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Purple had been living in Minecraft for about a year now and she was not an avian.
She hadn’t looked at her wings in months, just keeping them pressed to her back so often that the pain faded into normalcy, and she could forget sometimes they were even there
She had the villagers to take care of, to gather materials for and lead. That’s why she was in the nether again.
It was an ugly place, filled with coarse textures and a complete lack of life, but it had good building blocks and the necessary materials to get through that portal she had concealed in her castle.
She was ambushed in the fortress. She was being stupid, she should have been watching her back more closely, should have blocked off passages so wither skeletons couldn’t come through. It was her fault, and soon enough she was scrambling for cover while anxiously watching her hearts creep back up after a wither got a hit off on her, followed by an arrow in the back.
She felt the arrow pierce her upper left wing. She swore irritably, and she was quick to yank it out. The wound was definitely bleeding, but she didn’t think she could bring the dumb thing out to get a good look at it even if she was acknowledging them. She was trying to leave that part of herself behind. Not to mention, if she didn’t self-preen well, there was no way she could handle an injury.
It would probably be fine.
Purple spent a few hours in the nether still, she didn’t want to leave without getting enough quartz for the villagers. It turned out alright, she only took a few more hits, and managed to get out without a major injury. She shouldn’t be getting hit at all from her father’s standards.
She would just find a way to cover the scars when he took her back. Lost battles wouldn’t help her case.
She didn’t take out her wings at all, even when the pain in the place where the arrow pierced her wing didn’t lessen as quickly as she thought it should. She was on a three-month streak not seeing them at all, and her instincts weren’t even that bad. If she kept it up like this, she might be able to actually function like a normal stick instead.
Except now, about a week later it was a throbbing pain, and it seemed to be feeling worse. Purple didn’t want to look at it. Realistically, she knew if she ignored it she couldn’t fix the problem, whatever it was. But injuries always healed, she was just being weak. It would pass.
Then Purple woke up with a fever, and a deep sense of dread washed over her when she remembered what that could accompany with a wound she couldn’t bring herself to look at. She reached into her valuables chest and chugged a healing potion. It made her feel a little better, but she could tell it wasn’t making the problem go away.
She could power through. It wasn’t bad if she was still walking. If she was still able to perform, it wasn’t bad enough.
She just took to her throne and kept doing her duties as their monarch while doing her best to maintain her usual disposition. She noticed some of them throwing her worried glances, but she just straightened up and put a calm face on to shrug off the concern. It wasn’t their place to be worried for her.
The next day she woke up with an even more awful fever and the sound of one of the villagers knocking on her door asking if she was okay. She glanced at the time and saw she had overslept by a wide margin.
Even worse, she could smell it. And that’s when it finally settled in that her wing was infected. She rolled over to find a nasty spot on her bed where some of the pus had leaked through her bindings and sleep shirt.
This was bad.
The villager knocked again, more worried.
“Uh, I’m okay. I just…” oh, what could she even say. ‘I’m an avian and my wing is infected?’ They didn’t know. What if they took it as a betrayal? What if they knew the kinds of things avians did and didn’t want the instincts of an avian to lead them anymore? “I’m not feeling well today. I’m going to rest.”
The villager said they would send for some medicine and before Purple could tell them no, they had already left.
She took a deep breath and dragged herself into her bathroom to finally undo her bindings so she could get a look at what was going on. This could kill her if she left it, she knew that from the time she spent in the hospital. She should probably go to one, but even the mere thought…no.
They would ask questions she couldn’t answer. They would send her back to the system and label her a flight risk. Ha. So much for flight.
When she unwrapped the final bandage and her wings unfurled for the first time in months, she winced and curled in on herself in pain a little. They were stiff, painfully so, and that layered onto what was going on with her wing, she needed a moment to catch her breath.
She was only interrupted by the sound of another one of the villagers calling through her bedroom door, announcing the arrival of some potions.
Purple looked at herself in the mirror, at the wing that was infected and saw the worst thing she could.
The skin around the wound was black and rotted, the only color around it was the yellow of the pus still leaking out, and dangerous looking red streaks were crawling down the wing where the feathers had been worn away from the bindings, but hadn’t reached her back and main body quite yet.
Purple knew what it meant. Her heart beat loudly in her chest. This was going to kill her if she didn’t stop it. The skin had already died, and if it was in her blood, she had to act fast. Her breath was in her throat as she knew what options were available to her, and they weren’t good.
She was going to have to remove the wing. And she didn’t want anyone around her to do it, so that meant she was going to have to…she swallowed. Do it herself.
She had her weapons in her room with her, a Sharpness V diamond sword would do it with enough force. One of the villagers knocked on her door with the medicine, which was really just a couple potions of regeneration and healing.
Thinking hazily through what would help, she figured strength would help her get the blade through the bone easier for a clean cut, swiftness might make it easier, but swiftness also made her senses more keen and this was going to hurt. She would rather not make it hurt more, even if she should just be toughing it out.
