Dihalo-Kasdeja House, Noeden | October 2nd, 01:13

It had been a long, long night. Warren leaned back in the office chair, his head pressing against the faux wood paneling of the tiny room he sat in. It was a small room off of the basement, hidden beside shelves next to the washer and dryer. Just big enough for a modest desk and a more than secure filing cabinet.

Warren stared at the flat device he palmed in his hands. A brick-like cellphone; the wires that poked out of its gray casing would have made it appear broken to any others. In truth, it was an older satphone that had been modified to work off of old communications channels that were no longer monitored by most Earth-based nations. Even if someone were to somehow listen in, Lengiki, the Alengian language, was only known to so many people on Earth - many of them being of the non-Human variety.

He rubbed his hands down his face, trying to get ready for a conversation he had never planned on having with his husband.

Finally, he twisted two of the exposed wires together and the satphone blipped to life. The Alengian dialed.

“Maorozh,” Eric answered with a casual greeting. “You’re not calling with good news, I take it.”

“How’s work?” Warren started.

“Oh,” he could practically feel Eric shrink on the other end. “You’re certainly not calling with good news.” He switched to their native tongue. >

> Warren answered. >

“Again?” Eric sounded dismissively incredulous.

“Takes more after you.”

Eric made a hurt, childish noise. “There has to be more than a schoolyard fight with some ham-fisted mouthbreathers if you’re calling. I know you better than that, love.”

> Warren continued on the phone. He would not let Eric use honeyed words to slip out of this discussion. >

Eric paused, and Warren could tell he was thinking of a reply to that. > he finally sighed. Warren could tell Eric’s attention had momentarily gone away from the conversation, likely back to what had taken him away to begin with. >

<>

> Eric finally huffed. “What on Earth do you want me to do, my love?”

>

A puzzled, strange noise escaped Eric on the other end. “So have the talk with him?”

> Warren said, putting it bluntly.

Immediately, Eric’s tone changed: >

> Warren closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Would otherwise have been due in the next year or so. From the size.”

Warren heard Eric swallow a hard lump in his throat, and he reflexively did the same. “My dear, I can’t come home just yet. This is too important. Help him cope the best you can. I will make it up to all of you.” There was a sense of pleading that hung in the silence the followed. “I can’t tell you yet, but I’m hoping they’re wrong about why I’m here.”

“The ghost hunt can wait. We need you here.”

Eric seemed to mull it over. Warren could hear him flicking his nails in thought. “This is a wash job. Maybe I should just let the color run and be done with it.”

Dihalo-Kasdeja House, Noeden | October 3rd, 08:21

Gadrien stared at his wall. He was in bed, on his side, buried under mounds of blankets. The cool air of fall penetrated his room at night, normally something he’d be upset with, but he wasn’t as aware of the cold as he should have been. His mind raced with other things.

Namely the dark brown wings that now stuck out from his back.

After Gadrien had slept off the initial exhaustion of his wings emerging, he found that his wings made it very hard to sleep. Though they were only half the size of his arms, they kept getting tangled up in the blankets and pillows; they flapped around in his sleep and knocked things over. It was to be expected, he was told, since they hadn’t come in on their own; that the night flapping would stop soon. But soon couldn’t come soon enough for him.

Having enough of lying in bed, he threw off the covers and sat upright. His wings fluttered a little, but he quieted them as quickly as he could. That, at least, he could do with conscious effort.

After flicking the lamp beside his bed on he carefully stood, making sure to rise slowly to counteract the newly displaced weight on his back. Gadrien stood in front of the mirror, his eyes, violet on the outer iris and hazel in the middle, still stared back at him like a strange dream he hoped would have faded. He turned, his back again the focus. His feathers were small, still growing in, and were a more dark, umber-brown than his hair; Gadrien thought his feathers were shaped like little dagger blades.

He could see a faint glowing at the base of his wings: places that were still healing from when his skin had been cut open. Not much of a scar remained, only bruised areas where the blueish glow shone through.

The crystal knife that his father had used when operating had healed most of his skin; it had been a shard of iridisim. All Gadrien knew was that iridisim was precious and finite on Earth as the only supply happened to be what any Alengiana had managed to carry with them when they arrived. He had seen smaller slivers once, but a shard that large had to have been saved for extreme emergencies.

Gadrien wandered out of his room and down the stairs, fingers feeling the grooves in the wall panelling as he went. It was dark and all of the curtains in the house had been drawn shut. He reached the bottom step and turned into the kitchen, seeing just why all the curtains had been closed.

It was rare that either of his parents had their wings out at home and not tucked up into their backs, hidden away under layered clothing. Warren’s wings were larger, more fluffy and full than Gadrien’s. They were a sandy, golden color just a few shades lighter than his pale hair; his feathers long and bulbous at the bottoms - like they were elongated ping-pong paddles. With his wings fully out, it was hard not to see how inhumanly thin his father was in build compared to himself.

Warren stood in the kitchen, tiredly leaning on the counter as he held the phone to his ear. He caught Gadrien’s eye and made a silent snapping motion, pointing towards the fridge. Eat something, he mouthed at him.

Gadrien slunk to the fridge, eyeing Warren the whole time. He opened the fridge, pretending to look at the food inside as he tried to listen in on who his father was talking to.

“No, of course I’m still here,” Warren perked and walked to the other end of the room. His wings pulled back slightly. “We’re signing the paperwork to have him homeschooled until he graduates in May.”

Gadrien hit his head. His wings flapped out of reflex. Papers flew off the fridge and counter, scattering to the floor. When he looked up, Warren looked at him with concern; but Gadrien just stood there, staring back and rubbing the back of his skull.

