Charles stretched outside of his nest, stalking around the surrounding terrain carefully. If anyone could see him now, they would certainly think this odd behavior for a Phorus - a blade-beak for Charles - considering the fact that it also carried a bundle of branches and dense leaves clenched tightly between its fingers and beak. He scoured the ground, finding evidence of his passing in a few locations before forcibly scrubbing the earth away. It was harder work than he’d expected, considering he couldn’t hold the branch in the right angle with just one arm. His fingers were plenty strong enough for it, but the grip was awkward. Charles had dropped the bundle a few times before he gave up, using both hands and his beak to stabilize it.

Prowling the underbrush and examining his own tracks gave him some useful information, he’d gotten quite heavy over time, and the trails themselves were many days old in some cases. This was due in part to the lack of rain, but also to the soft earth and packed plant matter where he’d strode that could very easily tell someone where he’d been.

However, he’d become much more adept at knowing where he could step, and how he could move through the forest. Nowadays, he’d left very scant traces. Enough that perhaps an experienced hunter could manage to piece together a trail of sorts, but not in any significant detail. At least, that’s what he hoped was the case.

‘I swear, if there’s actually some kind of video game system overlay and people have stats in tracking or some nonsense, I’m going to lose my pecking mind.’ He griped, having tried any number of generic ‘System’ summoning key words and phrases. To his knowledge, there wasn’t any kind of omnipresent thing doling out experience and stats and skills. That was probably good, it might mean that the playing field was somewhat level.

Then again, he also could feel how every day his essence seemed to thicken, going from a light feeling creek with a bare warmth to it flowing alongside his veins, to a river with rapids, powerful and with a heat that radiated from seemingly everywhere at once. Charles figured that he was getting stronger, too, but he wasn’t certain on any type of quantifier.

‘Is this normal animal stuff, or specific to me?’ He pondered to himself, knowing that his chances of asking someone this question were near zero.

‘Well, unless I get another visitor… So long as they don’t touch my stuff.’ Huffing with amusement, the blade beak continued with his self-appointed task. He continued for hours, finally having cleared the area around his nest to the river. Luckily, he tended towards trails of his own, but by the time he set the branches down near the riverbank he was already sore in his hands and beak.

‘Quite the workout… Sheesh.’ Charles shook his head, stretching out his fingers and jaw. Feeling the heat built up within his body, Charles flexed his neck and opened his wings wide, allowing heat to dissipate quickly from his body. Being a bird, he’d realized he didn’t sweat - which he frankly loved, given how messy it was - but instead had to stretch out his neck and wings to the environment. It normally took several minutes to get stabilized, but he’d learned a new trick of late that helped speed things along quite a bit.

He gently prodded his essence, feeling it move alongside his veins in a metaphysical sense. Truly, he didn’t know if there were dedicated veins for this sort of thing, not that he’d found anything in prey he’d split open. Nevertheless, the activity had been difficult at first, but he’d found that manually controlling his own essence while it was within his body was quite easy. It was different from when he’d reinforced his legs or his beak and neck, there wasn’t any kind of… crystallization, he supposed, but instead just the movement. It ran through his wings and neck as he bid it, carrying imagined heat from his blood and to the surface before circulating back down.

Steadily he felt his core temperature drop down to reasonable levels once more. Charles smiled at that as he slowed his essence flow and returned it back to its ordinary path. It stagnated briefly, but with a gentle push the system of essence began moving at speed once more, carried perpetually under its own weight.

Charles had no idea what would happen if his essence ever stopped flowing fully, but he had no interest in finding out. He couldn’t imagine it would be a good thing, considering how it almost behaved like pseudo-blood in his body.

Charles paused then, hearing a branch snap above and away. Sharp eyes pierced the mixed light of the forest, glaring in the direction of the sound. It was still distant, but he recalled that he’d recently mapped out that area, leaving scratches and markings to claim as his own.

Distantly, he realized that the woman probably found him with those in the first place. Charles pushed the thought out of his mind, shifting his stance wide to be ready to meet a charge or to dodge. He panned his gaze around quickly, careful to keep his peripherals available from the direction the noise came from. Sometimes, noises happened in the forest for no real reason at all, this was something that Charles had grown more accustomed to over time. But he wasn’t taking any chances for a while. It cost him nothing but a little peace of mind to be wary, and that was better than giving something, or someone the first strike on him.

Another moment passed as a skree resounded in the air, the cry piercing and loud, just before another branch let out a resounding snap from above. Charles frowned at that, knowing something had to have hit the wood fairly hard for the sound to carry so far away. He still couldn’t see the-

And then he froze at the sight of the bulky red hawk that came into view, flapping madly and confusedly. There was a nearly manic energy to it as it darted to and fro, seemingly searching for something. That wasn’t what had seized Charles’ nerves, though, but the fact that he recognized this bird.