For aftermath, she wanted an enchanted golden apple to eat immediately after, and she had one of those in her bedside chest. It wasn’t as potent as a fresh one though. But if she asked for too much from the villager, she might raise suspicion. They would ask questions she didn’t want to answer.
She could send for a strength potion and a rag to bite on. She could just say she wanted one to cool her fever. Bandages were stored in her bathroom, along with some bleach she could use to clean any blood that made it too far.
Now that she had a plan, she shakily made her way to the bell she had hung in her room, which could call on one of the villagers without her needing to see them face to face. She rang it and tried her hardest to maintain as much composure as she asked for what she was needing.
She had her strength II potion and her rag within minutes. With that, she grabbed her sword, her enchanted golden apple, and her bandages and propped herself on the edge of her bathtub, positioning the bad wing over it so that when she cut it, the thing would fall into the tub instead of on the floor.
It didn’t feel real. As she set everything up, Purple distantly noted that she didn’t feel particularly connected to what was happening, like she was operating based on pure necessity, but that she would just wake out of a bad dream. She wondered if she should be more scared, but instead all she felt was grim determination.
She placed the sword at the top of the wing, the magically sharp blade already cutting into the skin a little as it rest atop the wing. Purple glanced at the mirror once more. What a sight.
Her skin was clammy and sweaty from the fever, she looked exhausted with a tinge of numbness in her eyes. She had the rag in her mouth, ready to bite down on the thing, and had already drank the strength potion. Faint orange bubbles floated off of her and she felt the liquid running through her veins, colliding with the creeping necrosis in her wing in an uncomfortable burning sensation. Her feathers on both wings looked awful and patchy from being rubbed by the fabric.
As she was about to cut through, a flash of primal fear forced its way to the front of her mind from the avian side she had been trying so hard to get rid of.
But the sky! It wailed. I’ll never fly again!
Her hand shook a little and she took some sharp breaths, desperately trying to keep herself under control. If she didn’t do this, it would kill her. Either way, she was never feeling the sky again, except one of those ways it would be because she was dead. Purple was determined to not die.
She glared into the mirror one more time.
I don’t want to be an avian anyway.
And she pushed down on the sword with all the strength she had.
It sliced clean through the wing and she heard the thud of the limb hitting the bathtub before she felt the pain, but it wasn’t delayed by much. She screamed into the rag and dropped the sword as she felt blood start to gush out of her back. Right. She wasn’t done yet.
She fumbled for the healing and regeneration potions and smashed the thin glass on the ground so the effect could reach the area faster. The effects reached the open wound first, minecraft potions were good about that, and she felt a thin layer of skin regenerate over the stub. Regeneration only acted as a mediocre bandage though, so she grabbed the longest bandage she could and started wrapping it around the wound
Once it was secured, she bit into the apple, which was the next thing she had in the row of immediate self-help. She felt its powerful effects rush into her, doing the most to help with the pain.
Everything had gone as smoothly as it could. She did it. The wing was gone. Well, it was in her bathtub, still leaking blood and probably about to smell worse than it already did. She should probably burn it.
She went to stand up, quickly stumbling to the side that had the remaining wing. She supposed that made sense, less weight now. She would just have to figure it out again, no problem.
She was fine now. The problem was gone, she didn’t want it anyway, and she had proven she could handle it.
She collapsed into her bed to rest for the day. She could do this.
Father would be proud.
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Purple missed the sky.
She re-learned balance, made sure the wound didn’t get infected again, and once she was in the clear, she started binding the other wing again. She managed to avoid the villagers until she could pass as the same as she had been previously.
Then Blue and Green showed up, and she was worried. And a bit weirded out.
“We’re sticks too!” Blue had said, and Purple didn’t know why that was such a big deal.
Then they were trying to take the villagers away from her. That wasn’t fair. They were her subjects, they had each other. They needed to just back off.
They went to The End anyway. Those two sticks weren’t expected to be around, but they seemed alright. And they had given the villagers the materials to upgrade her castle. She hadn’t even asked.
She had watched the villagers build it and improve it for no reason other than they might actually seem to like her? Whatever, if the strangers were friendly with the villagers, maybe she shouldn’t be hostile with them.
When Blue had grabbed her hand and they were dragging off the back of the ender dragon though, she got the first tast of the sky in a very long time. Thoughts of loss, longing, family, community, and all the discomfort she had been shoving down with all the force she could muster started coming back up.
Good thing none of them were keeping a close eye on her, or they might have noticed something was up.
And then she saw that egg and got the idea. Father might like to see that, it meant she would have encountered a dragon and made it out alive. What better way to prove herself than that?
But the moment she saw an opportunity in the game to get back in the air, she had to take it, consequences be damned.
