//------------------------------//
// Chapter 11 
// Story: Hegira: Option Gamma 
// by Guardian_Gryphon 
//------------------------------//

Since the press had taken over the front steps and lobby of the Bureau once more, Wrenn had come down to the newfoal quarters,  which played host to new Converts and the native Equestrians staying at the Bureau.  

The floor had a few small lounges of its own, made a good walking or running circuit, and none of the press would be there, making it perfect for Wrenn’s purposes.

Somewhere on the same level, construction crews were hard at work extending the facilities to incorporate appropriately sized and designed living spaces for new Gryphon converts, unaware as to exactly why these new rooms had to be built to such peculiar specifications.

After figuring out how to comfortably sit on his haunches in a chair, curl up and lie down, stand without falling, and use one of his claws from a quadrupedal stance without doing a faceplant, Wrenn had begun to practice walking longer distances by moving between the lounges.

There weren’t many newfoals there during the day, most were in classes, but those that were visible, and the native Equestrians, gave him a wide berth.  Wrenn tried to shoot them a friendly smile whenever they looked his way, and a few returned the gesture.

Once had had successfully managed to make a circuit of the entire floor twice, Wrenn decided to try jogging.  The first time, he concentrated too hard and ended up launching himself face first into a sofa, eliciting a few muffled guffaws, followed closely by curious looks, from nearby Ponies.  Wrenn was glad of the durability and pain tolerance of his new beak.

The second time, his legs started to work in concert, but he found himself focusing too hard again, and he ended up doing the equivalent of a belly flop into the carpet.  He was suddenly grateful for the new layers of feathers and fur protecting his skin.  The last time he had gotten rug burn had been when he was a kid, but he could still remember how much it had hurt.  

Against his feathers and fur, the texture of the carpet was definitely a strong sensation, but it didn’t leave behind any sort of lasting pain or discomfort.  He discovered, lying there, that his fur was not like human hair, it had a much stronger nervous system connection that let him feel more sensations of touch and texture, but at the same time seemed to be less oversensitive; the sensations were strong but not demanding, and filtered against pain.

On the third attempt he succeeded in distracting himself by chanting, under his breath.  
The words were old, but simple, a holdover from the spiritual predecessor to Earthgov Special Forces, “One two three four, I love the Marine Corps. One two three four, I love the Marine Corps...”

As long as he focused on the rhythm instead of actually trying to control his legs, he found that they worked in perfect synchronization.  He wasn’t so much jogging as loping, and he suddenly realized just how fast he was going; as a human he would have been forced to run flat-out to keep up with the pace he was currently setting, and that was just an easy accelerated stride.

Disaster nearly struck as he passed the next lounge.  The rooms were an extension of the hallway, a curved bulge with exterior windows filling one wall, generally populated by tables, sofas, and floor cushions.

Wrenn spied a familiar face occupying one of the cushions, and he stopped to join her.
That would have been the end of it, except that he thought too hard about stopping, defaulted to the old two-legged method, and nearly tumbled into a wall before his body instinctively corrected for him.  In the end, he managed to just skid on his paw pads, and the slick part of his fore-claws, until friction stopped him.

Wrenn shook himself, and stepped into the lounge, “Hey Callie.  Long time no see.”
He certainly wasn't expecting the welcome he received.

With a sound that was more of a shocked squeak than anything, he suddenly felt a pair of hooves connect squarely with his beak.  Being an Earth Pony, Callie had a very strong kick, and Wrenn was still trying to cement his sense of balance.  
He nearly ended up flat on his back, but to his amazement, his muscles stepped in once again, reflexively, and righted him.

As he straightened up, he caught a glimpse of her tail disappearing around a corner.
He raised his voice, “Hey! hold up!”  The sound probably carried to half the floor, his throat could produce quite a ruckus now.  He hadn’t intended to be quite so loud.

Wrenn set off to follow her at a more sedate pace, hoping not to frighten the little Pony.
She was standing around the corner, looking as intimidating as she could manage, but Wrenn’s eyes could pick out the hidden tells of fear, even panic, "Who are you? What do you want?"

He mentally kicked himself.  She probably hadn’t had time to recognize him, and now she was too keyed up to make the connection on her own.
“Its me.  ‘Soldier man.’ I wasn’t trying to scare you, but hey... you need to work on your people skills.  Socking someone to the beak isn’t exactly love and tolerance.”

"S-soldier...man...?"

“Uhuh.  In the flesh.  Well... in the feathers now.”

"Wha-what happened!? You got turned into a..."  she looked him up and down,
"...Griffin!?”  She paused, “Did the ponification process have a glitch?”

