Work Text:
“Saturn. Saturn.”
A sleepy sound left the gas giant as he shook himself awake. Or tried to, anyway. His eyelids were far too heavy to open properly. What a shame…
“Saturn.”
Oh, please no. The warm fluffy feathers he was buried against were too comfy to even think about leaving. He let out a disgruntled chuff and tried to sink into it and away from whomever was calling his name.
“Cronus.”
Sigh.
“Mrm. ‘M awake.” He called back, only to be shushed. Well, that's rude.
He forced his eyes open and stretched his beak wide in a yawn. His field of vision was immediately filled with the the golden light of the massive and warm feathers that belonged to their star. Poking his head out, looking far too awake, was Jupiter.
Saturn fought the urge to fluff up his feathers in annoyance. “What is it?” He hissed.
“Is Sol asleep?”
He tilted his head to check, listening intently. He nodded. Yes, the star was sleeping.
Saturn was extremely tempted to join Sol to be honest, rather than be dragged into cold space by whatever Jupiter was planning. Oh, and it’s so nice and warm in here too.
“Do you want to practice flying?”
…
…sigh.
Wordlessly, Saturn began to swim his way out of the sea of yellow feathers. A considerable feat, considering no part of him was made for swimming. He ignored the little smug chirp of victory from Jupiter.
Finally, they poked their heads out of the comforting shelter of Sol’s wing and into the much colder, much less nice emptiness of space. The owl fluffed himself up in a meagre attempt to stay warm.
“We could‘ve waited until Sol woke up, Jupiter.”
“I wanted to do it now.” The eagle was all but running at that point, eagerness visibly vibrating off each feather. “I’m so close to getting it.”
While downy fluff still clung stubbornly to the two of them, their flight feathers pretty much fully come in. With it had come a constant buzzing in their core, urging them, fly, fly, fly!
It seemed that those calls were a lot stronger for one of them. The call of sleep was much louder for Saturn at that moment.
“I almost had it last time.” Jupiter said once they had run far enough away. He didn't slow his pace, raising his wings and hobbling forward with a few flaps. “I just need to stay in the air.”
"Yes, that is..." Saturn opened his beak to yawn. "-indeed how flying works."
“Well," Jupiter sounded miffed. "There’s no need to sound so excited.”
The barn owl churred.
Saturn thought that Jupiter’s adult feathers were turning out to be quite pretty. Swirling shades or reds and pinks, with even some dusky blues beginning to show up in his wingtips. Saturn's own tans and dusty yellows were also quite beautiful, even if he still had a good amount of fuzz stubbornly clinging to him.
Saturn shook out his feathers, little pieces of fluff floating away. He raised a wing to look at it, the sunlight streaming through the barred pattern. Well, they came out here to fly.
The owl spread his wings out and, with a few uneven flaps, darted upward in an uncontrolled hurtle only to crash back onto the ground. His next attempt at least gave him the grace of landing on his feet.
Hopping forward unsteadily in an attempt to keep up with the other, Saturn began to clumsily hop-flap as well. “Jupiter.” He let out a screech. “Slow down!”
Jupiter wasn’t listening. He flapped his wings more vigorously, as if he could make it work through sheer force of will. Saturn made a leap to catch up, his wings curling in a downstroke to the point his wingtips almost met.
At the same time, Jupiter stumbled and tried to overcorrect, accidentally launching himself backwards into Saturn. For a brief moment, both had escaped their usual orbital plane, and Saturn's core sang as the eternal call to fly was finally answered.
Jupiter was suddenly far too close. Before they could collide, Saturn twisted his tail on instinct and fluttered as much as he could away, while Jupiter swerved and both came to a tumbling halt. They looked at each other.
"..." A small noise of barely contained laughter. Then Jupiter was hiding his wings over his face and shaking, and despite himself, Saturn was also breathlessly churring. They didn't even know what was so funny, but the two found it harder and harder to catch their breath as the light slowly grew brighter behind them.
