Daughter.

The Mana Tree’s wordless voice whispered through Fey’s mind.

You have returned. You have grown.

The sense of a caterpillar ready to form its cocoon.

Here begins the next step of your journey.

A pregnant pause, waiting for Fey’s response.

Fey took a deep breath and thought with crystal clarity, Yes.

The swirling currents of glittering pollen shifted to converge around Fey, tracing golden ribbons around her body and limbs. She began to feel weightless, a gentle breeze lifting her off the ground in a sea of brilliant flower petals.

Golden particles began to sink in to her skin, awakening a tingling sensation that travelled along her limbs to centre in her upper back. The sensation built and built until it felt like it would burst – and then it did.

Brilliant wings flared into existence, glowing the fierce purple of Fey’s magic. They beat the air twice, sending shockwaves through the floating pollen and flower petals, then held themselves half folded as Fey drifted gently towards the ground.

Fey paid little attention to the system notices, still absorbing the sensation of having suddenly gained a new pair of limbs. After landing on the ground, the wings gradually lost their glow, darkening until they were the same purple-black as her hair, albeit with a slight translucence that made it clear they were summoned entities and not flesh-and-blood appendages.

Fey carefully extended and folded the wings; it felt like a new pair of arms, but with fewer joints to control. This is sooo weird. Experimentally, she dismissed the wings; they disappeared from view but remained intact to her sense of proprioception[i]. She reached back to touch where the wings anchored when present and hastily pulled her hand away at the confusing barrage of sensory input that told her her hand was both in the same space and not in the same space at all as her wing, as well as a mildly unpleasant tingling sensation similar to a limb falling asleep.

The creation of functional wings had been one of the most difficult challenges in the creation of Fantasia. Mammalian brains were simply not designed for the control of six limbs, and human motor and sensory cortices were already fully occupied with the base, four-limbed body. It had taken years of research for VirtualRealities to successfully map wings onto the lesser-used motor and sensory territory just below the arms. Fantasia was the first and currently only game that offered a true flying experience, although their main competitor had a fully automated version without sensory input.

Despite the years of refinement, wings would always be a rough add-on when connecting to a human brain (unless arms were taken away, but people tended to like to keep their opposable thumbs). Players focusing too much on the new limbs tended to suffer from severe headaches and failure to gain motor control, so the tingling sensation had been programmed in as a distraction and deterrent from too much experimenting.

Fey was by no means an expert in neuroscience, but she knew enough that when it came to virtual reality, it was the integration of the fantastical with the mundane that challenged the realism of the game, and she was impressed with the entire quest associated with the avariel wings. Taking one last look at the surreal splendour of the Mana Tree, she touched its trunk in a silent good-bye and quietly left.

***

Leandriel could see Fey on his navigation map walking towards the less-remote part of the forest where he waited, so it seemed likely that she had completed her tasks for the Mana Tree, but one could make no assumptions when it came to Fey.

Leandriel began drafting a reply, but before he could send it, she appeared as if of thin air and walked straight into him. Her pets managed to stop without bumping into anything.

“…I’m here,” Leandriel said belatedly, steadying her balance with hands on her shoulders.

Fey stared blankly up at him. “Where did you come from?”

“I have been here for a while, but the forest around the Mana Tree separates you into a private instance, so you did not see me.” In retrospect, Leandriel should really have taken a few steps back from the very edge of that invisible border. It was a type of error he would not have normally made, but one he was afraid would be quite frequent when it came to today’s not-quite-a-date.

“Oh. Hi,” Fey said, breaking into her usual cheerful smile, the one that always made him smile in return. “Where should we go from here?”

“There is an area designed for flying practice here in the Elvenwood,” he answered, the words containing a question.

“Lead the way,” Fey invited.

Leandriel nodded and began to walk, Fey falling into place beside him and the pets following.

The flying practice area was not a short walk away by foot. Flying there would be considerably faster. Leandriel was fairly certain he could bear Fey’s weight in flight following the transition to avariel form, and it would be an opportunity to allow her to get used to being airborne.