Wrenn chuckled, “No no... I’m not even sure that’s possible... No this was intentional.  You remember I said they showed me something I couldn’t tell you about?  This is it.  I’m supposed to go live on the news in about ten minutes.  I’m the first.  First human to become a Gryphon.”

As he said it, the enormity of it hit home again.  He was no longer human.  He had wings, a tail, claws, golden eyes, feathers even.

She blinked at him for a moment, "It really is you then."  She sat down, giving him a sheepish smile, "Sorry for kicking you. Reflex reaction to getting pounced on."

Wrenn smiled, “My fault really.  I should have known you wouldn’t recognize me immediately.  Good thing my skull is even thicker now.  The beak helps too.”

She nodded, looking a bit nervously at the aforementioned sharp protrusion, "So what's it like? Being all feathery?"

Wrenn shook his head, “Hard to describe.  The eyes are just *incredible*!  I haven’t figured out the wings yet... But I’m really looking forward to it, that’s for sure.  I feel strong enough to bend steel, but I’m still getting the hang of letting the body drive.  The sensations... Is this how life is for you?  Seeing and feeling so much?”

"I couldn't say. I've never been a griffin.  But I love being me, if that's what you're asking."

Wrenn inclined his head, “True.  So what do you think?”
He spread his wings, this time to their full extent.

"Ooh, pretty..." she closed the distance between them with a quick, peppy trot and nuzzled the feathers a bit curiously, "I've wished I was a pegasus at times...being able to fly... So you haven’t flown yet?"

“No.. I think that’s something to try after I’ve had another night’s sleep and some time to practice walking more.  But if you want to fly, I could always look into getting you a VTOL ride.  And have you considered jetpacks?  Not the most elegant solution, but hey...”

"Last time I tried something like that, I sort of got into an argument with a tree..."
She winced, “...And lost."

Wrenn shook his head, “That doesn’t sound fun.  But the offer still stands.  VTOL pilots generally don’t tangle with trees.  Though I was in one that had ‘an argument with a tree.’  I’m still here, but the VTOL isn't, not in one piece anyhow.  So I guess you could call it a draw.”

She nodded sympathetically, "Well, I ship out tomorrow for Equestria. After some recent events, I was told that it would probably be best if I went somewhere less dangerous..."
As she spoke, Wrenn noticed a small flecked marking across her flank that almost looked like a burn in the final stages of healing.

He shrugged, “Well, all the Bureaus are under increased military protection now.  But things are standoffish with the PER, which means the HLF usually isn’t far behind.  This time it’s different.  Bigger.  As much as we’ve done our best to make things safe again, I don’t blame you for wanting to go home.”
He paused, then gestured to the vanishing wound, “That happen during the evac?”

She flicked her ears back. "Sort of. I was trying to help during the PER attack, but there was an explosion and I got caught in it. Someone grabbed me and got me to safety, but not before I got singed. The doctor suggested I head home to recover from 'mental trauma' or something."

Wrenn’s ears flicked back as well, a emotional reaction not unlike the frown on his beak, “You *should* have followed the evac order.  War is my territory, leave the combat zone to me.”

His face softened and his ears perked up, “Though speaking of home, where do you live?  I’ll pay you a visit when I get to Equestria and find some free time.  I know Gryphons visiting Pony settlements is unconventional, but it’s not exactly taboo or anything.”

"Ponyville, for now. I'm moving around a bit. Just be careful you don't scare everypony when you drop in."  She shot him one of her smiles, pure and joyful; a sharp contrast to the fake grimaces, and dull expressions he had been party to so recently in the halls of power.  Somehow he was reminded of Commander Aston, during her more relaxed moments.

“Well, you had all better get used to...” he paused, savoring the words, “...my kind.  The more you push the frontiers, the more of us will be coming to live with you to provide protection.”
He smirked, “If you have someone you really want to prank though, I imagine I’ll be much better at the pouncing thing by the time I come to call.”

She giggled, “That might be interesting... I'll consider it. In the meantime, my transport leaves in five minutes. I'd better get down there. Until I see you next, Wrenn. Be careful." 
She gently headbutted his chest.

He gave her a quick hug, encircling her with one wing, "You too.  The more the barrier expands, the longer the trip gets, or so they tell me.  Stay safe."
He glanced down at her burn again, “I mean it.  No silly heroics.  You have friends, here and at home, and none of them want to have to come scrape you off the pavement and stitch you back together.  I expect to find you happy and healthy and in one piece when I visit.  Got it?”

She nodded, her bow flopping with the movement, "Got it."





As he descended in the lift, Wrenn thought about Callie, and the journey she had ahead of her.