“Yak?” Charles let out a chirrup from across the river, still several dozens of feet away.

The bird reeled instantly at the noise in surprise, and then hovered midair with wide eyes locked on the larger bird's form. For a split second, uncertainty swam in the bulky bird's eyes, but even before Charles could form concern, it vanished. Instead, Yak released a piercing, far louder cry that rippled with essence, exultant and happy, it trilled through Charles' body almost infectiously. Yak dove down, and Charles grinned–

And then took a fat bird straight to the chest.

“Oof! Dude, the hell have you been eating?” Charles tried to chastise his sibling as he damn near bowled him over, but that quickly melted away at the cries that the bird made even as it clutched against him with its wings and careful talons.

Charles felt tears in his eyes as he folded his wings around the smaller bird, feeling as his siblings' smaller body hitched and more wordless cries emanated out from his grasp.

“Brother?” He heard another voice, and Charles felt his stomach do flips as he turned his eyes back upwards.

For a second, he wondered if he were hallucinating, but the wetness against his chest feathers, the flapping sounds of four more pairs of wings, and the sets of eyes that belonged to them all felt far too real to be any mere hallucination.

This time, Charles didn’t trust his half-words at all, knowing that he still had trouble communicating with them. Instead, a rush of inspiration after witnessing Yak poured through him.

He could see the uncertainty on their faces, much more wary than Yak, though to be fair he’d never been the brightest bird of the bunch. Each of them had grown, nearing adulthood and appearing all the better for it. The fact that they were together distantly entered his thoughts, but he could care less about if that were normal or not at that moment.

And so, taking a queue from Yak, Charles took a deep breath, infusing essence into his voice.

And cried out, pouring all of his emotion into his essence that he could, laden heavy with his intent and sent surging out of his throat. Near tangible, the essence rustled leaves as it rushed outwards, dipping his stores remarkably just from the maneuver.

Yet, to Charles, it would be worth that and so much more if he could just get across how he felt. Pride in them, glee at seeing them, the warmth of love that he felt for the siblings he’d been ready to die for, and the one thing that he’d wanted to feel in his own life, back when he was human.

Acceptance, togetherness, like the warmth of a hearth in the winter, a sanctuary against the cold and the dark.

The red hawk siblings staggered in mid air as the overwhelming wash of essence carried through them. Almost as one, they glanced at once another, shocked and in disbelief that their lost eldest was alive.

Yet the first one to dive into a flying tackle was their sternest sister. Talon slammed wholly into Charles’ while warbling and hitching a cry. Gabby, Pecky, and Owl dove at once.

‘Ah, shit, this one’ll hurt.’ Charles grit his beak even while he smiled broadly.

Three more impacts sent him sprawling down onto moss and grass, and more noises, both sad, happy, and nearly hysterical, resounded from the riverbank.

“Holy crap, why are you all so pecking heavy?” Charles cackled aloud, “What have you been eating, cows?”

“Lots!” Yak cried out back at him, though there was more in the statement, he got the vague impression that the troupe had been hunting together from the moment they left the nest. Charles warbled happily before nuzzling each of them with his beak.

“You’re so big now, can you even fly?” He heard curiosity in Pecky’s tone, “What happened?”

Before he could answer, he heard a stunningly human scoff from Talon, but the twinkle of humor in her eyes betrayed her inner thoughts, “Brother is bad at being a bird.”

‘Whoa, I can damn near understand them,’ was Charles' first thought, and the second was the embarrassment at the fact that she wasn’t that far off, really. The siblings laughed, and he tried to put together how to tell them.

“I’m not sure, it happened after the… snake.” He trailed off, and the siblings stilled a little at the mention of it.

‘Mmm, maybe don’t talk about that,’ Charles considered, ‘Might be a touchy subject.’

Contrary to what he expected, though, his siblings only spread out their wings more, burying their faces amidst his feathers in what was perhaps the comfiest hug he’d ever been given.

What Charles didn’t realize was that his own essence displayed the trauma’s he’d experienced with vague impressions. Even without saying much more, they could infer that Charles hadn’t come away unscathed, and almost hadn’t come away at all.

“It’s alright, now. We’re a family.” Gabby chirped, “Family stays together. Protect. Like you said.” He could virtually feel Gabby’s warmth in her words, accompanied by no small amount of awkward winged hugs.

‘Ah, shit.’ Charles instantly knew he was– yup, there were the tears. All of this essence stuff was just so much more potent than just words.

And, like a dam breaking, his siblings joined him as their essence mingled, a rare instance where emotion and intent flooded across freely and without barriers.

