CHAPTER 2: OCCULTO ANIMARUM
Panicking in such a confined space had some practical limits. Once Taylor nearly went tumbling over the lip of her nest she spent a full 10 min facing the surface furthest from the sheer drop... There were also practical limits to how long one could stare at the dull gray wall. Full circle now, Taylor had to admit that the view was to die for, though she was still 20 floors higher than she was comfortable with.
Barely fortified she shuffled to the rim of her nest, "It's alright Taylor, you just woke up as... a bird. Only you could have screwed up dying so badly, that you end up in a bloody bird! It's not like I don't know how to fly or anything!" With that last syllable she had miscalculated, angry gesticulating with wings were a prime solution to her problem but present an entirely new dilemma: how not to go splat on the pavement below. The wind that had ripped Taylor from her perch sent her in a flat spin reentry to the afterlife. Buildings blurred by tunnel vision increasingly faster and unforgiving earth neared. 10 Floors down flapping madly she missed a parapet ledge by inches eliciting panicked squawks and more uncoordinated flapping. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. This is it. 4. 3. 2. 1…
Somewhere along the way Taylor had closed her eyes. So when that terminal conclusion of her unremarkable tale exceeded the time limit she cracked open her eyes. The very winds that tore her from the modicum of safety above had caught her all the same, as if it were only natural that she was fair game to its vagaries. Streaking between the building she passed over an abrupt updraft where a furtive finger of sunlight had warmed the tar of an intersection. Now predictable Taylor carefully twitched her tailfeathers directing herself to another. Soon the buildings dwindled in the distance below as the cityscape bloomed like a concrete flower. Car still honked through the buffer of the wind, but she glided detached from the world. The first time she had felt truly free of everything since summer camp 18 months ago.
This time as she spoke it felt as if a nail or thorn was stuck in her throat, "What I wouldn't have given for the chance to escape like this…" This somehow seemed to pivot her from woe to wrath, not much unlike her father. "I'm going to shit on them every single day! Daydreaming of vengeance and flying are poor companions, Taylor was already over downtown by now and steadily losing altitude. Soon she was low enough that people no longer looked like ants below. Quite unexpectedly her avian eyesight fixed on a shiny necklace and then on the woman wearing it and two men by the entrance of an alleyway. Swooping down on the railing of the fire escape, the situation quickly clarified itself. It was a pair of E88 skinheads intent on fleecing a middle-aged woman dressed in office wear.
Corralling her further into the seclusion of the alley one of the men spoke up, "We'll have that pretty necklace of yours and whatever's in your wallet, chink." Back to the wall now the lady looked around but the other pedestrians not six feet away gave not one wit about her.
She pleaded, "Please, don't hurt me! Here, take the necklace and my phone but I don't have any money on me!" The one guy patted down his leather jacket and grinned, "Seeing as you can't compensate us for our work, you'll just have to make up for it." Taylor could see the whites of the lady's eyes as the two crooks grabbed her tearing three buttons of her blouse. Her shrill screaming shocked Taylor into action, the people on the street were ignoring that particular byway even more intently now than before. In her raven body she couldn't do much but nevertheless she pulled in her wings and dove, not unlike an arrow with claws and a beak. In moments she was upon the pair slashing with her claws at the eyes of the first. Busy as she was attempting to circumnavigate the leather clad arms Taylor never noticed his partner had dug a rotten plank from the nearby garbage.
With one swing he brained the aspiring hero, the second was just insulting. The lady had clawed her hand at the top of her blouse and took the chance Taylor offered her to slip free, while Tweedledum and Tweedledee were bent over catching their breath instead of her. "Dammit, fucking bird came out of nowhere! This city's insane, I swear I think it was going to eat your fucking eyes right out your skull!"
"Hell, man, thanks for the save!" The second thug replied while fingering the new furrows in his jacket. As they turned back to the wall sans a victim and cursed anew, the two of them missed the teal outline emanating from the raven pancake vanishing into the depths of the alley.
A/N: Had a bit of time, here's a bit of a bite. Maybe this will turn into a story, maybe it won't. Enjoy.