#Det. Adil Morland

[phantomwingblog]

Adil’s going to have feathers up his nose when he wakes up...

(not shown: Adil’s industrial-strength earplugs because Torvi snores. Like a chainsaw.)

[saxspielercaderface]

Getting back to those crying prompts! A mourning Adil.

Very little context version under the cut (with context added):

He watches the knife-wielding tentacle of doom that Torvi made in the garage keep running, even after she’s long gone.

[saxspielercaderface]

Ficlet: Untitled

Quick interaction for WB-June, addressing a bit of the town Torvi lived in while she was still in the Vojakantii (inspired by those cool ice pics on my dash because that is exactly Hazard’s aesthetic), as well as Adil’s hometown/the town most of the story takes place in.

“I come from a place called-” she spat out a collection of rolled syllables and harsh consonant clusters before she paused, tapping her hand talons against the counter-top. “In your speech, that is, ah, ‘Hazardous?’ No, no, it is more, ah, ‘Hazard.’ As you call ‘Geel-mahn’ your home, I call ‘Hazard’ mine.”

“’Gilman,’” Adil corrected, taking a sip of coffee. Torvi shrugged - with both sets of arms. A single, downy feather came loose from her wing-wrist, twirling in the air before coming to rest on the counter. Adil’s eyes flickered to it - a tiny sprig of brown fluff on slightly coffee-stained linoleum. “What was Hazard like?” he asked, looking back up at Torvi.

“Frozen - all the time.” She pointed to the window, to the sheets of rain beyond. “It was like that, water always falling, but always freezing on things instead of making everything...loose.” She spoke again in Tyrkovihat before stopping, clicking her teeth, and continuing in Common. “Beautiful, I think would be the word? Like glass, some of it. Icicles hanging from the cliffs, the river below would freeze, the plants-” her hands came together, cupped- “trapped? Closed?”

“Encapsulated?”

“Yes. Like a bug in sap.”

A lingering moment of silence, Adil trying to visualize the town. Towering cliffs, mantling over a canyon, everything frozen solid in ice. A quiet, still world - not quite a dead world, but a deadly one.

No wonder they called it “Hazard.”

“Sounds cold,” he said, raising his mug for another swig.

“You are an ‘obvious captain,’” Torvi chirped, baring her teeth in something that was probably supposed to be a smile.

Adil snorted into his mug, spraying coffee across his face.

“Dammit, Torvi.” He wiped a sleeve across his mouth, snorting again. “Your Common’s getting better, but you still can’t use slang for shit. It’s ‘Captain Obvious.’ Like a name, or a title.“

“Aha! I see.” Torvi clicked her teeth together again, seeming to store the phrase away in her memory. “You will have to teach me more Common-Talk slang, Adil. I do not want you to breathe in your bean-water like that again and choke.”

“And I don’t want you to have to give me CPR - not with those talons of yours,” Adil grunted, earning himself a barking laugh in response.

A quick refill of the mug, and the two returned to listening to Gilman’s endemic rain bombarding the roof.

[saxspielercaderface]

E. Sharing a drink, Torvi! (YEAH PHANTOMWING)

Added Adil in for someone to share a drink with XD - this is from his POV

Though I miss swimming, running is fine too.

The crashing of the waves.

The slight give of the packed, wet sand beneath my feet.

The huff of my own breath and the pounding of my heart in my ears.

It’s a good morning for a run across Beachhollow. Foggy, but good.

Then I hear the near-roar of my current running partner’s breath and the uneven thumping of her own feet as she struggles to keep pace with me, and I have to rethink my previous statement.

Right. Time to take a break.

I slow to a halt.

Torvi crashes to the sand.

“You alright?”

I don’t think she hears me - she’s rolled into the ocean, splashing around, her wing flipping frigid water high into the air. The sight reminds me of the birds that used to visit my bird bath, at least before it got run over and destroyed by the cable guy’s truck two years ago, and I can’t help but chuckle.

A bird in a birdbath.

Except the bird is seven and a half feet tall and the birdbath is Beachhollow Bay.

But still. A bird in a birdbath.

Eventually, she rolls back out from the ocean and sits on the sand, head feathers ruffling to flick the last bits of water from them.

