I woke up to the sun streaming over my face. I wondered why I was not laying in my dorm bed on my back staring at the ceiling. Instead I was on my stomach and on the floor. There was clean-smelling leafy stuff underfoot instead of the flat mattress of the cot in my dorm room. I shook my head to clear away the cobwebs. Of course I was not in the dorm. We had been camping out at the site for the last few days, right? That must be it. Huh. I nearly poked an eye out trying to get my hair out of my face. No, wait. Not hair. Feathers. Any semblance of sleep dissolved instantly. That dream I thought I had about climbing a tree and seeing an overgrown Waikiki? Yeah, not a dream. I was lying here in the remains of the University of Hawaii at Manoa student union building with a feathery parrot face and a lion’s butt.
I looked around to see if the others were still asleep. Doc was; he was making these loud doggy snores that I was surprised did not wake anyone else up. He looked kind of cute with his feet sticking up in the air like that, twitching. Trish and Nic were also still asleep, as was Adam. Emmy, though, was nowhere to be seen. I got up carefully, trying not to wake any of the sleepers, and made my way out into the open courtyard. Emmy was there, carrying a bag of something. I startled her a bit when I emerged and the bag fell over, spilling a couple of ripe mangoes onto the ground. I stared. “Whoa. Where did those come from?” I asked.
“I… I found them.” Emmy said softly. She pointed towards a crumbling wall. “Over there. I could’nt sleep with the sun out, so I did a little looking around.” She shrugged. Her horn lit up with that bright blue glow and one by one the mangoes rolled back to her bag.
“Been practicing?” I asked. She nodded.
“I looked at that book you found yesterday.” Emmy said. “The part about unicorns had some basic exercises about learning how to use magic.” She gestured to her horn. “I … may have squished a few when I was picking these, but I can pick them up now if I concentrate.” She squinted a little and lit her horn, using the glow to pick up the last fruit and spin it in midair before returning it to the bag. “Want one?”
“Sure.” I said. She passed me a mango, with her hoof instead of her magic. I caught it and took a bite. It was tart and juicy, but somehow not as satisfying as I hoped. To keep my mind off that feeling, I asked her more about what she had read.
“There’s not much, but I think everyone should look through their section. I mean, there were only about a couple dozen pages about unicorns and basic spellcasting, but I learned a lot. Do you want it next?” Emmy asked. I nodded.
With book in claw, I retreated towards a large koa tree on the other side of the courtyard. I leafed through until I found a chapter on griffons. The first part was basics: bird head and front half and big cat rear end, with bird wings. The illustration looked more like an eagle than anything else, but the text noted that the bird half and feline half could each vary depending on the locale. It did not give examples, but I could imagine a snow leopard and snowy owl appearing in the Arctic, or a peregrine falcon and cheetah popping up in Africa. Eh, I guess a parrot griffon coming about in a tropical rainforest was not that unusual.
I flipped forward to a section about diet. The page noted that griffons were omnivores, like humans I guess, but that the feline part of us meant that meat was not only edible, but necessary for survival. I glanced at the unopened bag of jerky I had stuffed under a wing. It wouldn’t last long, but hopefully it would be enough until I could find some other kind of supplement. Maybe… yes. The text continued that if meat sources could not be readily consumed, fish or eggs could be added to one’s diet. Well that’s something, I guess. Though where I would find eggs on a place like this was a good question. As best as I could recall, feral chickens had been a problem on Kauai more than on O’ahu. Or at least in the touristy areas. Maybe out where we’d been working, but not here. But of course, that was then, not… however many years in the future we were.
Of course, this is an island; maybe I could somehow learn how to fish. That would be preferable; but we’d need some kind of equipment. A net would be safer than a pole; I used a pole maybe once in my life and that only resulted in getting a fish hook caught in my sister’s hair and both of us upending a canoe (we were barred from being in the same boat from that point forward). I knew we had rope leftover in the trailer. Maybe I could try to set snares for whatever critters lived here. Rats? Cats? Mongoose? Worth a try.
I wondered if Doc would have the same restrictions. Dogs, after all, are not usually known to be vegetarians (then again, they will try to eat anything). I flipped to the chapter labelled “Diamond Dogs”. To my surprise, there was some variation here too. As big as Doc and the other male dogs were, it looked like the bitches of his kind were even bigger. I shuddered at the thought. The sketched drawings showed Diamond Dogs that looked like pugs, doberman pinschers, and even a couple of unusual ones like malamutes and a shih tzu (that one was quite small; I wondered if there was a chihuahua version out there somewhere). According to the text, Doc’s diet would benefit from being augmented by an outside protein source. Great. I suppose I should offer him the other bag of jerky. Of course, if he knew how to fish, he could potentially teach me.
