audacity of this man. “This is the thanks you give me."
“Kaveh, it’s fine–”
“Mind telling me how you’re going to clean the blood off? Or are you happy with being covered in dry blood?” With a sharp exhale, Kaveh drops the now maroon and brown cloth onto the ground, and he sits back on his heels, glaring at the back of Alhaitham’s head.
Alhaitham says nothing to this and simply looks back down at the book in his hands.
“We need to get you fixed," Kaveh declares. Alhaitham simply turns a page.
* * * * *
Kaveh makes sure to take the time to seek out the sages and the current Acting Grand Sage that day, notifying them that the scribe had fallen terribly ill and would not be able to come to work for a few days. If they could figure out a solution without Alhaitham ever stepping outside their shared abode, then, well, that would be the most optimal.
He does, however, take the opportunity to sift through the entirety of the House of Daena’s section on ancient Sumerian mythos and dendro constructs and comes home that day with a small wagon full of books, much to the librarian’s chagrin. It’s only with promises of many favors and no small amount of pleading that he’s able to bring so many books out of the House of Daena. Not to mention, wheeling the wagon full of books leaves him winded; more than once he needs to pause halfway home to catch his breath and rest for a few minutes.
“First, we need to understand the problem. Then we can begin to come up with potential solutions.” Kaveh watches Mehrak fly back and forth, picking up the books from the wagon outside and neatly arranging them into little stacks in the middle of the living room. On her way back to the wagon, Kaveh gives her a little pat on the head, eliciting happy beeps from the automated case.
“I highly doubt we’ll find anything that’ll be useful, so we’ll probably have to take another trip to the House of Daena at some point.” Kaveh peers at Alhaitham from the periphery of his vision and at the pair of fluffy wings sticking out from his back, “Or I will. Either way, didn’t you say you did some reading yesterday morning?”
“I didn’t find very much. Then again, I hadn’t gone looking for literature on yazatas in particular.” Alhaitham says, thoughtfully cupping his chin in his hand. Kaveh nods in acknowledgement. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
They spend the entire day reading and taking notes on anything they find vaguely relevant.
It has been a long time since Kaveh and Alhaitham had worked on something together. And it’s familiar, in a bittersweet way, bringing back memories of a time long gone, when things were simpler and happier. Either way, Kaveh would be lying if he said he doesn’t find the endeavor somewhat enjoyable.
And besides, while he didn’t quite like that his roommate has been forcefully given a pair of wings, he does find it amusing how Alhaitham seems to unconsciously ruffle his wings every time he stumbles across something interesting in the book he is reading.
* * * * *
One thing Kaveh quickly learns about Alhaitham’s new wings is that they are very, very high-maintenance as far as limbs went.
For one, if the blood that had shown up on Alhaitham’s sheets the first night had been any indication, Kaveh quickly learns that Alhaitham’s wings keep growing as the days go on. They’ve only sprouted less than a week ago, and they’ve already nearly eclipsed the span of his arms. Thankfully, for the most part, Alhaitham keeps his wings folded and behind his back for most of the day, so the size isn’t too much of an issue—at least not yet. Kaveh adds cleaning the dried blood off of Alhaitham’s back to his morning routine, right after washing up himself and right before breakfast.
Kaveh doesn’t mind that, save for the fact that they are now running low on their strongest liquors. No, what he does mind was all the shedding.
He has no idea what was going on with Alhaitham’s wings, nor was he an expert in ornithology by any measure, but he was quite sure that regular birds did not shed as many feathers as this man did. From the third day onwards, Kaveh can hardly find a corner in the house that didn’t have feathers everywhere—even places that Alhaitham never frequented, like Kaveh’s room. Longer, glossier feathers and smaller, fluffy feathers no longer than a nail; it didn’t matter, they were everywhere.
Alhaitham doesn’t even seem to notice and is completely content in sitting in his own feathery mess. Or perhaps he is simply waiting until Kaveh’s patience has run thin and the older man took to cleaning the house himself.
Kaveh cannot wait until they figure out a solution to the whole wing problem.
