//------------------------------// // News To Me // Story: Displaced // by LeafBug //------------------------------// The first sensation was awareness. And it was with this awareness that the story begins. I am.... I think.... I am conscious. I don't feel anything... My senses don't seem to be working. That's... odd. Am I unconscious? No, that doesn't make sense. I shouldn't be capable of lucid thought if I was unconscious. ...I'm taking this whole 'lack of sensory input' thing rather well. That's... also odd. I suppose that's a good thing, panicking wouldn't do me any good. I need logic right now. I suppose the question the question to ask right now is, what happened to me? The noise of thunder was in no way dulled by the impossible noise the rain was making on the corrugated steel roof of the car ports. A man, though barely that, some would say, was making his way through the drenched streets to the apartment complex his late friend resided in. Friend. Another loosely used term, the man had cut such social ties even before his “friend's” death; though the dead man was as close as he had come in a while. As he finally entered the stairwell, and subsequently used the key given to him earlier in the day to enter the deceased man's apartment, he continued to ruminate on his thoughts. Walking through the modestly sized room he entered, he thought upon the circumstances of his frie-... more of an acquaintance, really; acquaintance's death. Suicide, via a bullet to the brain stem. But not before leaving a last will and testament, in which he had left everything he owned to the man now in the apartment; which unfortunately didn't include the apartment itself. And so he had been asked politely via angry phone call to come “Pick up the dead guy's shit” as soon as possible, before they threw it into the dumpster. To be honest, the man didn't really care about most of the stuff that was in here, and he planned to leave all of the dead man's belongings in here just to make the landlord have to go through the effort of throwing everything out. However, there was one thing that was explicitly asked of him in his late acquaintance's will; to pick up a box from the bedroom and deliver it to the guy's mother. So the man decided to honor the last request of the only member of his social circle, it's not like he was that much of a douche. Now leaving the apartment with the rather large box in hand, the man started his trek back to his own apartment, a few blocks away. Having long since been soaked through his clothes by the cold, late Autumn rain, he didn't really relish the idea. Stopping under the car ports he had passed by earlier for a moment to adjust his glasses, he began to hear sirens in the distance. Police sirens, to be exact. Probably some drunk idiot getting chased by the cops, he mused to himself. Funnily enough, he was right, though that would never be known to him. Walking into the poorly illuminated streets for the second time that night, the man struggled to hear anything over the din of the rain, or see anything through his fogged glasses. Astigmatism was a rather unfortunate byproduct of Albinism, truly. He became aware of the police sirens coming rapidly closer to him, able to barely see lights from multiple police cruisers over the tops of a few houses before getting blinded by an ungodly light at the end of the street. It seems they were chasing someone that had stolen the cab of a semi. Seeing this, he made the remarkably idiotic choice to rush across the street before the chance was blocked off by the chase, he did just that. And then slipped. In the middle of the street. The box spilled its contents across the deceitfully slippery street, sliding away from him along with the glasses that dislodged from his face. With a groan, he got up quickly, trying to finish his mad dash as quickly as he could. Only to be made painfully aware of the aforementioned chase by the airhorn of a semi truck. Snapping his attention to his left, he got a nice glimpse of the blinding light of headlights before a quick jostling sensation, and blackness. ...God damn it. I'm such a dumbass. Now being aware of his previous circumstances, the man tried to make sense of his current situation. That was enlightening. I guess I'm in a coma or something like that. It would make sense, I've heard that your senses don't come back immediately if you've been comatose for too long. Seeing as how I got hit by a truck, I've probably been out for a lo- Sensation. Touch. Feeling. It returned in a bit of a rush to his battered mind, sending him reeling for a moment. He was cold. Not overly so, but still enough to be kind of uncomfortable. The next thing he noticed was that most of the sensations he felt were kind of... muffled. Like he had something covering him. Which would make sense if he were in a hospital, in a bed, and under sheets; but pressure indicated he was lying on his chest and stomach, and