The bird wants out.

The bird wants out so bad.

“Miss?”

Paia flinches a little and turns her face towards the flight attendant, a lady in her forties with coral-colored lipstick and a little hat pinned to her blonde hair.

The lady seems nice. Real nice.

Still, Paia doesn’t dare look her in the eyes. She looks at her philtrum, instead.

The philtrum is the line connecting the nose and the upper lip.

Paia presses her own lips together hard, smushing them between her teeth until they are a tingly, stiff line of bloodless flesh. The corners of her mouth go up automatically, so it looks a little like a smile.

She has practiced this in front of her mirror many times. It was considerably easier at home.

The bird still wants out.

Paia hopes she didn’t say that out loud. Seems unlikely, given that her lips are still smushed very tightly and her teeth are beginning to hurt. But still. This body isn’t always… entirely connected. Anything can happen in it.

“Is this your first flight?” the attendant asks with honest sympathy and a strong hint of wariness – eyes wide open, roaming Paia’s face, searching for signs that cause concern in a very professional sort of manner.

Is this her first flight?

It is and it isn’t, really. First flight on a plane or any type of flying machine, yes. First flight, no. There’s no way to explain it. Not to her.

The flight attendant is clearly concerned by the lack of an answer, but Paia can’t think of anything to say. Can’t bring herself to say it. Speaking to people is so much harder in practice than in theory.

“Miss, are you feeling unwell? Do you need anything?” She points to the longish brown paper bag that’s folded into the net in front of Paia’s seat, stuck between some glossy magazines and the ‘safety card'. “The sickness bag is right in front of you, just in case.”

Safety. Such a weird word to use. We are hurling through the sky confined inside a heavy metal tube, propelled by burning gas, running against the winds instead of with them, and one little bird could cause us to plummet to the earth like a meteorite.

Paia keeps pressing her lips together and focuses on the flight attendant’s neckerchief instead of her philtrum now. She says nothing.

There are little penguins on the neckerchief. Flightless birds. Is that supposed to be irony?

“If you need anything, feel free to press the call button,” the lady eventually says, gesturing to the console over Paia’s head, and adds with a professional smile, “Please buckle up, we’re about to take off. Thank you!” Then she clicks the overhead bin shut and moves on through the rows towards the back of the plane.

Paia observes her as she leaves, slowly letting go of her lips and the grimace.

Humans surprise her over and over again with their simple politeness and the honest lukewarmth in their words. No matter how many times Paia leaves her nest and encounters humans, she is taken aback by that distant but firm considerateness with which the people interact. At the supermarket - ‘Have a nice day.’ At the grocer’s - ‘Thank you for your purchase.’ At the coffee shop - ‘What can I get you today?’ On the street - ‘Excuse me? Could you point me towards the next train station?’. On the train - ‘Sorry, is this seat taken? Do you mind…?’

Humans aren’t supposed to be nice. They are supposed to be cruel and cold, killers of all things Other, swift and decisive in their strikes.

That’s what the flock keeps saying.

Instead, most people take care of strangers, even when the stranger is Paia. At least a little. They say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, they help when they see you drop something, they inquire about your well-being and point unsarcastically to sickness bags that are right in front of your face, and they don’t go out of their way to laugh at you when something embarrassing happens to you. They don’t lash out first thing, they don’t peck and shun. They are not readily, easily, casually cruel in Paia's experience.

They’re so different from the flock.

Still, Paia is quietly thankful that the two seats next to her are empty. This plane is almost deserted, or it feels that way because everyone is scattered in the forest of high backrests. The next passengers are two rows behind her and there is one man in the same row at the window over on the other side, but the seats are set up in such a way that she is not in anyone’s easy line of sight and no one is in hers. She can only see the man when she leans forward. By the looks of it, he’s somehow already asleep, his chin sunken onto his chest, the inflatable pillow shaped like a croissant that’s draped around his neck offering his head zero support.

Paia buckles up because the flight attendant lady asked her to.

The click of the metal buckle and the metal flap rings out like a round sliding into the chamber of a gun or the ratchet of a handcuff.