“I can assure you it has little to do with the way the school handled the situation,” Warren said, returning to the conversation he was having. “But the doctor found something unexpected while we were getting him treated.” He paused, listening to the reply, his pale brows shooting up in a completely unimpressed manner. His wings were held tense in place.

“We’re not suing anyone, we don’t want to sue anyone,” Warren flatly lied, his feathers ruffling slightly. Compared to Eric, when Warren told a story he wasn’t as grand or dramatic, but he was effective. Gadrien could always tell when Warren was annoyed or lying, because Warren’s skin would start to crackle and change to whatever his hands happened to be touching. At the moment, Warren’s left hand was turning to granite just like the countertops. “We are removing him from school because the doctor found an unexpected mass on his spine, Ms. Novak. You can’t rush spinal surgery or recovery.”

More silence followed as Gadrien managed to slip into a chair at the table, waiting for the conversation to be over.

“Yes, well, if you’ll excuse me, there’s another call I have to take.” Warren ended the phone call and tossed his phone down on the counter, then stood running his hands slowly down his dark face.

“The, uh, ‘mass’ on my spine,” Gadrien started, “Is going to get me out of school for the rest of the year, huh.”

Warren peeked out from behind his fingers, which had started to recede back to their natural brown hue. “Is that what you took away from that conversation?” he chuckled lightly and Gadrien sheepishly shrugged. “You sound like you’re feeling better.”

“I’m tired still,” Gadrien said. He leaned onto the table in a slump. “Hungry. I really want hot food. Everything in the fridge is cold. Is that… normal?”

“Your body’s stressed, you probably need the extra calories after what you went through. I can go get you something now, and I’ll go to the store later when I go to pick up your sister.”

“I really want fried chicken,” Gadrien whined, already salivating. His small wings flop-flapped.

“Grease and salt: on the shopping list.”

Western Massachusetts GATE Campus, Northampton, Massachusetts | 14:26

Concentrating on the machine’s whirring speed in front of her was hard, what with everything that had happened in the past few days. Hellena found herself less interested in her work. Which was frustrating in itself; she normally loved working with the centrifuges without a teacher breathing down her neck.

She had to watch her brother get his shoulders split open, to have weird, bloody, limbs pulled out from under his skin like some sort of alien back-birth. Which, she supposed, it sort of was.

From everything she knew, from everything her parents had told them both, it was very rare for a Nephilim - a half-Alengian - to have wings. The last Nephilim to have wings was born in the mid-1800s, based on what she could guess from the few conversations she’d overheard. Presumably they had been born naturally; and not with donors and surrogates, like Hellena and Gadrien. It stirred an uneasy question in her mind: could they have had been made to have wings? Could she end up having wings herself, and, if so, would she need to go through the same non-anesthetic surgery her brother did?

“Hellena?” the teacher called to her.

Hellena blinked, looking up from her notebook, which was by then filled with idle scribbles.

“Your process is done. Please remove your sample tubes so that someone else can use the machine.”

“Yes, ma’m,” Hellena replied, reaching to open the latch that held the top of the machine down.

Ultimately, she decided that their parents conspiring to try to artificially design them with wings was unlikely. Her father looked so worried, so tired, so relieved when it was all over; she could never imagine him either hurting Gadrien or herself, let alone with such intent. She concluded the incident and the atmosphere at home was driving her to overthink…

Hellena focused her green eyes on the test tube in her fingers, watching the liquids inside try to separate themselves - but the mixing machine had combined them together too well to come apart.

Dihalo-Kasdeja House, Noeden | 18:55

Up until a certain point dinner that night had been quiet, filling with only the sounds of clinking dishware and chewing. The breaking point was when Gadrien, mouth stuffed with half a drumstick, brought up the fact that he was going to get to leave school.

“I get to leave school and eat whatever I want,” he gloated to his sister.

Hellena rolled her eyes. “You say that like you don’t already eat everything and try to get out of going to school.”

“I don’t eat everything-”

“Um. Remember when I was ten and you ate all my Halloween candy?”

Gadrien tried to wave it off. “Hey. I ate the ones with peanuts. You hate peanuts.”

“He can eat what he wants until we figure out how many calories he’ll need going forward,” Warren reminded him. He broke apart a biscuit and shoved half of it into his mouth. “He may end up needing a more specialized diet going forward.”

“I will gladly eat a thousand vegetables every day if my spinal mass means I’ll never have to go to school again,” Gadrien crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. He flinched before remembering to tuck his wings up. “Is it going to make dad come home early, too?”

Warren paused, his pale brows shooting up. “Maybe. He’s going to see if he can delegate the situation to another department.”

The Alengiana froze mid-bite. His wings perked up defensively, his trailing feathers ruffling. His teal eyes flicked to the windows, looking for something he hoped he wouldn’t find.

“Go downstairs,” he suddenly told his children. “Lock the door after I leave and go into my office downstairs.”

“What, why?” Hellena asked.

Gadrien’s wings twitched and slowly tried to close up as close as they could to his back. “Who’s out there?”

Warren pointed a finger at them. “Lights off. Downstairs. Now.”

When Warren opened the back door out of the kitchen and closed it behind him, Gadrien locked it and Hellena hit the light switch. But neither of them went downstairs.

“What is it,” Hellena asked Gadrien.

“I-I don’t know,” he replied. “It’s like there’s this invisible wave and it’s tugging on my feathers.” Hellena gave her brother an incredulous look and he frowned. “It’s cold and kind of itchy.”

She again rolled her eyes and returned her attention to the darkness outside the kitchen window. Her green eyes narrowed. “There!” she pressed her finger to the cold glass, pointing to a barely noticeable figure dressed in flowing black and bright blue. “There’s some guy out there!”