he wouldn't be so cold under sheets in a controlled environment like a hospital. This along with the fact that some parts were less 'muffled' than others debunked that theory entirely. The third thing he felt was.... wrong. Wrong, in so many ways, wrong. His face felt like it had something wrong with it in general. A slight cold breeze was caressing appendages he didn't know he had. His back obviously no longer held the same curve as it once did. Whatever was on his back gave a twitch, the feeling of it moving almost putting him in shock. No, not something. Somethings. The feeling was just.... strange, and alien and wrong. But he stopped himself. He stopped and felt. And soon the alien sensations of his new appendages, one of which was almost connected to his ass (which was just awkward), became less.... well, wrong. I will not panic. I will think, rationalize. Logic. I need logic, not fear. And so he systematically tensed his muscles, including the new ones. His legs felt... off. Down to his knees was pretty much the same, if a bit shorter, maybe, but his feet were more constricted. His heels felt like they reached much farther back than they did before; as well his calves having changed, apparently. It was his weird elongated foot, his heel, his Achilles tendon, a length of leg that hugged his side a little bit along with his knee and thigh.* It was definitely different, that's for sure. His arms, surprisingly, felt about the same as before. If not a bit more scrawny at the ends. And the fact that he apparently now only had three fingers, no real palm (there was a little there, but...), and his thumb was, well, opposite of them. It faced the other way now. While his hands were most definitely the strangest part, he found it increasingly odd that his shoulders would retain pretty much the same kind of joint as before, namely one resembling a ball and socket, even though the arm had quite obviously changed; yet his hips seemed to have changed along with his legs, they certainly felt different. His face still felt off. He felt like he had... well, like he had a beak. There's no real way to describe it without having it yourself; he no longer had lips, or teeth, or the same kind of jaw. His nostrils were on it, and it felt weird breathing through them. His tongue rested inside whatever was jutting from his face: he could definitely feel that. He could also feel the breeze on it ever so slightly. It wasn't as sensitive as, say, his mouth was, but it wasn't completely dead to feeling. Probably a beak, really. No two ways about it., he mused to himself. Sight. Vision. Light. To be honest, he only had noticed that last one at first, as he had yet to open his eyes. Light was shining through his closed eyelids, and so he slowly cracked them open and waited for his eyes to adjust. The first thing he noticed was that everything had a crystal clear clarity, more than that, actually, which was quite a sight for someone who had Astigmatism their whole life. His vision was sharp as a tack, giving him a much better sense of sight than even when he had his glasses on. The second the he noticed was- What. He was in a forest clearing. In the middle of winter, it seemed, due to the snow on the ground and in the bare trees. It made no sense, but neither did the rest of his situation, so he ignored it for now. He had more pressing matters to attend to. He tried not to focus on the blurry white thing on his face, which he assumed was his beak. It was surprisingly out of the way, only a bit more in sight than his nose was before he got turned into a red Picasso by that truck. Using his newly regained sight to help orient himself, he awkwardly pushed himself onto all fours with what he felt in his throat as a grunt of effort. He immediately noticed his arms were the same length as his legs. He was no longer bipedal. Shit. Not overly surprising at this point, but it could be inconvenient later. Now standing, he felt the back appendages flop uselessly to the ground over his sides, and , with instincts he didn't have before, folded them onto his sides. Turning his head to peer at them, he confirmed his growing hunch that he now had wings. Bird wings, to be exact; the same pristine white as the snow around him. It seems a few things have followed me... Continuing his slightly limited visual observations, he noted that those weird feeling arms of his were now exactly the same as a bird's, also completely white, claws and all. Additionally, he noted that his back feet were now paws, but in his standing position couldn't see anything more than that. Trying to remedy that, he ended up flopping onto his flank with his leg lifted up, like a cat trying to lick itself. He idly noted how fitting that analogy was when he saw his legs were pretty much exactly the same as a cat's. He frowned as best he could with the small amount of free muscle behind his beak (compared to a human's free range of