Lawrence was very, very glad to finally get out of the infirmary. The level of indignity involved in being there had been about as much as he could tolerate, mitigated only by Rodney’s dutiful attention to his needs. Now he was free again and after getting himself back on his feet, his first order of business was to get firmly back into his routines. He felt like he’d gained a lot of weight due to being sedentary and there was one particularly good way to shed that weight as well as help himself get back to normal.
It involved flying.

At first it had been unpleasant and difficult, a lot of ungainly flapping around and crashing roughly into things but over time he’d managed to get the hang of it a little more, bit by bit. Before the Sahara he’d been working on using his tail to control landings a little better, but they still proved the hardest part. It was just so easy to overshoot or undershoot on a landing and end up tumbling head over heels across the ground. When it was breezy on the island it was even worse. Something he’d learned very acutely in his first few weeks was that barn owls were very lightweight animals.

That day thankfully it was calm, with not a cloud in the sky and the ocean a flat twinkling ray of scattered sunlight in the distance. He kept away from the beach, because that whole place was dangerous lately, especially for a little bird, instead making his way up the hills in the centre of the island. Once he’d put enough distance between himself and the facilities he shifted shape, the transition between human and owl always feeling deeply disturbing and disorienting. The sensation of falling was the worst part, dropping from his modest human height all the way down to the ground, all of it simultaneous with a shift from reliance on sight to reliance on hearing instead. The world always got excruciatingly loud.

He took off once his head stopped spinning, the initial few wing beats taking a great deal of effort, when he got higher it got easier, even on a calm day the air higher up providing the comfortable breezes he needed to stay aloft. The heat of the island itself was useful too, the thermals over it providing the sort of lift that leant itself to gliding. If only his wings were longer, it would be possible to stay up all day without so much as a wingbeat for minutes at a time.

Looking down he could see all the way to the ground, even at this height, finding that his vision was drawn to any small movement in the trees or grass with unerring certainty. It was difficult to fight the short attention span on the surface, feeling like a cat who was forced to hunt any small piece of string, as if part of a compulsion. Mercifully there weren’t any real prey animals on the island yet, even with the fog going away. It wasn’t easy for mainland animals to get smuggled in due to the nature of portals.

But he feared it was only a matter of time, and then he’d need to find some way of dealing with the overwhelming desire to hunt and eat mice and rats before he ended up having to figure out how many calories one contained.
Up here he could think, using the time and space to simply let his thoughts wander. He’d slipped up again out there, making mistakes on the spur of the moment which had cost him dearly. It was all well and good to say to him that he should never trust things which were too good to be true, but in this world, this world of hunters and artifacts, was there anything that was too /anything/ to be true? Nothing at all was impossible any longer and he’d seen creatures who could exchange youth as a bargaining chip. It was possible, he just needed to find the right place to obtain it from.

There was just the problem of Rodney and his morality. He had been firm about the fact that he didn’t want their relationship to be founded on years stolen from other people, comparing it to blood money in some respects, reminding him that all any of the creatures he consorted with had done was take from him. Lawrence wanted to believe it wholly, to take it all to heart and go from there, but part of him just wanted youth so badly it was like a gnawing ache, a hunger he couldn’t starve out or ignore. One day he’d be dead and Rodney would not and the thought of it made him strangely angry. He wanted control and here he had none.

Circling lower he made his way in the direction of towns, letting the air spill from the aerofoil of his wings as he dropped into a dive, levelling out over the houses. He could see the gardens, see the windows, see all of the details. Someone was out walking in towns, in the distance a red haired figure carried a steel beer barrel outside. He circled lower, dipping close to the perfect white house that was his home, its grass carefully mowed, the garden neatly tended. There was motion next door, there was motion everywhere, every caress of the wind across every leaf turning the world into a roar of sound and a clash of black and white

Sometimes he thought about how bad it would be if the artifact ever failed him, leaving him stranded in the air capable of doing nothing but falling to his death. He thought about it a lot but it never happened and felt as real to him as thoughts of backlash, as thoughts of fear. He wasn’t afraid and nowhere did he feel it so much as here, nothing but air below him all the way to the indifferent earth.

He wondered too if he’d be attacked by other birds out in the world, how other owls might respond to him. It was fortunate he had the island, fortunate he had nothing much here to distract him. It was a playground to learn in, and he appreciated the chance to practice because flying was hard.

Rodney was in the garden, he’d spotted him sitting amidst the riot of monochrome hissing static that no artist could even hope to capture. The world was black and white, the world was alight with sound and blinding in the light. Rodney all but glowed and as he moved nearer, lower, with ears which could hear the faintest footsteps of a mouse in a silent field, he could hear his breathing, his heart, everything about him, even the rustling of his clothing while he inhaled a scraping of noise against his avian senses.

He was going to do a perfect landing and he lost more altitude, intending on alighting just in front of the other man and shifting back dramatically. He’d do it. He’d do it correctly this time.

He spread his wings and his tail and extended his legs, ready for the landing just in front of where Rodney sat, a pale and silent flutter of feathers. He touched down, but he had too much speed, too much speed and you overshot, too little and you stalled right out of the sky. He tripped, tumbled, did a few somersaults and landed upside down with an indignant shriek.

It was such a tragic effort after the grandness of being above it all, of being superior and untouchable that he didn’t even turn back, just lay there like he was dead, staring at the too-bright sky.

He'd never get the landings.