Immediately, the scratching and fluttering inside get worse. Much worse.

My bird wants out.

My bird needs out.

Out.

Out out. Out out out out Out OUT OU-

Paia presses her lips together again, this time to keep the shrill noises in, and screws her eyes shut as the plane begins to move. It's slowly rolling backward at first as it pulls out of the gate, jolting her in her seat and rattling the entire inside of the plane.

This was a bad idea.

Such a bad idea.

A lethally terrible idea.

Paia is almost certain she said this out loud.

The rumbling and jerking jostle the marrow of her bones, the contents of her almost empty stomach, and the roots of the feathers in her neck. The noise of the engines settles between her delicate ears like a constant storm.

Out. Out. Out.

A terrible idea.

She clutches her stomach.

Her rib cage tightens and squeezes.

Oh, gods and storms.

It’s starting.

“Are we going to have a problem?”

Her eyes open at the first deep, rumbling note, and then widen in horror.

Every feather and down inside of her skin blusters to attention and her wings scream with the need to burst out. Her claws pierce through the soft beds of her fingernails, white-hot and painful, ready to scratch and rip and scramble for purchase.

They are not strong enough to cut through the slick polyester strap of the safety belt, though, and her pointed claws slip off the smooth belt buckle, and the contraption seems to tighten around her waist as she struggles to break free and get away from the – the feline – that is suddenly in the seat next to her.

Fly fly fly fly FLY FLY FLY!

Paia can see it in his eyes.

A cat creature. Predator.

Hunter and eater of birds like her.

If we fly, he will pursue. The voice in her head is human, the small human portion of her being. It is logic, unafraid calculation, the counterpart to the instinct and constant fear of her avian.

If we fly, he will pursue and catch and kill. We have nowhere to go.

There is nowhere to fly to but death.

Her skin is already curling with the feathers, but they don’t come out. Her bones are at the precipice of metamorphosis, but they hold their form. Her eyesight switches from human to bird to human.

Except for her claws, she stays human. For now.

Pinned to her seat by the seat belt, bathed in sweat and shivering with adrenaline, scared.

Human.

The tomcat, also in a human suit, observes her with piercing laziness.

“Are we. Going. To have. A problem?” he repeats his question, more slowly, chewing the words as though through a mouth full of fangs.

Paia can’t nod or shake her head. She can merely stare and shiver and pant.

“Good,” he says as though there had been an answer, and a satisfying one at that, and then reaches out his right hand towards her, but then just lets it hover there in mid-air.

It takes her a long second to understand the gesture.

A handshake.

How… humane. Humans give each other their hands all the time.

How condescending. Like a Venus trap offering a high five to a fly.

The bird wants to scratch him because she doesn’t have a beak with which she could hack him to pieces. Her hand, her claw, lashes out, wanting to cut his palm into ribbons.

The feline is faster.

He grabs her hand, claws and all, and enfolds it in a grip that is crushing and irresistible. Inescapable.

“No!” she gasps soundlessly. “No, no, no!”

We are caught. Caught-aught-ought! Out! Out-out-out!

The bird thrashes and trills sharply in panic as Paia tugs on her captured limb. Her bones and joints crackle in his clutch. Her elbow thumps heavily into the backrest of the seat.

“Behave, little bird,” the tomcat warns. His pupils elongate upwards and downwards and the irises around them flash with reflection.

He doesn’t let go.

The bird still wants out.

Paia feels legitimately ill now. Her ribs squeeze her stomach and her lungs. Her sight zips to the airsickness bag the flight attendant had pointed out.

“You can hurl if you need to. Feel free.” Maybe he saw her look toward the paper bag, or maybe he just noticed her blood leaving her face and tingeing it green, or the line of sweat on her upper lip. On her philtrum. “But you will not fly in here.”

He leans back in the seat next to hers, filling out the space in more than the physical sense, and doesn’t elaborate exactly what will happen if she does fly in here, what he will do should she even try.

He still hasn’t let go of her hand, and the knot of fingers and knuckles and palms – one set big and strong, calloused, cool, the other set dainty and fragile in comparison, glazed with cold sweat, pressed into a painful, crumpled fist – lie between them at an awkward sort of angle, pushed against his outer thigh.

