Dihalo-Kasdeja House, Noeden | 17:19

Gadrien stood in his room with his back to the floor mirror in the corner. He was shirtless, dark hazel eyes scanning his back. There was a large red mark that seemed to cover his shoulder blades, but towards the center of the red mark it was beginning to turn a grotesque shade of yellow and purple. He frowned - he felt like shit, but he didn't think he had been slammed into the dumpster corner that hard.

He pulled a plain white tee back on; one arm, then the other, then up and over his head. His back resisted him the entire time, his muscles felt like they were twitching under his skin.

Gadrien took a moment to lean closer to the mirror, double checking his nose. Swollen, still not broken. He pulled down his lower lip. No teeth loose or more out of place than usual. His eyes... he looked tired, which was expected. But something wasn't right with the way his reflection stared back at him. He leaned as close as he could to the mirror, his nose touching the glass, and saw a very thin, violet halo encircling his irises.

"Practicing kissing?" a voice asked, and Gadrien jumped.

Gadrien turned to see his sister standing in the doorway. She had long, black curls and bright green eyes. She wasn't as dark-skinned as Warren, but she wasn't as light as Eric and Gadrien.

Gadrien shook his head. He stiffly straightened his posture. "See they let nerd school out early today."

Though they were brother and sister, Hellena and Gadrien went to different schools; Gadrien had attended many public schools and Hellena went to a school for the mentally gifted. Hellena might have been a year younger than Gadrien, but she might as well have been twenty years smarter. One look from her told him that she already knew everything that had happened.

Hellena didn't take his bait to make the conversation more light-hearted. "It happened again, didn't it."

"So what if it happened again. I don't want to talk about it." Gadrien frowned, then reached for the door.

"You're my big brother, Gade, and I can be worried about you."

At this, Gadrien paused. "I'm just going to take a nap."

Hellena's eyes narrowed as if she were noticing her own brother's face for the first time. "What's wrong with your eyes?"

"I'm just tired," he replied. "Like I said. I want to take a nap before dinner."

"Uh, like, look in the mirror. You're white as paper and your limbal rings are turning... purple?"

They exchanged looks for another moment. Hers, concerned; his, begging her not to call any more attention to it. She did not listen.

"Daaad!" Hellena shouted. "Gade's eyes are changing color!"

"No they're not, I'm fine!" Gadrien shouted over her.

It didn't matter which sibling had shouted louder, because Warren had rushed up the stairs and down the wood-panelled hallway. Gadrien hissed as his father pushed him to sit on his bed, wincing as his right shoulder muscles twitched again. Warren gently turned his son's chin up towards the light.

Something in Warren's expression told Gadrien that this went beyond his father's usual over-concern for his wellbeing.

"When did this start," Warren asked.

"Noticed it five minutes ago." Gadrien stilled as Warren gingerly pulled down on his bottom eyelids.

"Is it internal bleeding?" Hellena asked. She had not left the doorway, and hovered at the edge of her brother's room as if entering it further would cause more damage. "He was going to take a nap."

"No, no," Warren took in a deep breath. "It's something else. Alengiana, like your father and I, don't have dark eyes like Humans do. Neither of your donors had very light eyes, either. It's not unheard of for Nephilim to develop minor traits later in life..."

Gadrien's face scrunched. "Dad, are you saying I got punched so hard it smacked me into alien puberty?"

"Stress does strange things," Warren finally released his son's face. "You'll have to stay home from school until we figure out what exactly caused this."

Just as Gadrien was about to start another round of how outside of his back that he felt fine, his body jerked sideways and he let out a light hiss. He fell sideways into the blankets on his bed and whined: "D-don't supposed that's part of alien puberty too?"

"Hold still," Warren said as his son tried his best to. "I'm going to lift up your shirt and take a look, okay?" Warren lifted Gadrien's shirt, revealing the dark blotches that now covered his whole back. Right behind each shoulder blade there was an angry stripe of red.

Hellena shrieked - underneath the mess of bad colors, underneath Gadrien's skin, something had moved.

"Hellena," Warren snapped his fingers, trying to get her to focus on something other than the living bruise that covered her brother's back. "Go into the bathroom, grab all the clean towels you can." Hellena only nodded, leaving to do so. He turned back to Gadrien, helping him up and leading him to sit backwards in a nearby chair. "You, sit here. Don't. Move." He ran out of the room and his frantic footsteps could be heard going down to the basement.

"Dad?" Gadrien called after him.

A horrible eternity seemed to pass before Hellena returned with the towels and Warren returned from the basement. Gadrien's eyes widened. Was Warren carrying a big, glass knife?

"You're not slicing me up with that!" Gadrien cried, moving to get up.

"I am, and you're going to let me," Warren commanded. "It's the only way to fix this, Gadrien."

"No! You're fucking nuts!"

"If it doesn't work, I promise, I'll take you to the hospital," Warren said reassuringly. Warren placed a hand on Gadrien's back, pushing him back down into the chair. "Bite something if you have to, this will hurt."

His hand searched out the moving lumps under his son's skin, holding one in place while he leveled the knife.

Gadrien screamed as his flesh was sliced into.

"Hellena, try to comfort him," Warren tried to keep them both calm as he operated. He had sliced just enough into Gadrien's shoulder that whatever was moving could be partially seen. The knife set on one of the clean towels, Warren carefully slid his fingers into the open flesh, delicately pulling on what looked like a furry bone. Pulling it up and out, he slid only half the bone from his son's shoulder.

"What- what is that?" Hellena gasped, pale from the impromptu surgery. "Is that... a wing?"

Warren nodded, grabbing the glass knife again to slice into the other shoulder. That wing also extracted, he began to run the knife's blade up and down the bloody mess; Gadrien's wounds shrinking while the clear blade began to turn a smoky red hue. Tiny dots, like glitter, in Gadrien's blood were absorbed into the knife last.

As the knife drew in his wounds, Gadrien looked relieved of pain and relaxed a little, but was still agitated, and his wings clumsily flopped around like wet, bloody fish sticking out of his back. He tried to look back at them, only causing them to move more, almost hitting Warren in the face. It was hard to tell what color they were.

"Hold still," Warren again told Gadrien. He felt around the base of the wings, then stretched them out and dabbed around the sticky reddened feathers with towel after towel.

Hellena came closer. She stared at her brother's wings - as far as she was concerned, this was probably some dream. This was crazy - from every story about their fathers' people they had been told, Nephilim, half-Alengiana, were rarely supposed to have wings.

Warren picked up the last towel and used it to wipe the blood off his hands the best he could. "You have wings, Gade," he breathed, more as if he were trying to convince himself. "They're-they're going to be small for now. The trauma, it must have caused them to try to emerge prematurely..."