I flipped back to the griffon chapter to find myself staring at an illustration of a griffon in flight. I glanced back at my wings. They seemed much too small to carry an animal my size. I hoped the chapter would explain further. It did. Apparently, both pegasus ponies and griffons have a way of using magic that allows these absurdly small wings to carry them into the air. In addition and in defiance of everything I learned in meteorology class, we can land on clouds and pegasi can even manipulate them to rain, produce lightning, or even form structures given enough magic and time. Something told me though that our lone pegasus was not about to fly just yet. Nor for that matter would I.
Flight, apparently, was like magic in that it took a lot of little steps and practice before it could be relied upon to work. I glanced back at my wings again and watched them unfold and refold. Like the section on unicorns, the section on pegasi had a number of exercises that could be used to strengthen one’s flight magic and eventually get airborne. The griffon section did not have as much, but I figured I could try some of the pegasus ones too. It couldn’t be that hard, right? I flexed my wings again, trying to follow the diagrams in front of me. It was not until I looked up from the book a little while later that I realized that Emmy and I were no longer the only ones awake. Adam was watching me intently while eating his own mango. His wings were half-furled, as though he was not sure what to do with them quite yet.
“Hey man. How goes?” I said, closing the book and setting it aside.
“You were doing that for a long time, Zoe. What on Earth was that?”
“Wing exercises.” I said. “The book said that griffons and pegasus ponies can actually use these things to fly! Apparently it takes some work before it actually happens though. Wanna take a look?” I offered him the book. Adam backed away, to my surprise.
“There’s something about that book that I don’t like, Zoe.” He said, shaking his head. “It was way too convenient that it appeared right when all this happened. I mean, really. What are the odds of the precise book we needed to appear appearing right now?”
“Maybe it is not about odds, Adam. Maybe it is more like… magic.”
“Yeah, right. Magic. Sure.”
“You did see Emmy with the mangoes, right? That seems like magic to me. I mean carrying something without touching it with your body?”
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to those who do not understand the former.” Adam stomped a hoof. “For all I know there’s some kind of reasonable explanation for all of this, not something out of a little girl’s fantasy story. Maybe there’s some kind of magnetic fields or chemicals that are interacting with our minds and we’re just hallucinating all this.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve never had a dream that lasted this long, Adam. Nor have I ever heard of a hallucination that resulted in something this persistent. I still have bruises from my attempts at climbing yesterday and I still felt them this morning. Look in a mirror. You’re not exactly walking around on two legs and waving as the world passes by with five fingers spread wide there. Like it or not, this… change. It happened, Adam. I don’t think there is any going back to the way things were a couple days ago. We might as well make the most of what we have now.”
“Speak for yourself, beaky. You at least have a way to manipulate things. All I have are these.” He stomped a hoof again. He glared at me, defying me to tell him otherwise. I would not give him the satisfaction. I just shrugged. Adam scowled and stomped off. He didn’t seem to notice that his wings were fluttering as he moved.
I turned back to find the book and noticed that during our conversation, Trish and Nic had taken the opportunity to borrow it. Despite having hooves as their only way of manipulating the pages, they seemed to have no trouble doing so. Trish was babbling excitedly about something at a speed that only a caffeinated chipmunk could understand. Nic was reading to himself quietly under his breath. He’d done that before with other books; that meant he was really interested and was trying to commit everything he read to memory. I hadn’t gotten to that chapter yet, but seeing as neither of them were carrying a mango, I decided to venture back to Emmy and grab them a couple for breakfast.
Before I got too far, I ran into Doc. He seemed restless and still half asleep. “Morning.” I said. Before he could respond, I opened the package of jerky under his nose. Whatever he had been about to say left his mind as the scent of the meat caught his attention. He was drooling. “Here ya go, Doc.” I said, passing him a handful of the meat. “This should hold you for a little.” Without further adieu, he stuffed it all in his mouth. He sucked on the stuff, savoring it as though it were some kind of rich candy. I ate a similar handful. Jerky never tasted so good. It took all of my willpower to reclose the bag and tuck it away under a wing.
Eventually Doc swallowed and came back to his senses. “Where is the book?” He asked. I gestured behind me with the wing not holding the bag of treats. He noticed Trish and Nic and nodded. “Good. Has anyone called it next? I would like to take a gander at it and see what it has to say about this.” He gestured with a paw. I felt faintly jealous that his clothes still fit. My instant growth spurt in the van had shredded everything I’d been wearing down to my underwear. The strangest thing was, I didn’t feel self conscious about being without clothing. In fact, my feathers and fur felt no worse than,(and in some ways a lot better than) my t-shirt and shorts. I was nowhere near as sweaty as I would have been dressed. What I envied about Doc’s vest was its pockets.
