I rouse from my slumber to the gentle tune of ‘Still Alive’ by Jonathan Coulton.

Mmmm.

It’s still playing. Why is it still playing? It’s vacation. Besides, I’m done with school. Bleh. I flip over and grab the phone ‘Trip to Denmark’ the alarm note says. Oh. I stop it and get out of bed. Right, the rather impromptu trip to Denmark for aspects. Man, I’m hairy. No, furry. I scratch my head, hand sinking down to my ear. Oh, I’m in wolfkin form.

I grab today’s clothes and start walking to the bathroom. I don’t remember taking on this form, though? I mean, I had thrown to covers to the floor, probably from the heat, but it’s a bit chilly now. Hmm, looks like it’s rained yesterday, and I have everything I can safely have open, open, for ventilation. Did I take on the form in half sleep, subconsciously or accidentally while asleep, or do I have power incontinency? Whatever. Let’s get this morning over with.

Right. Navigation gear, artifice kit, mini crafting kit, harvesting kit and the small toolkit. Clean clothes. Digital tickets where needed, food will be bought wherever I am, but it seems I can draw on the shapechanger storage for nutrition if that’s a problem. My old phone to use as a GPS when travelling, since I don’t wanna risk my current one. And the action camera and a very crude mount for it, so that I can record at least parts of my flight.

Perfect. Probably. Worst case scenario I spend some money and/or return home early.

Off I go, then. Let’s see, hm, yeah. I fish out my phone from my bag, currently tied around my waist, on the front, in preparation for flying. Let’s see, if I stand over there, it should be impossible to recognize the place unless you’ve been here. I point the camera in that direction and hit the record button, then walk into frame, phone held in place with magic.

“Hello, world.” I wave, a rather cumbersome action with three to four meter long wings in place of arms. As for their exact length, I don’t think I can measure them with these hands, which are mostly rigid. Oh, and the fact that they stretch out away from the core of my body doesn’t exactly help.

I look to the ground, or rather, tilt and rotate my head sideways, given that the resting position for my head in this form is about forty-five degree upwards. Otherwise, my neck would start hurting real quick from looking ‘up’ all the time, when flying.

“Ahh, crud. I should have planned this. Like, at all.” I pause, looking at the floating phone. “Whatever. So. Uhh... Here.” I spread my wings out, the ends of which probably out of frame.

“This is me. My birdkin form. Birdman. Something like that. Yes, I’m human, but I have [Shapechanger] abilities. Today, I’m flying from Oslo, Norway to uhh, the eastern part of mainland Denmark. If you see this, then I’ll have edited in a map of my flight route.”

I let out a breath, retracting my wings and folding them across my body. “In short, I’ll travel south, along the coast of the Oslo fjord, and then the swedish coast, until I reach Göteborg. From there I intend to cross Kattegat, flying over some island I don’t know the name of, and then to Denmark.”

“Well. No idea if I can fly continuously for that far. If not I’ll just have to buy a ferry ticket or something.” I do an approximation of a shrug, difficult in this form thanks to almost immovable shoulders.

“I intend to do some recording with an action cam as I fly-” I fish the camera in question out of my bag, making it hover above my talon-like hand. “Most of which will probably be in its own video.”

I put the action camera back in the bag. I take the few steps to grab the phone, and stop the recording. A bit below two minutes, huh. That’ll do. Maybe I should redo that intro after the trip… I’ll decide later.

I make a quick tweet: ‘I’m gonna fly from Norway to Denmark using magic and shapechanging. This will be interesting.’ then put my phone in my bag. After that I ensure the openings of the bag are covered tightly, so nothing will fall out.

The bag is the same as before, in other words fairly small, and only has the things I want to easily access, with the flat compass shoved into an external pocket I added on to the side, and the old phone in another such pocket on the opposite side. Doesn’t look all that great, but I’m more worried about functionality than offending birds’ fashion sense.

“Tower, this is Birdman, ready to take off.” I muse to myself, spreading my wings in their full glory and start awkwardly running down the lawn, with an initial boost of speed from magic. A few steps in, I lean forwards, pulling my wings upwards, and with a powerful flap and burst of magic, I lift off.

No longer bound by the speed I can move my legs, I left them up behind my body and, using [Aerokinesis] in concert with [Force Magic], boost both my speed and height, clearing the building at the end of the lawn with a good margin, to the apparent surprise of a woman hanging laundry on her balcony (hers is covered from the weather with glass walls).

Some more flaps and a little bit more magic, I am truly flying, yet again. I’m not that high up yet, but people, and even cars, look small some hundred meters below. I turn south, the direction found using my (admittedly not great) sense of direction, the sun’s position behind the clouds and of course my compass, accessible from its position with magic. But mostly the fact that the fjord is south of the city. All I have to do is to follow the coastline, and then I’ll be there in no time at all.

I severely underestimated the length of this trip. I’m feeling surprisingly little exhaustion, probably because of my improved stats and [Body Enhancement]. On the other hand, continuous use of mana has left me somewhat drained, a problem I solved by swapping [Meditation] for [Mana Absorption]. While the higher up, the thinner the mana seems to become, I don’t fly that high so and I don’t linger enough in one area to drain it of local mana.

On the other hand, [Meditation] seem to have had a relaxing effect on my mind, or maybe I simply crossed a threshold somewhere, but constantly using mana is mentally exhausting. That, and while flying is fun, I’m not really flying as much as travelling, and over large tracts of rather monotonous land.