This went on for several minutes before Charles managed to control himself enough to carry the - admittedly very heavy - load of his siblings to his nest. Idly, he set a reminder for himself to hide the trail he’d just left later.

“I’m so glad you’re all alive, and together!” He cooed aloud, “there’s so much that I want to tell all of you-”

‘Brother’s still… not that great at talking…’ Talon listened to what their eldest sibling said, snippets of words and complex, deep meaning rippling through the air as he spoke. For the most part, she could understand what he was saying. That he was happy, glad that they were together - surprised that they were even together, for that matter - and went on to talk at length about his experiences.

Which is where the problems began cropping up.

“Wait, so, you like… super molted into this that you are now?” Pecky tilted her head, now giving a wingspan of space between her and Eldest, giving a good look over him. He’d always been slightly differently colored, little speckles really, but this was entirely different. She shared a meaningful glance with Talon, who nodded in her limited wisdom.

Molting was definitely not what happened. But they were intelligent enough to guess that his process was something altogether different.

Denial fluted musically with essence, dancing at the feathers of Eldests whims. Along with that, snippets of words sounded out with his noises, “Different from molting,” the first words morphed into being, “deeper, more.”

Talon felt her skin goosebump as he tried to explain the process, simultaneously feeling the essence in the air twist in flux with his intent. She wasn’t sure he was even aware of what he did to the essence around him, how powerful it was. While he may never have been born with the ability to speak quite right, he was learning. And, even without that, Eldest was something of an idiot savant with essence. In fact, she was fairly certain that he’d, to some effect, done something to her and her siblings. Not on purpose, necessarily, but even so, it was both fascinating, exciting, and unsettling.

Owl settled in next to her, head cocked to the side as he examined Eldest’s feet. He was somewhat competitive, and it was with a chagrined smirk that he looked down at his own talons. No doubt, he was noting the fact that Eldest’s talons were huge.

“Oh!” He let out a surprised chirp, then, Owl’s eyes settling on the marks that they’d followed along the trees. Talon looked at them as well, realizing that they were looking at the aftermath of just a single strike with Eldests claws, rather than multiple hits.

‘That’s strong,’ nodded Talon pridefully, ‘good that he hasn’t been slacking. I wonder how many more snakes he’s tested himself against. Or maybe Badgers?’

Her thoughts were interrupted as Gabby broke into Charles’ story, “That sounds… rough.” She stepped forward, “You found yourself a nest, though? That’s definitely good! We have one too, though… someone snores. A lot.”

Yak, for his part, managed to look just contrite enough as he spoke, “Come with? See?”

Eldest blinked and considered the question hesitantly. Talon stole a glance to her other siblings, each suddenly very aware that their Eldest might not necessarily want to stay with them. He’d made his own home, and he’d begun to make his own way in the wake of their separation. The thought burned Talon in a way she couldn’t describe, a heavy feeling that had a bitterness to it that she didn’t enjoy.

‘Guilt,’ she realized the word and its connotations like a slap on the skull, ‘I don’t like this feeling.’ She turned her attention back to Eldest, trying to keep her discomfort from her face and essence. It would, admittedly, alleviate some of the sensation if they could treat Eldest to some hospitality, and she wanted to be closer. Whether or not he would though…

“Yeah, I’d like that,” Eldest considered aloud, “That’d be very nice. Yes, I’ll come visit.” The clarity of the words were accompanied with the warm wash of essence, one that was a balm to Talon’s mind.

‘Mmm, those ‘tears’ again…’ Talon felt the wetness at her eyes and the hitch of happy-cries well up, the essence reverberating through the clearing.

“Oh, here we go again…” Eldest’s words had an amused tinge, but was crying all the same. None of them were embarrassed as they clamored for another hug, tears flowing once more as they embraced.

The siblings as a whole still struggled with the strange words and knowledge that occasionally flitted into their minds. They were each unique, powerful in ways that they knew that their parents hadn’t been. Still, they were far behind Eldest.

“C’mon, it’s this way,” Owl chirruped happily, taking wing and flitting up to the air. He turned, making tight circles around the trees. “Try to keep up!”

Talon looked to Eldest’s wings, momentarily worried that he might be depressed that he wasn’t going to be able to fly.

Surprisingly, while there was a slight envy in his gaze, the only other thing present lifted Talon’s worries entirely.

“Race? I can do that.” Eldest’s essence took on a hungry, excited pulse, the type that they felt when they were competing with one another.

Grinning broadly to one another, the siblings took to the air as one, flitting upwards between the branches with speed, while another, larger form slipped through the underbrush, no slower and stunningly silent with only the streak of sapphire blue and burgundy red color breaking the otherwise green landscape.