The light…
Saturn slowly turned his head over his shoulder, blinking as he suddenly met familiar fiery eyes. “Oh. Hi, Sol.”
“Cronus. Zeus.” The eyes blinked slowly at them. Suddenly, Saturn was being lifted and pulled in by a gentle gravity. “You aren’t sleeping.”
Well, he didn’t sound mad. Just tired. The gas giant let himself be brought inward, feeling the light warm his face.
“Sol! Sol, we flew! Did you see?” The eagle wriggled around in the hold of gravity, wings half spread.
“I saw.” The star yawned and bent his head to greet them once they were close enough. “Very well done.”
“I told you I could do it!”
“Yes.” The cockatoo gently tapped his beak against Jupiter’s own. “I’m very proud of you.”
The eagle preened.
“But," Sol continued with a slightly stern glare, "You should've woken me up so I could watch you.”
Jupiter wilted a little at that, but perked up when Sol brushed his beak against his head, smoothing and fixing some feathers, before reaching over to the other giant. The owl leaned in as the star gently tapped their beaks together. Then Saturn was being pushed back against warm feathers.. “You can keep practising— with supervision— when I’m more awake.”
“Aw. But Sol—“
“Later.” The cockatoo punctuated the statement by wrapping them both up in a wing. They were tucked securely back against his warm body, and Saturn felt the weight of sleep begin to catch up to him. “You’ll have all the time in the universe to fly.”
Jupiter loved flying.
The feeling of leaving his orbital plane with a swift downstroke filled him with giddiness each time. He got stronger with every attempt. Each new push into empty space fulfilled the loud part of his core that was always chanting fly, fly, fly!
He kept trying to convince Saturn to do fun tricks with him, but the owl seemed to go pale at the thought of mimicking the spirals and dips that Jupiter loved to do. It was a shame, but he still loved flying alongside the other. Well, when Saturn wasn’t sneaking up on him with his silent wings, that was. How can he fly so quietly? I need to see if I have a book on that.
Soon enough, they were trying to teach a new dark bird to fly, although X seemed to prefer to stay on the ground for the time being. That made sense for a celestial of his age. Saturn stayed with him and let the younger one follow him around, as the smaller planet had gotten attached to the gas giant. It was probably something to do with them both being owls.
One day, Jupiter had pushed himself higher, as high as he could possibly go. The Solar System pulled away from under him, and suddenly everything he knew seemed so small.
If Sun called him to come down, he couldn’t hear it. He didn’t have Saturn’s super hearing, after all.
He didn’t want to come down, either. It was him and the endless stars, with the comforting glow of his own star lighting up the underside of his wings.
He knew he wasn’t alone when, out of the corner of his eye, starlight reflecting off a heart shaped face. Jupiter back winged until he was gliding above Saturn’s primaries, chirping a greeting. The owl screeched back, and then, together, they were circling higher and higher above their home.
As they flew meandering loops through space, weaving in and out. Light danced off both of their feathers and scattered into Jupiter’s eyes, dazzling him.
They stooped and spun and twirled together, bracketed by the cosmos. When Saturn flew close enough, Jupiter imagined he could count the constellations just by looking at the reflections in his eyes. Then they were twisting away, falling apart only to rise back together.
Flying was amazing.
“Jupiter, don’t.”
“But Sol,” The eagle protested. His wings held half open, “I want to fly with Saturn!”
“I know, but the rocky planets are still forming around you. We’ve talked about this.”
The new planets were small. Very small. And boring, in Jupiter’s opinion. They hardly moved, still in the form of lifeless rocks. Probably because they were lifeless rocks, and that tended to be what they did.
Well, almost lifeless. When Sol’s light shone through, little glowing bodies could be seen just underneath the molten shell.
Apparently, rocky planets needed a lot more attention. The star was always crooning over them, nudging them with his beak and fretting over their temperature. With each new planet that collided, Sol became more and more agitated. Before, he'd kept most of them tucked underneath him in his warmth. Now, he refused to have anything even attempt to move the forming planets out of their orbit.