“For one, you'd disturb this plane, and I need to be in L.A. today,” he suddenly speaks up after a full minute of safety procedure. “I don’t fancy re-boarding. Or crashing, for that matter.”

Outside the oval windows, there is nothing much but the endless landing strip, low grass burned yellow by the many summer suns and the hot exhaust from countless planes, dotted with little plastic markers. Paia barely dares to look at it all – the yearning to be out out out there is too shrill. The plane is quickly headed towards the very start of the strip now. Inside the cabin, many little chimes sound, followed by the captain’s orders to the cabin crew.

“And much more importantly, ignorance is bliss.” He pauses. “Not ours. Theirs.”

His chin lifts and his head tilts briefly to indicate the people around them, outside of their little bubble; the people who are preoccupied with definitely not listening to the safety video or taking much notice of the flight attendants who are standing, swaying, in the front of the aisle and demonstrating to nobody how to operate a flotation vest. The sleeping man at the other side of the plane across from them is still sleeping, his head now thrown back – somehow, his neck pillow is still not helping him whatsoever – and his mouth wide open.

Paia hates that the feline is likely right. That she doesn’t have sufficient evidence to defend all those nice, polite humans against the accusation that they’d turn on her the minute her Other became obvious.

“So, if you’re still entertaining the idea of shifting in here and messing everything up for everyone… don’t.” His pupils do the thing again. His mouth twists in an animal grin. “That is… unless you want me to pluck out every single one of your pretty feathers and then lick your naked skin off of your brittle birdy bones.”

Lion? Tiger? Leopard? Cougar?

She tries hard to suppress the shiver.

Monster!

Her claws extend farther again of their own accord and gouge a fraction of an inch into the skin of his hand.

He doesn’t flinch. His eyes widen and his pupils blow up.

“Harder, little bird,” he purrs and grips her hand more tightly, squishing the brittle birdy bones of her fingers until it hurts. “Come on. Give it to me.”

There is a moment of almost stillness, suspended like one of her feathers curling in the air.

And then the plane suddenly roars like an angry animal, vibrating throughout, and jolts forward, leaving Paia’s stomach behind and dragging at the blood in her veins. Everything shakes and grumbles, the pitch changing as the plane accelerates more and more and more and finally leaves the ground.

This is the opposite of actual flying. This is hell.

Paia and the bird screech behind closed lips and dig their claws deeper into the monster's hand according to his wishes, torn between two mounting fears.

The world inside the plane is made of movement and roaring.

Never. Ever. Again. I will never get on a plane ever again. Ever. Again. Please. Please, gods, winds, let me survive this and I swear I will never leave home again! I will listen to grandpa and uncle and mom, and I’ll stay home and not talk to anyone who doesn’t have the right feathers and beak ever again, I will never-

“Good,” he interrupts her thoughts with a purr and slides his empty left hand onto her thigh.

Square onto her thigh. Covering a significant portion of it with his large, large palm and his long fingers.

She flinches and tries to scoot over, but the window seat she is strapped to is so narrow that it doesn’t offer any space to scoot, and the safety belt is too tight besides. She then tries to shove and push his hand off with her empty left hand, but she might as well try pushing a tree off her leg.

Moreover, as she shoves and pushes there is a lot of skin contact, and after a while, it just seems like she is rather aggressively petting him even if her fingers end in curved claws.

He notices. He chuckles huskily.

He has hair on the back of his hand. It’s brownish blond. It is odd. She has never met a man who had hair on the back of his hand before.

It’s not a lot of hair. Not like a pelt or anything. But it’s there.

“Bet you five bucks I can make you stop thinking about the plane until we touch down in four hours.” He smirks as she ceases her vain attempts to free her leg from his warm paw. Instead, she grabs onto the armrest until the plastic casing creaks, frustrated in defeat, imagining the armrest was his neck.

“Remove. Your hand. At once,” she hisses, unwilling to draw attention from the few humans around them. In vain, she tries the belt buckle again, one-handedly. Devil contraption. It’s so slick, that it slips through her pointy claws. “And let me go.”