In an attempt to solve this problem as quickly as possible, Kaveh falls into a routine he himself knows is quite unhealthy: he spends the days trying to care for Alhaitham, wiping the blood off of his back whenever the skin splits in between spending hours pouring over all the books on the topic he could get his hands on, and then spending his nights on his own work, trying to finish up projects as fast as humanly possible.
It’s not healthy in the slightest, but Kaveh tells himself he’s already used to all-nighters and horrible work hours and that he should be able to handle it just fine.
And for the most part, save for the growing frustration that they seemed to be no closer to a solution than they had been on day one, he does.
Alhaitham himself seems to be quite unbothered with the whole thing, save for the frustration of occasionally accidentally knocking over things with his wings. In fact, suddenly growing wings hardly seemed to have changed him at all, save for having a slightly increased appetite and an aversion to wearing shirts—not that Kaveh was complaining too much about that one, although he’d never admit that one out loud.
In fact, Alhaitham seems to be quite content with his wings and treats their research as more of a recreational thing than an actual endeavor to find a solution for the problem on his back.
But at least he seems to be aware—and at least tangentially grateful—for what Kaveh is doing for him. Lonely mornings where Kaveh was left to hunt for a breakfast to fill himself with were now replaced with him waking up to a complete breakfast table, and Alhaitham at least puts his damned books back in their place now that there are piles upon piles of books on Sumerian mythos in every corner of their house. More than once does Kaveh wake up from an all-nighter to find his ink bottles plugged to keep them from drying, his quill back in its place, and his notes neatly organized in small stacks around him.
It’s nice, almost. Save for the feathery problem on Alhaitham’s back, that is.
* * * * *
But the days stretch into a week, and the week quickly becomes a month. And neither of them are any closer to a solution for Alhaitham’s wing problem. Worse yet, Alhaitham’s wings have grown to double the size they had been. Soft, downy feathers have been replaced with longer, glossier feathers that look more suitable for actually flying.
They’re sitting at the breakfast table one morning, enjoying a quiet meal of coffee, bread, cheese, and other various pastries, when Alhaitham suggests that they should ignore the dilemma for the time being. Pretending the two wings awkwardly sticking out from either side of the chair he was sitting on weren’t a thing.
“So you just want to..." Kaveh drops the morsel he had been holding in favor of waving his hand in Alhaitham’s general direction, “Act like those aren’t on your back?”
“Now that they’re here, I might as well make the best of them, wouldn’t you say?” Alhaitham calmly takes a sip of his coffee, peering at Kaveh over the rim of his cup. There’s a twinkle in his eye, one that Kaveh can’t quite decipher.
“What use?"
“I don’t know, what are wings usually used for, Kaveh?” Is his immediate, sardonic response.
Kaveh frowns at him. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try to actually fly with them, are you?”
Alhaitham gives a small shrug. “The idea of not having to walk to the Akademiya nearly every day is appealing.
“You live five minutes away."
“Could be less.” Alhaitham hums, reaching for another pastry.
“You’re unbelievable.” Kaveh rolls his eyes. “What if you fall?”
In response, Alhaitham ruffles his wings. There’s a slight mischievous uptick to his lips as he watches Kaveh seethe. “Suit yourself. But don’t come crying to me if you fall and break your legs.”
“I don’t recall ever doing so in the first place.”
“You know what I mean,” Kaveh says through gritted teeth. He takes a moment to sit back in his seat, arms crossed in front of his chest, before saying, “You know what? I’m coming with you.”
“What?” Alhaitham sounds marginally surprised for reasons beyond Kaveh’s understanding.
“The first time you go flying, I’m coming with you. You need all the help you can get.” Kaveh nods to himself before leaning forward to take another bite of his breakfast. “I’m not letting you go out there on your own.”
* * * * *
They settle on that night, hoping the relative darkness of the night will give them a fair degree of privacy. Kaveh hastily packs Mehrak with food and drinks before they set off. No amount of “I’m not a child, Kaveh.” and “What are you even looking to achieve?” dissuades the older man from trailing behind Alhaitham when they head out that night, and no amount of Kaveh’s fussing convinces Alhaitham to wrap his wings in a dark blanket before they reach their destination; a small area right outside the outskirts of Sumeru City, at the edge of the jungle.