When the barrier had first appeared, getting to Equestria was relatively simple; a Convert would take a transport ship to the barrier, then transfer to an Equestrian ship which would take them to an Equestrian port.

Even after several years of expansion, all that had appeared on the Equestrian side, in most places, was more ocean.  True there were areas where the main continent had begun to expand dramatically, but there were still large swaths of safe ocean to journey over as well.

After several months of observation, scientists had made a chilling discovery; the relationship of Equestrian space to Earth space was not one to one.  For every meter of Earth consumed, Equestria was gaining 1.7 meters.

Complicating matters; two years prior, new land masses had begun to appear, proving the longstanding theory that Earth’s space was being completely consumed and altered as it was swallowed by the bubble.  

Oceans were still easily accessible on the other side of the barrier, but scientists were starting to paint a grim collage of predictions;  in another few decades the Equestrian nation proper would be thousands of miles journey from the inner barrier edge.  By the end of the bubble’s expansion, the remaining circle of Earth would be further from the capital of Canterlot than the distance between New York and Singapore three times over.

Wrenn wondered how they were going to cope with that morbid fact.  Even if one could find a safe water route, there was no guarantee that there wouldn’t be hostile forces along the way, and the distance would make the trip prohibitively long by sailing vessel.

Celestia had recently reassured the media that a joint team of magicians and scientists were working on the problem, and that a solution was close, but she never seemed willing to say just what they were doing.

Wrenn trusted her, especially after having met her, and given that Earth scientists and Equestrian magicians had met with so much success in their past joint ventures, he had no doubt that the issue would be laid to rest before the end of the year.

The lift arrived at ground level, and the doors opened to a mercifully empty lobby.  
The press was swarming outside, likely filming some sort of introductory speech from Celestia.
As he stepped out of the lift, Wrenn could actually hear the Princess’s voice, muffled as it was by the walls of the building.  Perhaps Gryphon ears weren’t as acute as a Pony’s, but they were certainly a step up from human.

Wrenn immediately noticed that the other Gryphons were waiting for him by the doors.
The glass had been electro-tinted, so the press couldn’t see in, and no one inside could see out, in theory.  Wrenn found that if he concentrated, that his gaze could pierce the artificial opacity and pick out a reasonable approximation of what was outside.

As he walked to join them, Wrenn re-appraised the three Gryphons with his new eyes.  He had seen them outside the Conversion room of course, but he had been so dazzled he hadn’t thought to seriously examine his friends’ features in full color and resolution.

Varan and Kephic were carrying on a conversation, and Wrenn quickly discovered that his new eyes enabled him to see all sorts of complex  emotional indicators on their faces and in their bodies.  Like a Pony’s face, a Gryphon’s face produced many of the same expressions as a human’s, but there were even more emotional markers, such as ears, the position of the head crest, the tilt of the feathers around the eyes, and the tenseness of the muscles in the legs.

Wrenn found that his mind was naturally picking up on an interpreting those new signals.  He had thought the Gryphons expressive before, but suddenly it was as if he could read their entire complex emotional state from a glance.  Looking at Sildinar, Wrenn couldn’t pick up on any of the new tells, however, so he assumed that if they wanted to, they could mask or turn off most of the visible signs.

Wrenn made a mental note to ask the Gryphon to teach him how to put on such a stoic visage, should the need ever arise.  He was also curious to know if Gryphons could pick up on human tells as easily as their own, and as easily as he had picked up on Callie’s, but he was going to find that out for himself soon enough.

As he arrived at the group, another new oddity struck him; his mind was moving at variable speeds.  When he had noticed the new information he was seeing and interpreting, he had mentally stopped to examine it more closely.  That had taken, he could have sworn, ten or twelve minutes.  But he had never stopped walking, changed his pace, or broken his stride, so the entire chain of thought had to have occurred within several seconds at most.

Now that he was closer, and wasn’t concentrating on any one thing, time seemed to be moving at the same pace as always.  Wrenn had experienced the phenomenon in battle before, but it had never been something he could control, and it had never reached such an extent.  It had always been an effect that lasted four or five seconds, dilating that time into ten or twelve.

What he could access was a whole new level of perception and thought, and he wondered if that was how Varan had managed to hold off so many PER soldiers for so long without taking any damage himself.  
If he was literally capable of thinking minutes’ worth of thoughts in the span of a second, he could easily evaluate his enemies, their armament, their motives and intentions, and plan a series of counterattacks before they could process the initial neurological impulse to raise their weapons.

His speed of perception and movement would then let him execute his plan at an accelerated pace that an average opponent couldn’t even stay abreast of, robbing them of the ability to defend themselves properly.

