Today had been going a bit better than the days before it for Mikey. There had been no problems during class, lunch had gone by without anybody making fun of her (at least not aloud,) and she was starting to get the hang of taking care of herself without the use of hands. And now that she'd been this way for a little under a week, she was just generally beginning to be a little less freaked out by it. As much as she still dreaded the prospect of being this way for the rest of her life, things were looking up, for now.
At the moment, she was out on the playground at recess. This kind of brought her mood back down a bit; Mikey had always been fairly athletic and energetic, but quite a lot of the playground equipment was designed for people who had hands. Her talons would afford a better grip on the climbing structures, granted, but she wasn't really balanced enough to stay up, and she couldn't really do any gripping with her wingtips. She gave it a try anyway, but it ended exactly as badly as she thought, with her frantically flapping her wings in an attempt to avoid falling backwards, and looking like an idiot in the process.
It didn't work, to boot; she failed to count on her wings pushing both ways, which left her rocking back and forth, looking even stupider, before finally losing her balance and flopping back into the wood chips. Well, that didn't work. Maybe if she could improve her grip and balance, but not now, that was for sure. She stood back up, trying to ignore the stares from the other kids, and brushed shredded bark out of her hair with one wing. It wasn't fair, she fumed. As if all her other changes weren't bad enough, she'd had her hands taken from her, and replaced with these things. There were all kinds of thing you could do with hands, but what were wings good for?
When she thought about it, the answer was fairly obvious, but how could she possibly fly? Despite appearances, she wasn't a bird; she had no instinctive knowledge of flight, and nobody was going to be pushing her out of a nest. But...well, what did she have to lose by trying? It wouldn't make up for the loss of her hands, but at least learning to fly would give her some use for her wings.
Having nothing better to do, Mikey went off to a quiet corner of the playground and began to experiment. Her first attempt was for a vertical takeoff, where she jumped into the air and thrust downward with her wings; she did get some lift out of this, but she couldn't get underway quickly enough, and dropped back to the ground. After a couple more tries at this, she decided to make a horizontal takeoff; she took off running across the playground, angled forward, with her wings tilted up slightly. Sure enough, as she ran she she could feel lift building up underneath her wings, and finally she took a leap into the air and was flying.
Mikey only stayed in the air for about a minute; she was new at this, and would rather improve slowly than screw up thirty feet off the ground. But she got in a couple circles around the school grounds, and by the time she came in for a landing, the entire playground was watching her. She came fairly low and used her wings as an air brake, lifting her up so she cold swing down into a standing position and drop to the ground in a single smooth motion. With everyone staring, slack-jawed, she walked back inside, more than a little pleased with herself; maybe she wouldn't get so much crap after this.
