Chapter Text
“These wings are so itchy, bro,” Wemmbu whines into the quiet of the jungle night, true to his word, bending one hand awkwardly over his shoulder to scratch disgruntledly at the appendages. He flicks his tail in irritation, a tail which has slowly been gaining more plumage as well and thickening at the base. “It’s such a hassle.”
Egg perks up from his spot across the room, where he’s scratching light notes into a journal. The angel’s own wings shuffle behind him in a cacophonous onslaught of ruffling. He hums before turning back to his writing, “I thought you said last week that they were awesome.”
Simply months, maybe even weeks, ago, Wemmbu hadn’t had this problem— couldn’t even imagine it, really. He’s always had wings, but all the feathers were new and their structure had changed as well: his body’s adaptation to the stress of elytra-macing. When every fight used to leave Wemmbu stumbling over his feet with voidal exhaust, and the feathered wings were additions that Wemmbu had to consciously add and maintain during the fight, his species’ natural inclination to adapt seemed a godsend when it kicked in. They were impressive things: large, sharp, stiff, and beautiful, and, most importantly, free of energy drain past the first hump of his natural form adapting to the limbs and altercations. Yet they proved to have their downsides, too.
Still, it was a wonder to Wemmbu that his body could produce wings that could carry his body weight, his old wings, even when he shifted the limbs to be larger, had struggled to carry him for long without the assistance of an elytra. They had seemed vestigial, but now they carried purpose.
“They are awesome,” Wemmbu insists, stretching a leg out in front of him and dropping both his hands into his lap. “I mean, their existence alone saves me so much energy in fights, but I wasn’t expecting them to be this annoying.”
To prove his point, the purple voidling flaps his wings violently from where he sits in the center of their hut, sharpening the blade of his netherite axe.
A part of him mourns the loss of his childhood wings, cold leather and scales that Minute would wash gently with water. It feels like giving up that part of him, and it makes the distance between them feel even greater.
Wemmbu would never admit out loud that he missed the older man.
They fell into a comfortable silence broken by the strange rhythm of metal striking the file and pen meeting paper. Outside, the wind howls against the jungle wood of their house. It would be the perfect evening if not for the constant itch and even slight stinging pressure that builds where the skin of his wings has been pitched, the nerves that flare through his wings burning lightly. The purple teenager grunts and shuffles uncomfortably on the carpet, shaking his wings near constantly in an attempt to settle the pain.
There’s a rustle of expensive ass fabric as Egg stands up, dramatically swiping off nonexistent dirt. He takes a couple of steps closer to the voidling; his face scrunched in consideration.
“You said your wings are itchy, right?”
”Uh, yeah,” He nods, “I dunno’ what could’ve happened. They haven’t gotten injured since they’ve ‘come in’ come in, y’know?”
There’s a pause where Egg finally reaches the chaos-born and studies his wings from a safe distance.
The angel sighs.
“Bro, have you preened your feathers once since they’ve grown?”
”…Huh?”
“Oh my god,” Egg huffs a laugh, “do you use your brain, bro? Are we serious right now?”
Wemmbu looks a little astonished, his hand hovering above the axe with the file ready to strike again. He sends a look over his shoulder to glance at the messy wings behind him, only to see that there are multiple feathers indeed askew, broken, and some even growing new. The chaos-born knows this should have been obvious, but give him some grace. Before the feathers were a permanent addition, they were temporary and hadn’t required any form of maintenance.
“I don’t…” He blushes, healthy feathers fluffing instinctively with his embarrassment and disturbing the irritated skin, making the teenager wince. He hates weakness, so he can’t just admit that he doesn’t know how to preen— that in all of his years he’s never touched another living thing's feathers despite his time with Egg.
With a soft murmur of faux exasperation, Egg seems to know what he means, even if he doesn’t say it. He approaches with confidence, crouching down just at the edge of Wemmbu’s peripheral vision, and reaches an expectant, gentle hand out. “Do you need some tips?”
Wemmbu almost refuses,— the sour denial lies on the tip of his tongue— but his best friend has multiple wings: 2 pairs attached to his back and another pair sprouting where his ears should be. The angel’s wings always shine with a soft, clean glow, and he knows its because the angel spends multiple hours cleaning the wings each day. Still, turning around and trusting his friend would mean admitting that he needs help to get his wings to such a state, to a state like Egg’s or Parrot’s, or even more resembling Theobald’s, whose feathers are almost always slightly askew thanks to battle, but who still takes great pride in those healthy feathers.
Looking back at his wings, Wemmbu knows that his wings are lackluster compared to the brilliant, iridescent wings that he originally donned.
The voidling groans, swishing his tail grumpily before thrusting one large wing in the direction of Egg, gifting his friend with a face-full of feathers.
The angel sputters before gently grabbing the first digit and guiding the wings to a comfortable distance from his body.
Eggchan, ever patient with his demonic friend, guides him through the entire process with a melancholic voice: from the process of running gentle hands down the span of the wings, dislocating and shaking out old feathers, and locating what he calls “pin feathers” and “blood feathers” under his breath.
Most of this makes no sense to Wemmbu, but he listens anyway, resting his chin on one hand and braiding a loose strand of hair.