Her eyes landed on the elytra, and she felt a rush of excitement that was a little too birdlike. She had been out of the air for long enough and it was stressing her out. The idea of never flying again because a stupid skeleton shot her still hurt, even though she was set on keeping as far away from her avian side as possible.
But they were for flying, and this was an opportunity. Besides, with them being a minecraft thing, she didn’t even feel like she was really giving into the avian stuff anyway. So it was fine.
She slipped them on and felt better immediately when they reacted to her. She shook her head out of the fog, dodged a shulker’s projectile, and hopped on the bow of the ship to glide after it, ignorant to the plight of Green and Blue.
Until they called out for her.
And she had to choose. Get the egg or get Green and Blue. The thing was, that egg might get her back her father. And then everything would finally be okay again. Father would take her back. And he was an avian, so he could maybe let her be an avian again, assuming he would be impressed with her for being able to cut her own wing off when it was a liability. She just wanted things to be okay again.
She thought she might be able to catch Green and Blue before they fell, but then the dragon began to fly back for the island, and she knew she would never have another chance.
So she left them.
Minutes later, the dragon was through the portal, destroying her kingdom and the structure the villagers had just made for her, causing them fear, destruction and pain. All because she was looking for her egg.
Looking for her baby. Oh no.
This was her fault. She made the wrong choice, again. Glumly, she retrieved the egg from its hiding spot and held it up to the panicking mother dragon. The dragon was still furious with her, but wouldn’t move to attack her while Purple was holding her egg.
Then it hatched, and Purple watched the baby imprint on its mother with an expression of sadness.
I miss my mom, she thought in a somewhat floaty way as the two dragons returned through the portal to their home.
She noticed Green and Blue again, standing behind three more sticks. She should apologize. She couldn’t take them all, she didn’t know if she could explain, but she could at least say she was sorry for leaving them.
But before she could take a step forward, one of them, the orange hollowhead stepped in front of them and flared out their wings. Glorious, orange and green ones that had been taken care of perfectly. She felt the elytra in her inventory and felt their inadequacy and her own remaining wing shuddering at the sight from its binding.
They hissed, stay away, at her and she stopped quickly, the command burning straight through her mind. Right. This was their flock, and she was a threat to their flock. She shrank down, almost against what she actually wanted to do.
She couldn’t do much else though, because the villagers had turned on her. Because of the dragon. Because of the egg.
She had lost everything again.
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Revenge wasn’t doing it for her.
She thought it would feel good, taking it all out on the sticks who were to blame for her failure. It couldn’t be her fault, if they just hadn’t intervened, the villagers would have thrown her in her own prison to rot for weeks on end before she scrambled for the portal and wandered for a little bit. Alone.
Her rampage had run out of fuel and she could no longer throw herself at a wall just trying to feel even a little better.
That’s what it felt like. Everything she wanted, everything she needed was on the other side of a brick wall, and she had nothing to break it down with except her own two fists. And giving up was never an option, and bleeding knuckles were the accessories of a fighter, so all she could do was throw herself at it until it broke.
It never did.
No, revenge just wasn’t doing it. They didn’t even seem to notice that it was revenge. It was all just a game to them. Second was being tossed in the air, celebrated by all of them excitedly shrieking “we won! You did it!”
It hurt to watch the other avian smiling and surrounded by all the love and affection they could ever need while she stood, failed in every way that mattered, off to the side. She didn’t want to watch anymore.
And they invited her to play league with them. She didn’t know what to think. Was it really just a game to them? Did it really not matter that much?
The orange avian, Second, had been the one to extend a hand to her after she lost. She wondered if they knew. She didn’t know if they were trying to chirp at her, or if their friends all just knew birdsong and they were very casual about switching between the two.
A mean little thought floated around that said maybe she could ease back into her avian side around them. If they were so good about Second’s traits.
Except no, she had been told to stay away from Second’s flock, and another avian might invite competition. Competition Purple would lose. She was only half-avian now that she was missing a wing.
The idea of even showing her wing to any of them horrified her on top of that. Hidden traits, maybe they could get over with a long time, with discussions about honesty and truthfulness and lying that would come up over and over again. But that wing…they would want to know what happened to it, and what kind of avian cut off their own wing?
She wasn’t an avian. She rejected the title. Therefore, they would not be seeing her wing.
Stay away. Maybe she didn’t have to keep away from them completely, but she would never be a part of the group. No matter how much her dulled instinctual brain seemed to want her to be.
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“Good job,” King said. Purple felt the click in her mind and wanted to scream.
She had just polished off the parkour trap after spending a few weeks hanging around King, helping him with his plan, hoping she was useful enough. He looked over what she had been working on, looking at the commands, and seemed especially impressed with her set up into the trap as being a game and competition that would delay suspicion long enough for her to get the block. He even said she was being smart for accounting for Second’s flight, which made her feel weird even through the delight at being praised for her work.
Two words. Two stupid words were all it took to apparently get her to imprint on the stranger. And the worst part was that she felt it was a filial imprint.