“I’m a little worried about Adam, though. We had a little… uh… falling out about the book.” I said, trying to be diplomatic. It is not exactly my strong suit. Doc’s nod said that he noticed. I blushed.
“I can see why. We heard your … discussion across the courtyard. Funny how sound carries isn’t it?” Doc smiled. “We are all dealing with this in our own way, Zoe. Adam has never been one to believe in fairy tales. Him popping up in the middle of one is bound to make him harbor doubts. Give him, yourself, and everybody else time. It takes some patience.”
Patience. Yeah, yeah, yeah how long will that take? I cringed. Not my strong suit there. The only reason that that did not come out of my mouth was that I had been forced to learn at least a little tact during the course of my twenty years on this Earth. Doc saw my expression and chuckled. “Think of it this way, Zoe. Patience requires practice and effort, just like how you were doing those wing exercises back there to try and fly. I saw your face when you were doing them; you can concentrate when you feel like it, and you can be patient when you feel like it too. Now, I am going to see about those mangoes that Emmy found. After we have all had breakfast, we should meet back at the van and start bringing anything useful back here. I don’t want to try and drive it unless I have to.” He nodded at me and we walked towards where we had seen Emmy last.
I wasn’t sure I could be patient around Adam. My best solution a the moment was to avoid him as much as possible. Luckily he seemed to have decided the same thing, so contact was kept to a minimum. Thus was the peace held. I ended up helping Emmy bring more fruit to the shelter before we joined the others back at the van. We ended up loading up everyone’s backpacks with whatever useful stuff we could find. To my surprise, Trish and Nic loaded up with more stuff than any of the rest of us, save Doc. They were nudging each other and adjusting the packs. I wondered what the guidebook had said about their kind of pony that made them so eager to carry stuff. I didn’t say anything, as I figured I would find out soon enough when I got a hold of the book again.
I did my best to carry my backpack, but I couldn’t get the straps to fit over my wings at all. In the end I did my best to balance the pack on my back between my wings and hoped I would not drop anything important. It took a few trips, but we got anything useful we could find out of the van and the trailer. Only the big stuff and the mostly useless electronics were left behind. We even took apart the seats so we could use the cushions as bedding.We were lucky; our van’s trailer had a lot of our camping equipment. We packed out a couple of tents, several sleeping bags and foam pads, a couple of solar lanterns, a couple of battered tarps, and some twine and rope. Add to that our digging tools: shovels, trowels, buckets for sand and soil, and some plastic bags and containers. I wondered distantly what had happened to the other van and its occupants; the other half of our group had the vehicle with the ground penetrating radar machine. Their trailer would have yielded much less useful equipment than ours. We’d seen no sign of them since our reappearance.
Back at our new base, we all did a bit of what my mom would have wryly called ”nesting”. In my case, it was pretty literal; I took my sleeping bag and used it to form a sort of bowl shaped nest on the ground. It would do for now, I thought, but if I get a chance I want to make a hammock. There was something about being on the ground that made me feel vulnerable. I somehow felt safer sitting in a tree than being on the ground. I figured I could manage to string something between the trees holding up the roof.
With our living quarters and personal gear sorted out, our next goal was finding a way to safely store food and water here. Ideally, the foodstuffs could be kept somewhere easy to access, but dry and out of the rain. The water needed to be kept clean and drinkable. Somehow or another, a waterfall had formed on one of the taller buildings a bit landward of our home base. Emmy had found it when she was messing with the mango tree and we used that to fill our water bottles. It tasted fresh and ran clear, but I would have much preferred a way to gather rainwater. There was no telling what little germies were swimming in the runoff. When I expressed that concern out loud, Doc shrugged and said that as long as none of us got sick, it would do for now. We used some of the water to clean out the containers from the van so we could use them for food storage and set up a sort of pantry in the dry space beneath an overhang.
Emmy’s “eating the islands” book was proving to be very useful indeed. It turns out there are a lot of edible plants in Hawaii. For example, I had never heard of a sea grape before, but Emmy had tried some when we had been out at the site and swore they were edible. She thought we could find breadfruit and if we were lucky there would be some other trees with edible fruits around here too. I was more curious as to why we were the only ones scavenging in this area. After all, there had been a couple hundred students on campus when we left, despite it being summer break. Yet we found not a soul here. Nor for that matter did we encounter anyone coming up into the hills from Waikiki or Honolulu. After all there was a tourist population in the tens of thousands on any given day, as well as the permanent population of the city. Surely someone was down there? Maybe they just didn’t think it worth their while to come up into the hills, though we certainly found it worth ours to be up here.