It took him another fifteen steps before he dared to voice the idea. “I could fly us there,” he murmured.

“Like, in your carry-pouch?” Fey asked.

“If you prefer,” he answered. “I can probably carry you directly. You are half the weight you were before the transformation to avariel.”

Fey’s expression took on a thoughtful, distant look. It made Leandriel review his words. He added hastily, “Not that you were heavy. Quite the opposite, in fact.” He would have thought her slender build the result of the purchase of an appearance module, except that Kevin had assured him, without Leandriel ever asking, that Fey’s appearance was entirely unmodified, save for the automatic shifts to elf and the purple tint to her hair.

Fey’s eyes refocused on him but her expression remained blank for a moment. Then she grinned, the smile taking in all of his overthinking and gently dismissing it as unnecessary. “Don’t worry about it,” Fey said, patting him on the arm. She stopped walking. “If you can carry me, let’s fly, by all means.”

Leandriel paused to consider. “I am fairly certain I can, but… Do you mind if I pick you up?”

Fey grinned again. “Well, that’s the most direct pick-up line I’ve ever heard.”

Leandriel hurried to clarify, “I only meant that—”

Fey patted his arm again. “I know, I know. Go ahead.” A purple glow enveloped Fey’s form as she Ex-quipped out of her metal armour, shedding as much weight as possible. She held her arms away from her sides in invitation.

Leandriel paused, decided he was better off minimizing how much he talked for today, and lifted Fey off the ground with a grip around her waist. It was an effortless action, given her slight weight and his avatar’s strength, her feet floating more than dangling off the ground.

“Woah.” Fey’s eyes widened but she did not otherwise move.

Leandriel forced himself not to linger and put Fey down as soon as he had a sense of the effort it would take to carry her in flight. “As I thought, it will be no problem,” he said. Copying Fey’s earlier action, he Ex-quipped to cloth garments, shedding far more weight in his plate armour than he would be taking on by carrying Fey.

“Okay, then. Now what?” Fey asked. Before he could answer, she turned to look at her pets and asked, “Do you guys want to come or hang out with Kallara?”

There was a brief, squeaked conference and Fey’s pets separated. Two of the glooms wrapped themselves around Fey’s legs like bracers, while Boris, Amethyst and the rest followed the path back to town. Leandriel had the impression that Amethyst would have liked to join in the flying as well, but was choosing to keep Boris company.

Fey turned her attention back to him with a questioning expression.

Vertical takeoffs were by far the hardest and most exhausting, and given the trees, there was no other option. Thankfully, unlike birds, they had well-developed legs that could jump quite the height with their enhanced strength and give the initial upward momentum to take the strain off the wings. “If you could please jump as high as you can,” he requested.

“Straight up?”

Leandriel nodded.

Fey looked up at the sky as her knees and arms bent, her weight centred, expression focused. He could see the training behind the movement, hundreds or thousands of repetitions refining the motion so that it was not textbook form but perfectly suited to her height, weight, and proportions.

Fey leaped, yelping as she clearly ended up far higher than she had expected. Leandriel jumped a split second later, catching Fey from behind before her momentum reversed direction. This time, she shrieked. Leandriel held on tightly, wings beating furiously until they cleared the trees and he was able to settle into a more sedate pace.

“…Are you okay?” he asked. Fey was stiff and frozen, with a death-grip on his forearms where they wrapped around her waist.

“Fine, totally fine,” Fey said in a voice that indicated the opposite.

He should have explained better, walked her through the steps. “Sorry,” he apologized, self-recrimination in his voice. “I have never done this before, and it shows.”

He had let more stress seep into his tone than intended, and Fey responded, unlocking her grip to pat his arm. “Hey, don’t worry about it,” she said in a much calmer voice. “I was just being a wimp. I doubt there’s a manual for flying with a passenger, and it's not like you dropped me or anything. I’m super happy you could take the time to help me with flying.”

He had not really been talking about flying with a passenger. “That, too,” he muttered.

“What?” Fey asked, his comment made indecipherable by the wind.

“Nothing,” he answered. Feeling uncomfortable with the lie, he added, “Ignore me; my mind is a mess today.”