He could not know. He absolutely could not know. She had seen the pictureframe, she had seen that he was missing a kid he obviously still wanted around that painted a sad picture.
He didn’t want her. She could see it. He wanted an assistant and a lackey, and she wanted to feel useful. He didn’t want her. But her stupid brain wanted her to be around him.
She wasn’t an avian. She couldn’t be. No instincts could be getting out. They would get in the way, and if he figured it out, he would want to see her wings. And there was only one to show.
She could see it now. Her accidentally letting out a chirp and he realized there was something else going on with her, and he angrily demanded she show him her wings because she had been lying to him. That she should have disclosed she was an avian before he accepted her for the job, because avians had more about them that made them worse workers, and they needed accommodations. And then she would, because she was to do as he said, and he would see the asymmetrical silhouette she had, and he might say it looked bad and ask her to cut the other one off—
She pinched herself to get off that thought train. If she was smart, he would never find out. She would just…hide the imprint. Yeah.
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The moment she let the elytra slide off her back from the force of the fishing line Green was using to hold her back, she felt like she was losing a part of herself again.
King really didn’t care. He didn’t care at all, she was in danger and he could have helped her up and gone right back to fighting, but he didn’t and he left her to them. The bird in her brain was crying the way it did when her father left.
It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I’m broken. I’m impossible. I’m worthless.
She ran.
No more wings to keep her in the air, Green would never give them back after this. More rejection. She wasn’t an avian, and yet it was still giving her more problems than it was worth.
She ran through the portal, seeing the notes and just kept going. She didn’t know where. She couldn’t do this.
There was no one else around and she felt her throat bubble up with mournful chirps she struggled to hold in, but when one finally came out, she went to cover it up, and heard the sound of a violin escaping her instead.
It must have to do with the musical nature of this world, but it would do the trick.
She distantly played a sad little song until she spotted Green, who was following her apparently. He was supposed to stay away, what was he doing here?
He sang at her, asking why she had done everything and wasn’t that a good question. Why had she left them for dead? Why had she attacked them on the PC using League? Why had she sold them out to King? Why why why?
And it was all her fault. Always. It always was. No matter how hard she tried to be better, make the right choice, the smartest choice, the one that might end the constant pain, it made things worse.
And if it was always her fault, that had to mean she was the bad one. There was something wrong with her, there had to be if it was always her fault.
She couldn’t stop looking from the outside at the Color Gang, wondering what she had done wrong in her life that she wasn’t allowed that kind of world. Why did people leave? Why didn’t they even want to try?
But when the Color Gang tried, she threw it away. Over and over because her stupid bird brain craved his approval so badly, and she could never deal with the anger. After this was over, they were never going to want to see her again. Not that she would blame them.
Because it was always her fault.
But that’s not what Green told her as she sang a somber tune about what life had been for years now. The approval she wanted and the love she had lacked for years.
She took the offer, even if it did sound too good to be true.
She didn’t tell him about the wings though. “You should have kept the wound from getting infected,” he would say. “Why would you lie about that,” he would ask. “What else are you hiding,” he would accuse.
She wasn’t ready. And she might never be. She wasn’t an avian. She couldn’t be.
But maybe she could at least be a part of the group. Once she fixed the mess she had made.
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The nether battle was over, Purple was still alive, and King was calmly wrapping some of the injuries she had sustained from all the action.
Looking back even over the past few days, Purple realized she had done a very poor job resisting the imprint. The effort Green had to go through, and the level at which Purple had to be pushed to turn on King was terrifying. She had done it again, being desperate for attention and approval from someone who hadn’t even seen her like that.
That seemed to have changed, but Purple still felt like she was flailing.
“Is your chest okay?” he asked softly.
“Huh?”
“The beam. It got your chest for an extended period of time. How does it feel?”
She raised a hand to feel where the beam had made the most contact. There was a faint burning, but there was no way she was going to be taking off her clothes because that would mean the bindings would be visible.
She just got his affection, she couldn’t lose it so soon. Not when things were finally looking up, and the gang was okay to have her around, and she didn’t feel terribly and utterly alone.
“I think it got healed,” she lied. “When everything came out of it. I feel fine.”
He gave her a look like he didn’t believe her and she worried for a moment he would make her check anyway, but he just finished patching her up and told her to get some rest.
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Why did Second have to come and ask her about her wings?
Of course they knew, she had suspected they knew from the beginning when they hissed at her and she knew what it meant.
But did they have to bring it into the open? It was getting hard enough to shove her traits down now that she was forcibly shoving the urge to imprint on the rest of them with everything in her. Surely they noticed how many breaks she needed to take just to avoid her birdsong taking over and an imprint establishing itself when she was working so hard to stay normal?
She had to leave right after. It was getting so hard to resist, now that that sort of help had been extended to her. She didn’t want to ghost them, not after everything they had done and overlooked for her to feel welcome.