“No.”

That’s all he says. ‘No’.

He settles back into his seat again, relaxed as only cats can be, all the while pinning her thigh to her seat with his left hand, and holding on to her right hand with his right hand, unbothered by the fact that her claws are lodged in his skin.

“Why not!” It comes out not as a question but as a snap.

“Because it’s winning me my bet.”

He slides the hand up her thigh – just a millimeter, just a smidge – and then back to its original place, and yet...

Oh.

She sits up ramrod straight, the polar opposite of his easy relaxation.

“I-I haven’t. Uh. Agreed. To the bet.” Words and sentences are suddenly harder than normal.

“Don’t care.” He shrugs. “I neither want nor need the money.”

Seconds tick by. The plane roars in the background, deafeningly loud but also strangely distant. Outside there are only grey clouds now, white-grey mist. The drag on her organs and on the liquids in her body has lessened a little.

“What do you want, then?” She barely dares to ask. Something about the openness of the question makes her tummy jolt, but not like the plane did. The other way.

He rolls his head against his headrest to turn his face towards her. He has freckles across his nose and cheeks. His second eyes are brown like coffee, and they also have freckles. Green-golden specks.

One corner of his mouth lifts in a way that Paia knows she could never manage, no matter how long she practiced in front of the mirror. She can barely lift both at the same time.

“You’d be wise not to ask the likes of me a question like that. It’s dangerous,” he cautions her with a darkly hungry note in his voice and a twinkling in his freckled eyes.

She cannot get out from under that gaze any more than she can get out from under that grip. And she cannot reply. Cat got my tongue.

“But lucky for you… at this precise point in time… I, little Birdie,” he drawls and tightens his fingers on her leg, digging into the muscle there just a little bit, until she can feel each of his five fingerprints, “merely want to put my hand on your sweet thigh.”

Oh.

She trembles. With rage. Only with rage.

“And because you want it, that’s reason enough to do it,” she states. Asks. States. Angrily. Who or what causes men to be like this? Why are all men like this, one way or another, human or more, feathered or furred?

And why is her damn tummy still jolting like that?

There’s a flash of annoyance, of affront, that zips across his features.

“Tell me. Does the bird still want out? Hm?” He pumps her right hand once, reminding her of the fact that her claws still pierce him, and that his blood is seeping into her cuticles and into the seam of his sleeve. She tries to retract them, but the bird doesn’t want to let go yet. Maybe not ever.

“Look at me. Huh? Let me see those beady eyes,” he challenges. “Where are they?”

She glares at him, then glares at the tiny TV screen in front of her, seeing her dull reflection in it. Her eyes are light greyish blue, not the onyx of her first pair.

“See? No birds in sight, huh?” He sounds smug. “Empty blue skies.”

Paia decides that she… loathes him.

The bird doesn’t want to let go because it is perching. Ready to fly, not taking off. Observant.

He speaks to her in low tones. “Both of you are afraid of this plane, and you’re afraid of your bird, but both you and your bird are even more afraid of me. Far as I’m concerned, I—or rather, my hand on your thigh is doing every soul in this dumb little plane a favor. My own included. You see, my reasons for wanting to put my hand on you are entirely unselfish. They’re damn well altruistic and noble.” He widens his eyes as though innocently accused. Pah, as if he could even be familiar with the concept of innocence.

The bird is still for now. Paia tries and fails to pull her right hand from his grip again.

“Ah-ah-ahh,” he sings low as he readjusts his hold on her. Makes it tighter.

The hand on her thigh slides closer to her body yet again – by accident, surely, unintentionally – and it feels like a snake is slithering towards her with its tongue flickering and probing.

Oh.

A jolt. Flutters. Like a smaller bird has hatched low in her tummy.

His fake innocence transforms into a real smirk. She can see it out the corner of her eyes.

“It is doing a very…” His fingers squeeze her thigh muscle rhythmically. “… special favor to you, though, isn’t it?”

Jolts.

Flutters.

***TBC***