Fey settled down quietly in response to his words, beginning to look around curiously as she relaxed. He almost wished she had stayed tense, as he was now becoming overly conscious of her nearness, the warmth of her skin, her personal scent. He resolutely focused on flying.

It was with mingled relief and regret that he began to angle for descent when other flying figures came into view.

“Is that the place?” Fey asked, tracking a couple of players circling around the practice area.

“Yes.”

She winced when two of the figures came too close to each other and one fell, unable to compensate for the change in air currents. “Oh boy. I hope I don’t fall to an ignominious death.”

“He will probably have recovered in time to keep from crashing,” Leandriel reassured her. “I’ll do my best to catch you if it looks like you’re in danger.”

“Good.” Fey sounded suitably reassured.

Leandriel aimed for the top of a cliff, the rocky outcropping looking unlikely in the middle of a forest. A whole set of cliffs tore out of the earth on one side of the clearing before them, the rest being a thickly turfed meadow that would cushion any crash landings.

Shifting his grip on Fey so he had an arm beneath her knees, Leandriel backwinged and landed, absorbing the impact with his legs before placing her on her feet.

Fey peered down at the distance to the meadow below, then at the players launching themselves off the cliffs with various degrees of skill. “So, how do birds learn to fly?”

“Their parents lure them away from the nest with food until they fall out of the tree, and they try to break their fall with their wings,” Leandriel answered, wishing he had a more comforting answer.

Fey turned to look at Leandriel, trepidation in her eyes.

“Would you like me to take you for a glide down to the bottom first?” he offered, wanting to make the process as stress-free as possible.

Fey took a deep breath. “No, no, I doubt anyone else here got to do that.” She summoned her wings and they flashed into existence, glowing fiercely for a moment before darkening to match her hair. The rich purple undertone was visible in the direct sunlight, and he was struck for a moment by her beauty, though no doubt she would scoff at the attribution if he mentioned it.

“Controlled falling, right?” Fey said, again looking down at the meadow. “Just like skiing. I can do that.”

Looking away from the ground, Fey flapped her wings experimentally a few times, took a deep breath, and jumped.

***

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod I just jumped off a cliff. There was nothing but the wind whipping by as gravity gripped Fey in its merciless clutches. Her wings beat instinctively, clawing at the air and managing to slow her somewhat.

The distance from the top of the cliff had seemed so far, but the ground was rushing towards her at an alarming rate. There was nothing to do but keep on beating her wings. She was still falling, but at a speed that she thought would not break any bones, by the time she made her first involuntary and uncontrolled landing.

“Oww,” Fey said aloud after a few seconds. She had landed feet first and then promptly fallen onto her knees and then hands, skidding forwards a short distance before coming to a blessed stop.

Leandriel made a much more graceful landing and knelt beside her. “Are you all right?” he asked, concern vibrating in his voice.

Fey stood up stiffly, the scrapes from her fall already healing due to the accelerated regeneration from the Mana Tree’s blessing. So that’s why they added that, she realized. “I’m fine,” she said. She was mostly uninjured, although it would take a few minutes before her body realized it was not going to die and stopped pumping so much adrenaline through her system. “How did I do?” she asked.

“Quite well, actually,” Leandriel assured her. “Your speed was quite controlled near the end. Landings… are going to be rough for a while, even after you get the hang of flying.”

Oh, joy, Fey thought, keeping the sarcasm to herself as she imagined the hundreds of similar landings she would experience before managing to stay on her feet. “Okay,” was all she said aloud. Spotting the steep trail that led back up the cliffs, she trudged towards it.

Seeing her destination, Leandriel offered, “Would you like me to fly you up?”

That would take her back to the top far too quickly. “Let’s… just walk,” she said.

Leandriel nodded and accompanied her up the trail, a reassuring solidity beside her.

Footnotes:

[i] Proprioception is the awareness of one’s body position in space; this is mainly informed by sensory input from muscle spindles that sense the amount of stretch/contraction in each muscle, as well as vestibular input from the inner ear.