They were trying to bait her into letting out her wing and her instincts. It wasn’t going to happen. Not only would it go against everything she had worked for for the past few years, but she was going to have to stand before an avian with two healthy wings and feel the eyes staring through the space where her right one should be.
Second might know she was an avian, but they didn’t know she was a ruined one. What would happen when they learned that?
Weeks of fighting the imprint instinct passed, trying to balance maintaining communication with them, especially Green, while staying far enough so that the urge would pass and she could join back in.
But like the infection, it was getting worse instead of better. She couldn’t get out of bed, could barely cook anything for herself, and she couldn’t just go to Mango’s, because he would investigate the source of the discomfort.
Every day she went to bed, hoping she would wake up with signs of improvement and every day she woke up with more of it hanging over her head and a tug in her gut to just go back to them, anyone, to end the struggle. But doing that meant letting the bird in her brain out, so it wasn’t an option.
One morning, she woke up to a text from Green.
Hey ! odd question, but would you like me to teach you how to preen Sec ? I noticed you’re kinda awkward when we’re doing that and I don’t want you to feel left out . I can give you a crash course if you need
Oh, cursors he was so nice. And so off base he thought that was why she was awkward around Second’s avian traits. It was so sweet and so not what was actually going on and she liked him so much and she was still lying to him.
She lingered around the tree fort all day long, pacing, picking up her phone to start typing a message back, but every time she started typing she didn’t want to send it.
I know how to preen. Nope.
Sure, you can show me sometime. I know a good amount already. Too vague.
That’s not why I’m awkward. Too leading
I’m an avian.
She almost sent the last one, but couldn’t force her finger to push the damn send button.
She just left the phone on the nightstand and tried to get something done. She went on a short flight with the elytra before she started getting a little too close to her instincts, so she landed and walked back to the fort. It was nighttime when she made it back.
Only to find a new message from Mango that asked her if she was coming over for Christmas, followed up by an explanation that he needed to know how much food he needed to buy.
That was it. Her ears were ringing and she stared at the words on the screen, hoping for some kind of indication that he wanted her to be there, and not some check in to see if he was going to have to feed her to just appear on the screen.
She wanted an invitation. Something that said I want you around me because I love you.
All the stress and frustration and build up finally spilled over and a broken warble tumbled out and she couldn’t stop it. She was losing control and it terrified her. She felt her remaining wing straining, and even the muscles in her back that used to connect to the ones in her missing wing were working as if the thing was still there.
It was happening again. She was breaking again. It wouldn’t get better if she didn’t act.
She grabbed her phone and texted Second, barely even looking at the keys as she asked them to come over in the middle of the night. Not even five seconds later, she had a response that they were on their way.
She could hold it together long enough. She was falling apart, sure, but she could do it. She switched to using her violin voice instead of the chirps to try to get her vocal cords under control before Second got there.
She heard them enter the room and felt them sit down next to her quietly. As polite as an entrance it was, she was kinda mad at them.
It was their fault she was doing this poorly. She had been managing so well without the reminders that there was an entire other part of her she was suppressing. They just had to come along and remind her what it was supposed to look like.
She didn’t want to fail. She had worked so hard to get it under control. She couldn’t just start chirping whenever she wanted now, if she gave up even an inch she would never recover the lost ground.
The thing was, she had already given in to even letting Second come around, and it was obvious that they were here to help with the avian stuff. That’s what she had called them here for, even if she was regretting it already.
They whispered comforting words. Ones that didn’t push her beyond her limits, but promised relief and comfort. They were so good at this, they were being understanding and kind.
They placed a gentle wing over her back and she promptly lost all composure.
She was terrified. She was in it now, Second was in her tree fort, and they knew. She reached down to grip their hand as they managed to convince her to allow herself to start chirping. She didn’t like the meaning behind the birdsong that was coming out, but it was a language that was very difficult to lie in.
They sat with her for a little bit while she kept chirping while crying, wanting to get a grip but also just wanting to let go for once.
They crooned a comforting note that she hadn’t heard in such a long time and she practically felt herself melt at the sound of another avian directing reassurance of safety in her direction.
Against her better judgment, she let go, trusting Second would do what they said and keep an eye on her while she sank into the floaty feeling of her now rampant instincts.
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When Purple came back to, she felt Second preening her wing. Oh cursors, it was out. The wing was out, which meant they could see the missing one.
“What’r you doing?” she mumbled.
“Welcome back, Purple. I’m fixing your wing, they were in rough shape,” they answered, as if this wasn’t something to discuss about the singular usage of the word ‘wing.’. She would rather not anyway.
“M’kay,” she said, deciding not to fight them. They were doing a great job anyway. It had been so long since she had a preen. “S’weird. Nice though.”
“Is it your first time being preened?” They asked softly. She could understand why they were asking, but it wasn’t.
