Welcome to Gaia! ::

Swan is jerked awake by the sound, and the ephemeral shape next to him (his swan form sleeps with its head tucked beneath its wing, just as he does) follows suit. Late afternoon nap disrupted, Swan ruffles his feathers and tries not to seem too irritated; smooths a rumpled bit of fur on his shoulder and shakes out his cascading beard before rising from his spot on the mangrove roots and descending gracefully into the water, ripples tossing the feathers gently to and fro. The ghostly swan follows after as he wends his way through the tree roots towards the sound, still slightly groggy, and calls out: "Do I have a visitor?"

Swan has the good grace to keep his preening inward. Instead, he reaches down to pluck one of the drifting feathers from the water, extending his head to tuck it neatly behind the doe's ear, as though it were hers, a thing she'd lost, that he was merely returning to its proper place. Incorrigible flirt!

"No need to apologize," he soothes. "You didn't injure yourself, did you?"

"Excellent," is Swan's brisk answer, and he scoops up another feather to join the first. Much better. Much more pleasing. He steps back to admire the sprig of white on white, and then half-turns towards his little grotto-esque hideaway. "Were you looking for me especially, or do I have the pleasure of a serendipitous visitor?" And then, a bit more modestly, perhaps: "I am Swan, by the way, if the latter." The invitation hangs mutely for her own name, and the shadowy bird swimming at his ankles echoes his movements gracefully, but somewhat eerily, the dappled light passing right through its shape and onto the undisturbed water beneath it.

Swan's eyebrows creep up his solemn forehead. "Forgotten Feathers! Perhaps one day you can tell me about your naming dream... I am glad, if my feathers--" and he gestured with his nose at her new acquisitions "--were somehow a comfort, in light of that name."

Both taken aback and charmed by the err--eccentric behaviour of the stranger, Swan finds himself grinning, and quickly smooths the expression into a more dignified smile. "What wings do you seek, then?" he asks politely, apparently determined to treat her with the respect he'd give any other visitor.

"But they are beautiful there on your fur," the stag gravely observes, "and much more practical, you see, than these." To demonstrate, he stretches his own wings wide, magnificent--and cumbersome, brushing up against the encircling roots and the feathers falling into instant disarray as they push against the bark. "Yours are always neat, always tidy. And much lighter. Wings are heavier things than you'd think."

Truth told, Swan is becoming a bit wistful as he recounts this, and it is obvious. His own wings had once been much like the doe's. Then the dreams had come, and the great change, and he'd woken up, first ecstatic, then a bit miffed at this so-called blessing. Perhaps--the thought had occurred more than once--they were a gentle reminder from the Motherfather that beauty is not always a virtue.

"Then they would be in your skin. And underneath it," he answers, with total certainty in his voice. No condescending soothing tones here, only matter-of-factness. "Just because they're shy doesn't mean they're not there. Just staying close to you. Mine don't stay close at all--they wander." He sidles up alongside the doe, rib to rib, and stretches one wing over her back, extending it as far as possible, so that it might--from some angles, perhaps even from the doe's own point of view--look as though it belongs to her, rather than to him; as though he had just for a tiny moment lent her his feathers. "They have this awful habit of abandoning me, only to come back later and ask for forgiveness. You'll never have to worry about yours running away and showing back up at inopportune times. Always close."