expressions, that is) when his eyes wandered to between his new legs. Apparently he no longer had external genitalia, excluding a small pouch-ish flap of skin and fur, the purpose of which needn't be explained; and the universal waste remover located below his tail. Speaking of, it looked rather nice. Tapered, not too incredibly long, ended in a tuft of fur. The tail, that is. Get your mind out of the gutter. Looks like a lion's tail. Guess that clinches it, I've either turned into a Gryphon or have gone completely nuts. I suppose either way it'll be real for me, so let's just go with it. Hearing. Sound.... Gurgling? Well, not so much gurgling as what could be called “Babbling”. There was running water nearby, That's good to know. With the return of his hearing and the end of his self observations, he righted himself and began to familiarize himself with the surroundings.. Small forest clearing, a bit cliché, but that's fine. Running water nearby, that's pretty great. Some poking around in the surrounding trees led to no real discoveries, so he moved for the stream, not without difficulty. He felt lucky no one saw him try and fail to walk his first couple of times; but he got the hang of it quickly enough, despite this form of locomotion being vastly different than the one he was used to. And it was a stream, kind of small at that, but crystal clear. A small offshoot pool was still enough to reflect surfaces, and the man-turned-Gryphon got a shock when he saw his new face. A fierce eagle's head stared back at him, stark white and piercing red eyes. Kind of creepy. A small crest of decorated feathers adorned the top of his head; which he was pretty sure wasn't on normal eagles, but at this point all the normal rules seemed to be moot. A somewhat small, hooked beak was stuck to his face, with a surprisingly emotive face behind it. He sat for a while, practicing his expressions in his mirror of sorts, leading to the discovery that he could open his beak rather wide, as well as convey his emotions quite well, as the beak didn't seem to quite connect its top and bottom pieces; as well as a small amount of somewhat elastic skin and muscle behind it. Not enough to be called cheeks, but it was still there. “Huh, tha-” He stopped, his reflection gaping wide-eyed back at him. He could talk. It didn't make any sense, but he could talk. He shouldn't be ABLE to talk, at least not in English, but he did. Or at least he heard it in English. Frowning and shaking his head, he decided to take the all-too-often taken path recently, and didn't question it past that. It just hurt his head. It was worth noting that his voice was impossibly deeper than it used to be, a deep, rumbly thing just reeking of the word 'Bass'. After this startling revelation, his sense of smell returned to him. Sort of. It seems as if this form didn't really have much in terms of an olfactory sense, and instead made up for with its exceptional vision. Whatever, humans were sight based creatures anyway, it's not like he turned into a dog or anything. He turned his attention to his growing thirst. Figuring it couldn't hurt to try it, he awkwardly sated that need in the stream. If he got sick later, he'd know not to do it again. Past that, he started walking upstream. He vaguely remembered that walking upstream was the way to go if you wanted to find civilization, or at least he thought he did. He heard it somewhere, whether it was a reputable source didn't matter right now. After walking what seemed like hours, he didn't find a town or anything like that, just more woods, and more stream. It was rather boring. Thankfully, though, he found the chance to rest his now sore muscles in the form of a cave; which upon further inspection turned out to be empty. Glancing outside after his securing of the cave, he noted that it was starting to get dark, and he had no way to start a fire. Unfortunate. He did, however, now have fur and feathers, which might work well enough as a substitute for more advanced insulation. It was also at this time that he realized he hadn't eaten all day, made painfully aware by a pinch of hunger from his stomach, accentuated by a loud growl. Right. What do Gryphons eat? Meat, most likely. But I can't hunt for shit, I'm a city boy, no doubt. What would I even eat with this beak? I think eagles eat fish, right? That sounds right. I'll check the stream then. Checking the stream in the waning light proved to be fruitless, not only was it Winter, so fish were pretty much out of season, but he was also wary to wander too far from his cave, lest he get lost somehow. Night settled while he was still checking the stream, so he started walking back to his cave. He barely stopped to consider the fact that he could see just as well at night as in the day; and his hearing wasn't quite attuned enough to hear the sound of rustling tree branches by the stream, and a figure retreating with the sound of beating wings.