They talked about it. Not the missing wing, oddly enough. However Second decided to handle this, they had somehow decided it wasn’t the most important topic of discussion.
She wanted to be honest, so she just answered everything they asked. They were so easy to talk to. She hadn’t spent much one on one time with them, partly because they were an avian, and she didn’t need more reminders, but they were really good at asking questions that communicated that they cared.
She talked about the avoidance and the back and forth, trying so hard to not guilt them into accepting her. This was a kindness, but she couldn’t just ask them to let her into the flock. No matter how badly she wanted it.
She thought they wanted her to stay away, but then they gave her a feather and the elation she felt at actually being welcome in this group of weirdos and misfits was so strong she wanted to return the favor immediately. They didn’t let her, on account of her having a rough set of feathers on her existent wing, but the fact that she had a feather of theirs now meant so much. And she could tell they knew it.
It felt like everything she could have ever wanted and they still weren’t grilling her on the lying, the missing wing, anything they could throw at her in accusation.
More discussion and she was waiting on Green to show up at the fort. She shifted anxiously a few times and let a few worried chitters out. Her gaze lingered on the empty space where her left wing used to be and that’s when Second finally acknowledged it.
“You don’t have to say what happened,” they said with a slight nod toward the empty space. “You can if you want, but if that’s private that’s fine.”
“Okay.”
Their wings fluttered anxiously and Purple could tell they had something else to say.
“What?” she prompted.
“It’s just, and you really don’t have to talk about it, but if you need to hide from whoever did that you can come to us for help.”
It was a sweet offer actually.
She smiled humorlessly. “I think it would be tricky to hide from myself.”
They opened their mouth slightly in surprise and probably concern.
“I don’t mind talking about it,” she said. “I got a wound in it that got infected. I didn’t handle it quickly enough and it would have killed me, so I took care of it.”
“You cut it off yourself?”
She just nodded.
“Does it hurt?”
She shrugged.
“I get phantom sensations sometimes, but it’s pretty manageable.”
The conversation ended soon after, and Green finally made it.
And Green did the same thing! He came in, saw the sorry state of her wings, a flash of horror sparked through his eyes before he shifted to excitement at her being an avian. He made a minor dig at the state of her wing, but didn’t acknowledge that one was literally missing.
Maybe missing a wing didn’t separate her from them too much after all. Maybe it really wasn’t that big a deal.
It was kinda nice to be treated normally though.
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Purple was hiding in her room at Mango’s house.
She was over for the weekend, and usually she liked spending time in the living room, but she never liked to be sad in front of people.
She had just come from a flying exercise she had with the gang. Her wing had healed after its break perfectly fine, thanks to Blue’s guidance.
It wasn’t fair, she had the elytra to get her up in the air alongside Second, but then they would land and she would end up walking just a little bit behind them, reminded again of her own asymmetry.
She was jealous, she always had been jealous of Second, but now that things were looking up, and she was fine now, it wasn’t reasonable anymore. She had access to everything she could want or need. She had a community, a dad who actually loved her, an incredible boyfriend who showed her what a relationship was actually supposed to look like, and safety.
It felt stupid, but she just felt…sad.
She heard a knock on her door.
“Purple, dinner!”
She sighed quietly and preemptively switched to her neutral pleasant face. She didn’t want to cause a fuss over something that couldn’t be fixed. And this really was something that couldn’t be fixed, it wasn’t one of those cognitive distortions her therapist talked about. It was literally impossible to fix.
She just emerged from her room to the pleasant scent of a roast and what had to be a blackberry cobbler in the oven. She loved it when Mango cooked.
“Smells good,” she said, taking a seat at the table while Mango brought over the food. She adjusted some of the silverware to be more aligned.
“Thank you, I’m working on using seasonings other than salt, I think this turned out pretty good.”
Purple took a bite and he really had done a good job. Salt never settled well for her, so he had taken to avoiding it where he could. It was such a kind gesture he always insisted was no big deal. She knew how common the foods that messed with her stomach were to cook with at times.
“You did great,” she mumbled through the food. “You used basil?”
“Oregano. And some rosemary.”
She nodded.
“How was the gang?”
“They’re good,” she said nodding and taking another bite of the roast. “We had fun. Green’s trying to put together a concert and he wants us to come.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, he’s getting the villagers to be in the orchestra. I offered to play as well, but he said he wanted me to watch. He said he was going to reserve the box seats for us.”
“Would you rather play?”
She shrugged.
“I think it’ll be nice to see what he pulls together. We can play together anytime, I think he wants the performance part of it.” She took a bite. “He’s like a peacock.”
“He does like to show off for you,” Mango said with a smile. “How are the others?”
“Good,” she said. “Second and I went flying. Yellow’s figuring out some new redstone techniques that incorporate more building, so her and Green were working on that. Red and Blue weren’t there, they were over at Second’s brother’s place.”
“Second has a brother?”