“How’re your legs treating you?” I ask. I think I already know the answer, given the pattern of the furrows her feet left in the sand behind her.

She’s off-balance, possibly feeling some muscle strain.

Her legs aren’t meant for running, let alone walking. Yet, with one of her wings gone, she’s been adamant about learning, about moving around under her own power until she finishes tinkering with that scrap-made, improvised prosthetic she’s always messing with.

“They are hurting,” she sighs, massive lungs still pumping the air. “But the muscles are learning.”

“Just make sure to stretch them when you’re done, okay?” I uncap my water bottle and take a sip before handing it off to her. “Stiff muscles aren’t that much better than atrophied ones, and-”

I stop. She’s put the water bottle down into the sand without even taking a drink.

“Torvi?” I can tell she’s overheated. The dip in the ocean, the fanning of her wing and tail fins, the heavy, too-rapid breathing. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”

She nods.

“I do not need water.”

“Yes, you do,” I snort, pushing the bottle closer to her with my foot. “You’ve practically got steam coming off your skin.”

“I do not need water, Adil,” she repeats herself, flashing her teeth to get the point across. “I do not need help. I do not drink when flying, anyways. Or…moving.”

“What?”

“Couriers, Adil. We can not carry water with us. Too heavy. It slows down flight. So, we do without.”

I sit myself down on the sand and stretch out my legs.

“Sounds like a tough job. But, it’s one you’re not doing anymore, so just drink the damn water and please, don’t pass out on me. I don’t want to have to carry you all the way back to the station over my shoulder.”

She rumbles, hisses, and finally picks up the bottle. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her suck down half its contents in no more than a second.

Ha, I’m right.

“Why did you pick up that job, anyway?” I ask, taking the bottle back after she drives it into the sand. There’s only a small sip at the bottom at this point…

“Why are you asking?”

“I read your file. You had job offers at some of the top engineering and aeronautics firms in the Territories. Why did you leave that for a job hauling cargo on your back, not drinking water, and practically starving yourself on salted jerky?”

I feel like I could have worded that so much better, but the question still stands. Thankfully, Torvi doesn’t seem angry or annoyed, and she starts to massage a knot in her calf as she answers.

“Rules,” she mumbles. “Laws. Expectations, too many of them. ‘No, you do not make an engine like this.’ ‘No you must shape the wings this way.’ ‘No, you must follow the wind shadow that the smart people have left for us tail-draggers.’”

“Oh.” I think I understand what she’s getting at. “You don’t like people telling you what you can and can’t do.” If that isn’t obvious from her endless attempts to get airborne again despite the entire situation working against her, I’m not sure what is. “You take that sort of talk as a challenge, and I’m assuming the engineers you worked with didn’t like that too much.”

She nods.

I’m right again.

“So, I go where there are no rules. Less rules.” She stops knuckle-massaging her legs and jabs a finger upward. “Do not carry too much. Fly well. Get to destination on time. Avoid the storm. That is it.”

“Hm.” I dig my hand into the sand, working it between my fingers for a minute. “It’s a bit different for me. You might think this weird, but I find it almost comforting to have-” I wave my other hand a bit, trying to come up with the right words- “rules and expectations, I suppose. It gives me some structure. Some sense of right and wrong that’s outside myself, you know?”

She nods again, trilling thoughtfully.

“I am not agreeing with you, Adil,” she begins, and I hear the laughter in her voice. “The world is very…gray…from up in the sky.”

“Well, that’s just because you can’t see any color other than blue or yellow…wait, was that actually a metaphor? A double entendre in Common?”

She guffaws, feathers fluffing happily, and I can’t help but - almost - match her smile as she smacks me on the shoulder.

“You see, Adil? I am getting better at Common-talk!”

I can’t disagree with that.

Once her laughter dies down and her feathers smooth out, she turns back to me, all business again.

“I am not agreeing with you. But we can agree to not agree, yes?”

I shrug, nodding, and we both look out over the bay, watching the last bits of fog finally burn away to reveal the mid-morning sun.

“Sure. Just…don’t go actually breaking any laws or I’ll have to drag you back to the station in handcuffs.”