With my batteries recharged, so to speak, I swap the two abilities back to how they were, leaving me with this ability loadout:

Classes: [Shapechanger] - [Proto-mage] - [Artificer]

Abilities: [Body Enhancement] - [Meditation] - [Regeneration]

[Force Magic] - [Aerokinesis] - [Spatial Magic]

Of those, I want [Force Magic] and [Aerokinesis] for the best control and actually being able to land. Accelerating and/or gaining height without them is also super difficult. [Body Enhancement], well. Without it I suspect I would’ve landed for a rest a long time ago. I have [Regeneration] more by habit by anything else, but given that it has slowly levelled up, it must be doing something. Also, if something happens I would rather have it than not.

As I’ve learned, I should probably keep [Meditation], which means [Spatial Magic] is the only option if I need to swap an ability. I need it for full control of the magic bag, and for any control at all over the subspaces in my body, so I am hesitant to unequip it, though. It’s not like the magic will fail if I unequip it or anything (I tested), but I lose the vague sense of connection to the subspaces, and obviously can’t use them.

Whatever. Ahead I see a city, which, unless I have somehow gone the completely wrong direction, must be Göteborg. I start descending slowly, having learnt yesterday that while I can do an aggressive landing, it is a bit too exhilarating for my own taste.

They have an airport, in fact there’s a plane… landing? Right now. I better steer clear of that. I could keep flying, but I should probably take a take a break. Besides, since I posted that first tweet, maybe I should make another to tell of my progress? I would need to find an open network to do that, but if I head to the city centre that should be easy. Hmmm, decisions.

Ahh, I know. Dirty cheating editing is what I’ll do. I’ll land on this field, turn on the action cam, and then fly into the city proper, landing on the large river. I thought of recording earlier, but I wanted to see if I could do the flight with no breaks. Well, the flight here, at any rate. I’ve flown for over three hours, and this is more or less a the halfway point. Longer as the crow flies, shorter if travelling by car.

I descend upon the river, small waves from wind, marring the surface. It is more or less a perfect landing and takeoff spot, given my abilities. As is any reasonably calm and large body of water, for that matter.

I come to a stop, hovering just above the water, off to the side as not to be in the way of boats. Speaking of which, there is a harbor of sorts for small boats here, which I figure is a good place to get up on land. There’s a part with no people around, so let’s go there.

I step onto dry land and detach the action cam, stopping the recording and turning it off. Since I’ll find some open internet to leech off, and now that I think about it, a place to buy something to drink, I revert to my standard form, since it’s less… well. As opposed to this form, it’s human, except for the slightly pointed ears and enhanced senses. My eyes also have a different color, but that can be achieved with colored lenses. Better put on a shirt, though.

Drink bought and internet leeched off (‘In Göteborg now. Short rest then off for the final stretch, gonna cross ocean.’), and also Google maps checked, just to be sure, I am ready for the most dangerous stretch, crossing Kattegat. Considering that I haven’t had any problems so far, I shouldn’t be in any danger, but if something happens, being above water could be less than ideal. And that’s why I want to fly past an island. That and a landmark to navigate by.

I return to the river and wait for a larger boat to pass by, then hover over to the middle of the river and, after taking off my shirt again, transform back to the birdkin form. I stretch out my wings, lean forwards accelerate and take off, more like a plane than a bird, really.

I never really thought about it until I was making a form to fly with, but while birds like pigeons and sparrows can be pretty fat and still fly, medium to large birds, for example eagles and other birds of prey, are actually pretty lean.

My point being that, in order to be able to fly, this form’s torso is smaller than I’m used to, the legs are pretty stubby, and with my arms becoming only half the length of the wings after being elongated, these wings are quite unwieldy when not flying. Heck, even in the air they are unwieldy, but only if I do some aerobatics or if I fly near obstacles.

Minus the wings I would look kinda like a feathered dwarf with very long arms that has an extra joint sticking out from a rigid hand with three fingers. Oh, I can call this form something along the lines of ‘air dwarf’. ‘Flying dwarf’, ‘wind dwarf’… ‘Winged dwarf’? Ehh, let’s just keep ‘birdkin’. Good thing I am covered in small feathers, this sea-breeze is quite noticeable now that I’m actually flying over water.

The dream of flight, huh? Now that I can actually fly by my own power, it seems a lot more mundane, but I keep getting this bubbly feeling of wanting to exert myself, to move, to to loops and turns and have fun. In short, this is amazing, and I gotta find a way to share this with others. I bet we can make sports revolving around flying, just like we have sports around swimming, skiing, biking and so forth.

Right I’m flying as a means of travel, though… Ahh, to hell with it, the park is open pretty late. Let’s see, I think that’s the island on the horizon, a bit to the side there, so I need to adjust my direction. With the checkpoint and landmark in sight, I change from level flight to a steep dive, feeling weightless for a moment before I do a loop. I scream in joy. There’s noone who can hear me anyway, and only a few leisure boats and one larger ship on the horizon.

After the loop I level my flight and reorient, having gone a bit of course, Then I start a corkscrew dive , burning mana to cover my feathered body in dazzling blue flames, shooting small mana balls off to every side. Man it feels good to finally do some flashy magic, even if it’s only seen by a few people relaxing in their boats. If they even look up, that is. Anime magic battles would be a lot more boring if everyone went for practical over flashy, but that’s the Rule of Cool for ya.