“Apparently,” Purple mumbled. “They’re real dodgy about him. He’s shy or something, I don’t know.”
“Hmm,” he paused a little in thought. “Is he an avian too?”
She picked at her food a little bit at the question.
“I think so,” she said. She could tell immediately that her tone betrayed her. She hoped Mango would either not notice it or ignore it. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately because parents were supposed to be a bit more intuitive with how their kids were feeling, he noticed.
“Are you unhappy about that?” He put his fork down.
“No,” she said. And that was true. She didn’t know the guy. It wasn’t even about him, or the secrecy surrounding him.
“Okay, so what is this?”
“Nothing.”
He gave her a look. He didn’t really need to explain what it meant anymore, there were enough times he had said something to the effect of I know you’re lying, or I know something is wrong. It wasn’t a threatening look by any means, but it did communicate that he wasn’t going to let her get away with whatever she was lying about.
“There’s literally nothing anyone can do, Dad,” she said, leaning back a little bit. “It’s stupid, it’s my thing to deal with, I’m just in a mood about it today.”
“Did something happen?” he asked calmly.
“Nothing they shouldn’t already be doing.”
“And what’s that?”
“Fucking flying like a normal avian,” she almost spat out before taking a quick breath. “That’s it. That’s all it is. I watched Second fly a lot today and I’m just…jealous.”
“You can fly,” he said, but not in a way she actually felt shut down by. He said it with a question, and passed a bowl of blackberry cobbler and some vanilla ice cream over to her, which she dug into in small bites.
She sighed.
“I miss my wing,” she said quietly after a few nibbles of cobbler. “I’m mad at myself for…all of that. It was such a stupid thing. Avoidable too. I mean, I literally ignored it until it was going to kill me. An arrow wound healed worse than a self-performed amputation. I literally didn’t even use a tourniquet. And for no other reason than the fact that I was an awful mess who hated herself. And now I have to live with the decisions of my fourteen-year-old self for the rest of my life.”
She could tell he didn’t really know what to tell her. She could see the way his fingers tapped on the table that he wanted to fix it. But they both knew it couldn’t be fixed, and she knew how much that ate at him.
“Have you spoken to Doctor Hazel about that?” He asked.
Yeah, Purple could have expected that. He couldn't fix it, he didn’t know how, so he wondered if there was someone who could.
“I already know what she would say. We have the most control over the reactions we have to the events and people in our lives. What matters most now is how I move forward. And I’m managing it fine, I didn’t take it out on Second.”
She pushed the bowl of mostly eaten cobbler and ice cream back a little and propped one elbow up on the table, leaning away from her wing so her other hand could mess with some of her feathers in an idle motion.
“It just…really sucks. I don’t know what else I can do about it. I’m just mad at myself. You know that when I did it I thought father would be proud of me for it?” she chuckled. She took a break from combing through her existing feathers and used her fork to stab and eat one of the blackberries. “He put a lot of value on being able to do hard things for the sake of survival. But I went to sleep thinking about how proud of me he might be instead of thinking about the fact that I had just cut off an entire limb. How fucked up is that?”
Like a lot of the time Purple brought up her father, Mango seemed at a loss. All the books and guides in the world couldn’t give a script for the right thing to say. He seemed increasingly more concerned with saying and doing the right thing by her. It frustrated her in a way, but how could she really argue against a parent who was concerned for her? He cared. She shouldn’t be asking for even more.
“I wish I could fix it,” he said quietly.
She smiled thinly.
“I know.”
She chose to turn in for the night shortly after. She just needed a good reset on her mind so she wasn’t thinking about it as much. The jealousy and sadness would wear off by the next morning. And with how she knew Mango liked to handle these things, she didn’t think it was going to help much, not that there was much he could really say that would make her feel better.
It wasn’t his fault she was like this.
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“Purple…your elytra,” Yellow said quietly as they sat on top of the pillar, surrounded by armor stands.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Purple said tensely. Yes, she was blaming Yellow for this internally, but she would rather not let those emotions out. Everyone was stressed enough.
Except those things probably kept her sane, or at least from developing skysickness. And now they were broken. It was so obvious that she only had one wing now, she didn’t have the elytra to balance her out visually.
What was this going to look like moving forward? No more time in the sky because she had overexerted the things trying to run away from living armor stands?
She wished Mango were here. Not because he would know the right thing to say or anything, she just wanted her dad to be there while she was losing one of the most important items in her life. Maybe he could fix it. Maybe he could put together something else that would work.
She was scared. They all were, sure, but she was very scared for the lack of something that had probably kept her from going under years and years ago. She was mourning their loss, and she could feel the pitying stares the others were giving her as she anxiously ran her fingers through her wing.
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Purple absolutely loved the aether. For as stressful as the events that had just transpired were, this was her kind of place. And she needed it after all of that.