Thankfully, no one seems to spot them as they sneak their way to their spot, as it is late enough for almost all of the inhabitants of the city to be holed up in the safety of their houses, most likely fast asleep.
“I can’t believe you’re serious about this,” Kaveh mumbles as he sets Mehrak down at the base of the hill as he watches Alhaitham climb his way up the steep slope, a clear purpose pushing him to walk up as fast as he can. Kaveh had suggested getting Mehrak to scan the various hills in the area to find the best one for flight practice without being tall enough to seriously risk breaking limbs, but no, Alhaitham just had to pick the tallest one in their vicinity.
Alhaitham is silent as he finally makes his way to the top of the hill, Kaveh trailing closely behind him. It’s pretty tall, as far as hills go, with the slope on one side being significantly sharper than the other, making the top of the hill a perfect jumping-off point.
Still, it is easy to see how one might break a limb or three if they fell off the edge at a bad angle. In fact, now that Kaveh stands underneath said ledge and found the top to be a head or two taller than him, it is safe to assume that even if one took extra precautions when hitting the ground, landing would undoubtedly hurt.
Alhaitham peers over the edge before calmly looking ahead of him, flexing his wings to their full span. A far cry from the small feathery things that had been planted on Alhaitham’s back on the first day he had been given them, they are now quite large, far eclipsing his arm span and then some. Getting rid of them now will be quite the challenge.
But for the briefest of moments, Kaveh wonders what the wings might look like fully grown, assuming they hadn’t reached their full size yet. As they stood now, well, they were quite mesmerizing underneath the silvery moonlight, all shiny grays, blues, and greens glinting dimly in the night like little feathery stars.
Alhaitham begins to flap his wings in earnest—perhaps for the first time he has gotten them. Still, he’s unable to lift himself off the ground even slightly; the only thing he's able to achieve with the unsynchronized, clearly unpracticed flapping of his wings is creating a strong gust of wind that tousles Kaveh’s hair and blows dirt into his eyes.
“Are you done being foolish now?” Kaveh asks, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice as he plucks a leaf out of his own hair. “Maybe they’re not big enough yet.”
“I measured them this morning. According to my calculations, they should be more than enough to lift my body weight.” Alhaitham says, and Kaveh isn’t the least bit surprised. He probably would’ve done the same before attempting such a feat.
That didn’t mean he’s happy with Alhaitham’s decision, though. “Theory and practice are two different things, Alhaitham."
“And that’s why we’re here on this hill, Kaveh.” Alhaitham looks away from Kaveh, back towards the ledge, and calmly peers down the ledge below. If he’s apprehensive, he doesn’t show it, but Kaveh thinks he can see a certain tenseness to Alhaitham’s shoulders that implies that he is at least a bit nervous. “Well, here goes nothing.”
Alhaitham takes a few steps back from the ledge before sprinting off the edge, leaping into the air with his wings outstretched wide.
For a brief moment, Kaveh hopes with bated breath that with Alhaitham’s wings being a gift from a minor deity, he'll be able to miraculously fly with them, despite being completely unpracticed. And for a second, Kaveh lets himself believe he was right as Alhaitham manages to flap his wings once, twice, momentarily staying afloat in the air –
– before he messes up and ends up falling to the ground like a bag of rocks.
“Alhaitham!!” Kaveh exclaims, sprinting down the hill and running over to where Alhaitham has fallen into a tangled mess of limbs and wings. Alhaitham’s head pokes out from underneath his wings as he sits up straight, looking quite alright, if not a bit ruffled, his hair a silvery, tousled mess of twigs and leaves. Still, Kaveh does not let out the nervous breath he had been holding until his junior finally rises to his feet, all six limbs seemingly unbroken and not sprained.
