Fwaaaaah~!

The slender branch under my talons sway with my stretching motions, rotating my neck and wings to get the blood flow going. It was cold in the early morning, with a white fog swirling in the depths of the forest, and a mist-like rain that gathered dew atop my shiny wings.

.

Fun fact about my new talons: they lock! As in, they lock themselves around the branch effortlessly, so I don't have to worry about falling off the branch while I was asleep.

So my sleep wasn't too bad being upright on the long tree branch, though it could never beat the comfort of a bed and a fluffy futon.

Ahh~ a futon sounded nice. My own black feathers would be too sharp to stuff the futon with, but I'm sure there would be something equivalent to a bird's soft and fluffy down feathers out there.

But it wasn't like we could go anywhere today while it was raining. Greenie in only his loincloth would probably freeze to death, and another thing,

Could I fly in the rain? Wouldn't my feathers get wet and weigh me down?

Only one way to find out.

I consciously unlock my talons with a popping sound, the joint in my sharp talons making the noise because of the overnight disuse.

Let's go check on Greenie~!

Hopping off, black wings stretch out and glide, using the falling momentum to maneuver right into the small cave entrance. Descending was just fine. I flap a couple times to test how high I could go while the rain starts to fall with larger pellets.

Ok, ascending was difficult. Even with the increased strength in my body from the evolution, my wings felt heavier, the motion of flapping my wings taking more effort.

I didn't mind the rain though. It was perfect for the spring cleaning I wanted to do, and there was no need to hunt for meat while the snake lasted in our cave. There was also that experiment I wanted to try, one that had popped into my head before I had fallen asleep.

Clacking my beak a couple times while entering into the cave, I poke Greenie with the knuckle of my talon bent inwards to I don't accidentally stab him

Rise and shine, my goblin friend~!

It's your morning wakeup call from the cave hotel! Har de har har. I laugh at my own stupid joke.

Greenie stirs with my prodding, uncurling from the fetal position he'd been sleeping in while holding something to his chest.

What was that

The tips of the stuff in his fist were black and fluffy looking, and when I look closer, they were-

my baby feathers that had sloughed off of me during the evolution.

Aww, that was sweet, I guess? He'd always wanted them to decorate his spear with, but it wouldn't be for a while yet. Since his spear was long gone, swallowed by the strange black voids that spread around me during the evolution.

That's my bad. You can keep the feathers Greenie.

He sits up, leaning back on one hand listlessly while fondling my old feathers with the other hand.

"Crawk!"

Let's work, Greenie!

First order of business was clearing out this cave. All the poop had to go. Speaking of poop, Greenie moves into a crouching position, hand going towards the loincloth, which I stop with a light peck on his hand.

Nope, no peeing in here!

I bound towards the cave entrance, croaking while I hope Greenie follows me instead of trying to do his business. Scratching his head, he follows me, and once he's outside, I point my beak a few times at the bush on the other side of the cave mouth, opposite of the spicy berries we'd eaten yesterday.

He looks at the bush and then back at me, confused. So I point both wingtips down to his lower half, whereabouts where Greenie's privates would be, and back at the bush, simulating the peeing motion I'd glimpsed him do the other day.

Ahh! His eyes seem to say, widening with a clear look of understanding. Going over to the bush, Greenie uses his new thumb and index finger to break off a leaf as wide as his palm, rolling it up and tucks the leaf into his loincloth.

Uhh- ok.

Not what I was expecting, but ok.

It made his junk look bigger in the front. I was expecting Greenie to pee, not try to enlarge his masculinity…

I really wanted to know the context behind his actions. Maybe meeting some other goblins one day would tell me why he did weird stuff like this. But his actions did tell me that these leaves were soft and flexible enough to fold and roll up.

Appraisal!

{Crescent Moon Plant: Hairy rosette plant that grows in height with the light of the full moon. Identifiable by the white crescent moon marking where the leaf meets the stem.}

I rip off a leaf for myself to examine the tiny white hairs growing all over the leaves. It repelled water, I could see, as the leaves waver with each large raindrop that lands on the verdant greenery.

Greenie moves his loincloth so the rolled up leaf, the width and shape of a large cigar, hangs straight down in front of his body. Guess he didn’t want a crooked looking pen-pen.

If that motion didn't work, I needed to come up with something else.

Trotting to the bush, I try making the sound of trickling water with my throat.

I've heard mothers in the women's bathroom encouraging their children to pee by singing them a song, and one woman playing the sound of trickling water on their phone.

Trickle-trickle. Man, were ravens good at reproducing sounds. It sounded almost perfect, like a picturesque babbling brook with an occasional low croak when I ran out of air.

Greenie adjusts himself, (or maybe it was the soft leaf), uncomfortably as I continue to make the noise, and then he lifts up the cloth to pee.

There we go! I turn away and let him do his business. Baby steps, but we were getting somewhere!

Tilting my head back, I take a sip of the free water falling from the cloudy sky.

Alright. First order of business for today! (Going to the toilet didn't count. That was a bodily function, not a real achievement.)

Another croak to let Greenie know I'd gone back inside, and then I use my beak to carefully gather brown twigs and sticks of a similar size, around the length of my body.

These would be useful later. I was separating the stuff we could use from the muck of feces everywhere, most of which was old and dry. It wasn't just the twigs that lay strewn about the ground. There were pieces of armor and scraps of cloth, as well as yellow bones and white bones bleached white under the sunlight. Basically anything that was not poop.

I had to be careful not to step in dark pools of urine that were in random spots while I carried the stuff with my beak, or used my talons and flew, though I tried not to do that too often since it was tiring.

There weren't any cleaning tools here. It would have to be done the old, old-fashioned way, with good thinking and some elbow grease.

I place all the stuff that looks good on a small clean patch in the center of the cave.

While moving the items from one spot to another, I appraised some of them:

{Dancing Balsa Twig}

When I first poked at this twig with one talon, it had quivered like a plucked violin string. May be good for making an instrument, but I had no use for it now.

{Orc Hip Bone}

It was a large bleached-white bone in a butterfly shape. I'd mistaken it for a misshapen rock at first because it was so much bigger than a normal hip bone you might see in a science lab.

{Crystal Potion Vial}

Empty. I shook it a few times, but the red potion inside it was completely gone. Greenie had used it all to fix my wing. So sweet.

{Scented Yew Shard}

Hmmmm~. A tiny shard of wood as large as a toothpick, smelled like tea. Amazing.

{Bone Fragments}

Literally. Bone fragments.

{Iron Helmet}

Everything made of metal in this cave was rusted. This dented helmet was no exception.

{Soldier's Dirk}

Oooooh! The Soldier's Dirk was a longer dagger, still in its leather sheath with metal bands that kept the blade and sheath rusted together. This was nice!

And the other stuff, I could figure out a use for them later, though it would all have to be given a thorough cleaning. If I had hands, I could have done them myself, but at this point it was a no-go for me. My beak was too sharp, too pointed, to clean a large surface area in one swipe.

Maybe I could try stretching out my talons and using one of the rags here?

Greenie comes inside, and I pause, using my talon to scratch my head. Ouch! The talon had gone into my skin a little deeper than I would have preferred. Better be careful not to scratch too hard with them.

Even if this was a fantasy world, it felt strange to do something so normal like cleaning. It made everything seem so real. So mundane, but in such a fantastic setting like a goblin's cave.