Somehow, she didn’t need both wings to feel the air. It was a place that let her play and exercise exactly in the way she loved to. Almost nowhere was actually specialized in aerial combat, far less catered toward it. It was like she was experiencing a world built around what she needed, rather than having to live in a world she had to adjust to fit into it better for the sake of an easier time.
When all this was over and things returned to normal, she was going to have to come back as often as she could, and she would be bringing the gang.
They would love it!
Mango was driving her crazy though. Couldn’t he see how elated she was to be in this environment? How well suited she was for it? This was any avian’s dream space, he had to back off, especially since this was the most connected she had felt to that side of herself in a very long time. She was chirping a lot and she didn’t even feel the urge to stop herself.
He and the gang had done wonderfully helping her ease back into letting out her avian traits, but she had a sneaking feeling that she was always going to feel a little out of place for one reason or another. But not here, and Mango was just freaking out the whole time at every little movement she made!
And she knew it was because he was stressing over her possibly dying, but he was taking all the fun out of this. She was making light of a bad situation, that was a huge step forward for her.
And sure, maybe it made her a little bit reckless, but the gang never discouraged her from indulging.
“Think Purple, think,” he lightly reprimanded when she went digging through the fake chest. “This is hardcore mode.”
“I know dad,” she groaned, following after him. “You die in the game, you die in real life.”
“This isn’t a joke,” he said curtly.
“Doesn’t mean it can’t be fun,” she mumbled.
Mango wouldn’t even let her fight the valkyrie queen for the artificial wings that did look like a big step up from the elytra, even though they were her goal.
And he had been fun to watch, and she had cheered him on excitedly, but two things could be true. She could enjoy watching her dad fight and also wish she was the one doing it instead.
And then things got stressful again. As Mango and the Valkyrie Queen shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, in ran the player to kill her. Well that wasn’t fair!
She shouted at them, rushing in to attack them, before losing her balance, and that player wasn’t having any mercy on her. They swung on her and started whittling down her hearts at an alarming pace, and right then, she understood why Mango was as stressed as he was acting.
She screeched a sound that communicated a pure fear of death, because that player was going to kill her.
Dad! Help!
Mango intervened with the kind of rage she had seen before, about a year ago when he was out to destroy the game. She saw the furious glint of determination in his eye. And then he chased them. Okay. This was her fault, she wanted the wings, she reacted to the player too quickly without remembering the tips the gang had shared about dealing with players differing combat rules.
She wanted to fix this. If she wanted Mango to understand that she could hold her own, and that she wasn’t a helpless kid anymore, she was going to need to prove that she wasn’t just capable, but responsible.
Turns out, she did such a good job in such a short amount of time that he was willing to pass the sword of the slain Valkyrie Queen to her.
Purple grabbed the sword, offered to her by the valkyrie with pride and a little bit of awe that Mango was letting her take it.
The moment she accepted, she felt it on her back. Her balance shifted suddenly and she felt a slight fluttering at the sensation as she re-stabalized.
She looked back at where her wing was to see it a part of a pair again for the first time in years. She just stared at it in awe. It wasn’t the same color as her purple starling feathers, instead taking on an angelic white that split the two down the middle, giving her a mismatched set that didn’t even bother her.
They were beautiful.
“Kid?” Mango got her attention quietly, seeming to understand Purple was more in a state of shock at having two wings again. “You doing okay?”
She nodded mutely and took a breath. If there was ever a time to get back into flying, real flying, it might as well be during a battle with a player. And that’s what she needed to focus on. Winning that fight.
And win she did.
It was a serious fight, and she treated it as such. She got lower on health than she would have liked, but really, she was re-adjusting to the way she flew. The elytra was a masterclass in mimicry of flight, but this was the real thing. The weight and subtle movements were different. She just needed a few seconds to get back into it. And once she got back into her groove of diving and twirling through the air, she couldn’t help but let out joyous laughs and trills as she dove at the player, batting them around the room and confidently juggling them between attacks like she wasn’t fighting for her life.
Before she knew it they were dead, and their inventory spilled out in the room. She was breathing heavily, smiling ear to ear and a bead of sweat dripped from her hair. It was the best fight she ever took part in.
She barely had a moment to catch her breath before the valkyries rushed her, jostling her excitedly before tossing her into the air a few times in celebration. Purple just giggled in delight.
This world was so fun. This mod was so fun. For as worrying as the heardcore hearts were, she couldn’t find it in herself to care so much because now she was in her element. She had her wings back. They were actually back. She could fly again! Without the elytra as a crutch!
The valkyries set her down when Mango approached the circle. Purple was barely even paying attention, caught in the feeling of exhilaration that she could finally be a proper avian. She didn’t see him until he was right in front of her and he pulled her in quickly.
“I’m so proud of you kiddo,” Mango said, hugging her tightly.
Her wings relaxed a bit from the heightened emotions of exhilaration rushing through her.
Finally, she felt proud not just of herself, but to also be an avian.