“I’m fine, Kaveh.” Alhaitham breathes, seemingly a bit miffed over how worried his senior is. He shakes his wings, making them rustle as he tries to pry all the leaves and sticks he’s managed to lodge between his feathers with his crash landing. With a huff, Kaveh makes his way behind Alhaitham and plucks the debris out of his wings. The feathers are quite soft, and Alhaitham’s wings feel strong underneath his touch, Kaveh thinks, and he fights the vague urge to run his fingers through the feathers.
Once he’s made sure he hasn't missed any spare twigs among Alhaitham’s wings, Kaveh steps back with a hum. Alhaitham gives his senior a little nod over his shoulder. “Thank you.”
“You’re wel – wait.” Kaveh blinks in surprise as Alhaitham rises to his feet, stretching his wings, and looks back up at the hill with a look of determination in his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re looking to try again.”
“You really thought I was done?” Alhaitham asks simply as he flexes his wings and rolls his shoulders in preparation for his next ‘flight’.
“Of course! Alhaitham, wings or no wings, this is dangerous –”
A sudden hand on Kaveh’s cheek catches him by surprise, effectively silencing whatever it was he had to say before he could even say it. Alhaitham meets his eyes, his gaze steely. “I’ll be fine, Kaveh.”
Kaveh gapes for a tense breath or three before looking away, clearing his throat. “Suit yourself. But don't tell me I didn't say so when you break a leg.”
Alhaitham chuckles lowly, and the sound of his laughter reverberates in Kaveh’s chest. “Alright.”
Kaveh picks Mehrak up and plops down on top of a log not too far away—close enough to keep an eye on Alhaitham but not too close to be in range of a potential crash landing. He hears Mehrak boop and beep at him, trying to communicate something, but he absentmindedly pats her in favor of watching Alhaitham, not wanting to take his eyes off of his junior.
He watches with bated breath as Alhaitham makes his way to the top again and stares out to nowhere in particular, brows furrowed with concentration as he slowly spreads his wings and moves them up and down at the same time, probably trying to build his muscle memory of moving them at the same time, and tries again.
It turns out that the first time he tried flying and stayed afloat for a second, it was beginner's luck, because in most attempts, Alhaitham doesn’t manage to do much more than fall to the ground like any other wingless human. There is no doubt in Kaveh’s mind that his junior will be covered in bruises and scrapes by the end of their little excursion.
Every so often, Alhaitham stops his vicious cycle of jumping, flapping, and falling to note something down on a notebook kept at the base of the hill. Kaveh loses count of how many nasty falls his junior has before he manages to synchronize the flaps of his wings in a way that keeps him afloat for more than one and a half seconds.
The small wins seem to encourage Alhaitham; with every small step of progress, his energy seems to return two-fold, despite the fact that flying is most likely incredibly strenuous for him and he’d been going at it for what was probably an hour or two by now. Staying afloat for a bit slowly turns into being able to fly a small distance, with each attempt slowly improving on Alhaitham’s meager aerial abilities.
Kaveh did bring a sketchbook with him to pass the time, but he can’t bring himself to look away from his junior. Partly out of worry, but he’d be lying if he said the sight of Alhaitham in the air, suspended by nothing but his wings, stole his breath away in ways he couldn’t quite describe.
By the time Alhaitham plops down next to Kaveh, panting heavily and covered in a thin layer of sweat from all the exertion, he’s able to consistently fly a couple meters away from the edge of the hill and land softly on the ground below. He’s clearly glowing with pride over being able to pick up the skill so quickly. Kaveh is proud of him too, but he doesn’t say that out loud.
“Are you done now?” Kaveh asks, his voice soft as he settles Mehrak on his lap, opens her, and pulls out the flask of harra fruit juice he had brought with him. Alhaitham silently accepts the proffered drink, breathing his thanks before downing half the drink in one go.
With a soft sigh of his own, Kaveh hands Alhaitham the sandwich he had the good sense to bring with him, and Alhaitham accepts that too, grateful in the way he nods at Kaveh before he hungrily bites down on the food. Kaveh takes out his own sandwich, splits it in half, wraps one half, and puts it back, just in case Alhaitham’s sandwich wasn’t enough for him. He takes a swig of his own from the juice before getting started on his own meal.
They spent the next hour sitting side by side with breakfasts in hand, watching the sunrise.