“Get inside honey.”
The harpy looked at the car door inside the hospital carpark, and limply tried to use her wings to open the door. The strange appendage wouldn’t bend the way her fingers would, and neither did she have enough ‘grip’ strength- if any. The limb had some movement to it, but it felt like she was perpetually holding a feather duster. “Um- sorry I can’t Mom-“
Her mother sighed and quickly came back to open the door for her. A simple activity that seemed beyond the black-feathered harpy-girl. “There you go.”
Colin quickly brought herself in the car, avoiding the gazes of others. “Thanks…” this was so embarrassing! She limply leaned into the car, clenching her talons a bit to avoid scraping the fabrics.
“Let me get your seat belt too.” Her mother quickly leaned over and placed the belt over her new daughter’s torso… momentarily staring at her chest and odd feathers across her arms. “This is… going to take some getting used to.”
“You’re telling me.” The harpy girl sighed.
The drive back home felt more awkward than it needed to. At least they knew it was her… she feared they might think she was a ‘pod person’ or some kind of alien replacement but no. There was enough of the old her to satisfy she was the same person. “…um- you’re taking this pretty well,” Colin said quickly.
“Well, these things do happen dear,” Her mother said simply with a shrug. “I’ve read all the pamphlets.”
Time seemed to slow down for Colin… “They happen? Pamphlets?” Wait- no they didn’t! How could anything so absurd happen? It wasn’t normal! People don’t change gender and certainly don’t change into monsters! She felt she had to probe further. “Um- when has it happened?” Colin asked. She braced herself for a left turn, feeling the… odd sensation of her new assets on her chest.
Her mother thought about it as she drove out the carpark. “Hm, well I think there were a few odd cases, wasn’t there someone on the news? A centaur I think? They called it Humo-filly syndrome, or that other one… I forget. I heard it on the news once. I think that one is genetic though.”
…a centaur? … so people think she simply caught the chicken pox and ended up a harpy. Was this some kind of Sunnydale syndrome? Why was she spared the effect? “…and my changing … uh… into a girl?” She still felt oddly numb about it.
Her mother gave a slight laugh at that. “Well, I can’t deny that’s pretty unusual… but yeah, there’s been a few cases of that too. I heard that most of the time people do change back though sweetie, so don’t worry too much about it. You might be human again in a year. Most people do make a full recovery.”
“Oh…” that was… certainly helpful. She might change back to normal? Back into a guy… if what her mother said was true… but given how she knew the world was ‘not’ supposed to be this way, she had no idea if to believe it.
So… that was it. The start of the holidays… as a bird girl. Could it get any worse for Colin?
She tried to turn on a computer console to at least get her mind off this weird situation, poking at the controller with her talons after a few unsuccessful attempts with her wings. Unfortunately, she ended up scratching the surface with a distinct sound of scraping plastic. She tried to stop it mid-way, but the damage was done. “Darn it!” She fumed. “Not that I can even use the controller like this anyway…” She couldn’t even get past the first hurdle.
What to do?
Who… to talk to?
What… was next?
Frightening questions that the new Harpy girl had no answer to. If this happened to someone else, maybe she would talk to her friends… her family… someone. Though that wasn’t possible. The truth of her life hit her like a ton of bricks. She almost wished that this was indeed perfectly ‘normal’ to be changed like this. “I have no friends… I’m a bird girl… and I can’t even play video games.” There was no escape… none…
The Harpy-girl stared vacantly for some time. She didn’t even have a sibling to confide in, and her cousins were all scattered in other countries, and didn’t even speak English even if she were to meet them. She couldn’t talk to her parents as they could never even begin to comprehend that this wasn’t normal!
The sheer feeling of pure isolation gripped her.
Colin always had this ‘hope’ that she could have made a few friends. She was just an awkward, shy teenager… everyone was, right? Maybe some day something would have happened and she might have bumped into the right person, joined some social group, found a girl who was into her… why didn’t her life play out like that? She was nothing to anyone, just a shadow barely noted by anyone in class. She had always been bullied for being a bit weird…
…but like this, she’ll be bullied even more.
Why did this… this… this THING happen to her!
She fell into her bed and screamed into her pillow, her talons ripping the bottom of the bedsheets as she cried out her frustrations… her dark black wings outstretched wildly. Her very existence was just a joke! Someone’s play thing now…
Colin’s cries were briefly cut as she heard an odd tapping sound. She tried to wipe her tears from her wings. “Huh… what…” She got up slowly, hesitantly getting used to the feeling of her talons as she looked at the windows. Some kind of… bird? “…A raven?” She blinked staring at the rather ‘ugly’ looking bird. “What the heck do you want…”
“I am so sorry to disturb you my lady, I am just here to deliver your key” a male voice said with a hint of a British accent. If she were to guess it sounded a lot like Alfred Pennyworth from Batman.
Colin stared at the bird. “Uh…”
The bird waited awkwardly, holding something in its mouth, glittering in silver. “So… can you open the window? Please?”
Colin stared some more. ‘Okay, so I have… also gone mad… no problem…’ Of course sanity ‘was’ in short supply. Taking a breath, she always felt like she was on the weird edge close to madness… she just didn’t expect it to manifest as an imaginary talking bird. “Well… could you just leave it there…”
“Right you are miss, take care.” The bird flew away.
Colin watched it go, leaving behind some strange… object. “A key?” The thing looked more like a necklace. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to open the window, or if she even ‘could’. She put her shoulders up against the handles, just about managing to bring the frame up with a creek. “Urgh… there’s got to be a better way to do this…”
She gingerly reached for the odd necklace with her feathered arms, managing just about to brush it inside. At a thought she started to pick it up with her talons, clenching the chain. “Huh…” She was surprised that her feet were able to… grip like that. The object itself appeared to be a strange necklace made of silver. An odd design of an elaborate star and some strange writings on the front. She looked at it a few times oddly… when it began to glow.
“What the heck!” She gasped.
The necklace thing had wrapped itself around her left talon. She tried to tug at it, feeling like an animal snared in a trap. “Ah- Get this thing off me!” Yet no matter what she couldn’t take it off… neither with her wings, or with her other talon… the chain dangled and rested against the golden scales around her ankles, like a strange band.