It seemed like an awful amount of fuss for them to form, Jupiter thought. He wouldn’t mind it, except that their existence seemed to be inextricably tied with him being grounded.
“You’re a giant ball of gravity already! And they need to form with as much stability as possible.” The star shook his head. “You can fly later when I’m supervising.”
Jupiter bristled. “I’m a grown planet. I—“
“Later.”
‘Later’ never seemed to come. Jupiter sat in his orbit, surrounded by sleeping rocks, growing dangerously bored.
The stirring in Jupiter’s core never went away.
Fly, fly, fly!
He wanted to. Badly.
His wings itched.
Fly, fly, fly!
“He’s so paranoid.” Jupiter sulked, pacing back and forth. “I’ve done this hundreds of times. I’m good at it.”
Saturn watched him from beyond the small stretch of the belt, halfway through preening his tail feathers. That was the other thing. Their new orbits had them separated from each other, which Jupiter hated.
First I’m it allowed to fly, now I can’t hang out with Saturn. He clicked his beak a few times in frustration. “And the rocky planets are fine! They just sit there. Like…”
“Rocks?” A new voice suggested. A splotch of dark blue entered his vision as X hopped over.
Jupiter grunted, staring down at the nearest one as it moved slightly within its shell. “I’d be careful.”
“He’s probably being precautious, Jove.” Saturn said, then wilted. “Although, I wish he’d let you cross over.”
“It’s probably for the best,” X fluffed up, although as he was already quite fluffy, the effect was lost. “He’s our star, and the oldest of all of us. He knows what he’s doing.”
“I suppose,” Saturn sighed sadly.
Saturn had long since grown into his adult plumage. Sleek sandy colours, with slight blue specking along his wings. The pale feathers on his heart shaped facial disk reflected both the Sun and the distant stars in a way that made him look ethereal.
X, while also an owl, seemed to be going a different way. He didn’t have the same face shape as Saturn, more round. And the few adult feathers that poked out of his cloud-like fluff were speckled with even darker colours. He still had some growing to do, only time would tell how the ice giant would settle.
Jupiter fixed a few more feathers on his breast, perhaps too aggressively. He was bored.
Fly, fly, fly! His core screamed at him.
I wish.
The rocky planets floated and sat there like inanimate objects. One of them wriggled slightly in their confinement, the movement barely causing them to wiggle in place.
If they would just hatch… then I could be free.
He bent down to stare at one. Hatch, he willed the tiny planet inside. Wake up.
It decided to keep being a rock. Just to spite him.
Jupiter kept staring at it.
Nothing.
... Aaand I'm so bored I'm having a staring contest with an unborn planet.
He looked back over shining light of their star. Despite the distance, Jupiter’s sharp eyes saw him perfectly. The yellow white cockatoo was bent over, making soft noises at one of the planets orbiting on the other side. Sol always made it a habit to speak to the forming planets. Apparently they would hear them, or something. Jupiter didn’t know how much he believed that, but he supposed it kept the star busy.
…
…wait—
“Sol’s distracted.” His core sparked. This was his chance! The familiar call to escape the orbital plane filled his body. “I’m going to come over.”
Saturn immediately perked up. “Good idea! Quickly!”
Jupiter was already standing and shaking open his wings. Being stuck in his orbit for so long made the calls intensify, echoing into his interior. Fly, fly, fly!
“Wait,” X was standing up too, a note of panic in his low hoots. “Are you sure—“
“He won’t notice.” Jupiter reassured. The familiar giddiness was already rising in his chest. The gravity of his orbit suddenly felt oppressive and suffocating, and he wanted— no— needed to—
Fly, fly, fly!
Jupiter was an eagle. Jupiter was also a planet. A planet who held half the planetary mass in the Solar System.
The rocky planets slept soundly nearby.
Fly, fly, fly!
With a flap of his wings, Jupiter took off.
“No, no, sorry, i-it’s not my—“
“I— I didn’t mean—“
“Wait— stop—“
Jupiter didn’t like to fly. Not after that.