Then the angel pulls out a misting bottle, and Wemmbu tilts his head.
“Why do you have that?” He asks, pointing a talon-blackened finger at the plastic.
“To wet your feathers,” Egg hums, shaking the bottle, “it helps soften the keratin, which makes it easier to preen, and it promotes healthy feather growth.”
Wemmbu is half paying attention, but, mostly, he’s distracted by the satisfaction that the cleaning brings. The soothing sensation of dirt being picked from under feathers and pins being gently massaged between skilled fingers until they’re broken; brilliant and new feathers sprouting from their keratin casings. Occasionally, the anger stumbles upon particularly sensitive areas of his wings, that sting upon pressure, but he always removes his hands when the demonic-voidling twitches away.
Egg explains that those are blood feathers, new pin feathers that are still growing, blood is supplied to the quill to nourish the feather, thus making it sensitive and painful to squeeze. “It is better to leave them alone,” he says. "We'll come back to them in a week, then they should be ready.”
They sit in silence for a while after that. Wemmbu watches the moonlight litter the ground in rays through dense foliage, relaxed by the soothing fingers that lace themselves through violet feathers. He’s almost in a half conscious trance when he feels those fingers stop halfway through the wings, and the Angel’s other hand-- soft, with no callouses-- gently grabs his other wing, maneuvering it in front of the purple voidling.
“What?” Wemmbu hums, sleepily, peering back at his companion.
“I’m not doing all this work bro,” Egg refutes. Then nods at Wemmbu, “You’re going to need to learn to groom your own feathers. I cannot help you all the time.”
“Why not?” He doesn’t pout. Truly, despite what Egg would say.
“I’m not always going to be here, Wemmbu, and I have my own wings to do. Think of it like doing your hair.”
Wemmbu grumbles, but grabs his own wings perhaps a little rougher than he probably should be. Rubbing his palm through the feathers in sections, watching broken feathers dislodge and fall to the floor and clenching his teeth when he runs over a patch of blood feathers.
He throws his hand back blindly, searching for the misting bottle and accidentally smacking Egg in the process. His friend let's out an alarmed grunt before handing the purple demon the bottle. Wemmbu can practically feel the Angel’s eyes roll.
“This is so dumb,” he murmurs under his breath half-heartedly, misting cold water over indigo feathers and watching the droplets form.
He’s only a quarter of the way through dislodging dirt from his wings when he hears another bottle pop open behind him. His sensitive ears twitch as they pick up on some kind of liquid sloshing into the palms of Egg’s hands. A familiar smell, the oil that Egg dutifully applies to his wings. The oil that makes them shine.
Wemmbu pauses as Egg’s fingers glide through the wing, gently working the oil into every crevice between the feathers. Despite the oil’s consistency, there is no weight added to his feathers. In fact, they somehow feel stronger.
Egg leans back, audible by the rustling of his suit, to admire his work, before shuffling to check-in on Wemmbu’s progress, who hurries to get back at it.
He chuckles at seeing the voidling clumsily picking mud from beneath his fingers. Wemmbu glares at him viciously, to which Egg throws his palms up at.
“Chill, bro,” he giggles, “you’ll get better as you get experience.”
He puts the bottle of feather-oil down beside Wemmbu’s leg before pushing himself up and returning to his desk.
“You don’t have a terrible foundation, brother,” He adds, helpfully, with his back still turned and slightly hunched over his journal. “Although I thought that your newfound, uh, instincts would’ve helped you with this.”
The sneaky glance the seraphim throws at the bunched up purple blankets and miscellaneous pillows and trinkets on Wemmbu’s claimed bed is not lost on said boy. He snorts heftily and tries to ignore the flush climbing up his neck by tugging at a clump of pin feathers aggressively.
The white flakes are satisfying, but Wemmbu could be doing literally anything else right now. He really does try his hardest to power through his boredom and sudden exhaustion, but he ends up giving up halfway down the wing, whining to himself and throwing himself whole-heartedly into his nest bed, only narrowly missing spilling the oil with his movement. He hears Egg chuckle from his desk, and feels multiple of his eyes track him. The angel is content to settle and take watch for the night.
Sleep takes him easily, one wing clean and the other only clumsily half-way cleaned.
He doesn’t dream, but his sleep must’ve been deep because when he wakes the next morning his wings are both meticulously preened, and a white feather sits braided into his hair.
Looking across the room reveals Egg is sleeping in his own bed, much neater than Wemmbu’s poor imitation of a bed, with a broken, indigo feather braided into the long red strands of his coily hair.
When Wemmbu flares his tail for balance as he stands, he finds that the feathers sprouting from his tail have also been groomed; feathers that were previously clumped together with dust and mud are now clean, shining and reflecting the morning sun.
He grabs his axe, which has been moved from the floor to the dining room table.
Golden rays of light blind Wemmbu as he opens the front door, but he can’t find it in himself to be irritated, he feels lighter than he has in months.
He promises himself that he’ll learn to preen his wings, to not burden Egg with one extra thing to add to his list, but it never ends up happening.
A part of it is due to Egg’s insistence of sitting down and preening purple feathers in the silent protection of the night.