Wrenn wondered what a fight between Gryphons, or between a Gryphon and a similarly endowed species, would look like.  Before, he wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it, but he found himself anxious to see the results, given that he could process them and learn something from the experience.

He felt oddly childish in his new state; most of his past military training would be useful, but not until he had adapted it and learned more about his body and the way it worked.  For a moment, that left him the equivalent of a rookie again.

He realized he had missed most of the conversation between Varan and Kephic, but his ears hadn’t.  If he thought about it, he could recall the entire portion he had heard, even though he hadn’t been concentrating on it at the time.

Wrenn had heard of humans who could do that, but as far as he knew it was a fully innate species trait of the Gryphon brain.

He moved to join the group, “They ready for us?”

Kephic snorted, “Define ready.  Ready, as in, is the press anxious and ready to see us? by all means.  If you mean ready, as in, is their world ready for this? That’s open for debate.”

Wrenn noticed that Kephic said ‘their’ instead of ‘your’ and somehow that made him feel both strange and pleased simultaneously.

Varan shook his head, “You’re underestimating their capacity for adaptation.  I think it will go over quite well.”

Wrenn glanced at Sildinar, the question inherent to his expression.
Sildinar inclined his head, “I agree with Varan from the standpoint of opinion, but I refuse to make any technical judgements until I’ve seen the press reaction for myself.  Do you have some idea of what you will say?”

Wrenn nodded, “Nothing exact, but I think I can work it out as I go.”

Sildinar nodded, “Good.  I’ll introduce you, then it’s your speech.”

Wrenn raised both eyebrows, “No pressure then.  And Sildinar? Make it good.  The PER and the HLF will be watching, and I’ll bet my stipend neither of them wanted this to happen.  I think we should rub it in.  Make a show of it.  Let them know we like to come out swinging.”

Sildinar nodded abruptly, “Agreed.”

The four Gryphons stepped to the doors and waited.  This close they could hear Celestia’s words, and she would make it obvious when she was finished.  They only had to wait a moment, she had timed her formalities perfectly, not too long, not too short.

As she stepped to the side of the doors, they exited, Sildinar first, Wrenn last.
That in and of itself caused a stir in the press.  Wrenn noticed it, but he was too busy to analyze it.  He walked out onto the top step and nearly froze.

He had to make a conscious effort to keep walking while still taking it all in.

All the years with implants had dulled Wrenn’s impressions of space.  Everything beyond two meters had been homogeneous, some shade of blue, and so much of an eyesore that he tried not to look at it unless he had to.  Consequently, he had come to think of the outside as a bigger inside, with the exception of sun days, when the color coming down off the more normal sky made everything seem a bit livelier within his normal vision range.

But with vision that could see to the horizon and scope out the pits on a golf ball at four kilometers, outside was a whole new world.  It would have been stunning if Wrenn had been upgrading from human eyes to Gryphon, but he had suffered years of forced digital isolation.

All at once he could truly see the sky, pick out individual patterns in the clouds, see the way the light from the invisible sun fell off across buildings all the way to the hazy line where earth and sky met.  The range of colors alone was enough to be blinding.  True the world was mostly grays, teals, and silvers where the more modern buildings stood, but to someone stuck in one end of the spectrum it was like seeing nature itself for the first time.

After the color, the scope hit him.  Computer graphics tended to create a flat perception of space.  But with the capacity to pick out every detail on every object in sight with binocular vision, then compare that to the entire picture as a whole, the sense of scale was mind boggling.

For the first time in his life, Wrenn really did appreciate the engineering marvels of New York.
Maybe the skyscrapers were poor substitutes for the forests of old, but at that moment they were the single most beautiful thing Wrenn had ever seen.

He traced the path of light falloff as it bounced between the megalithic reflective structures, and inwardly his heart ached.  He almost had to look away, it was such a shock.  He had expected the sensation of freedom, being able to see and feel the world properly, but he hadn’t prepared himself for the emotional impact of truly living *in* the world again.

He must have felt the wind tunnel effect of the breezes coming down from between the mega-skyscrapers hundreds of times, but suddenly the sensation seemed new, and thrilling, and important.  The way the wind passed between the feathers on his face, and ruffled the fur on his back and sides, was feeding his new instincts all kinds of incredible information.

Somehow, he knew it was going to rain in less than five hours but not sooner than two, that it would be a large thunderstorm, and that it would come from the north.  

Wrenn tried to break it down, force his brain to analyze and trace the inputs, but the best guess he could muster was that whatever new instincts came with his brain were taking their information from a combination of the wind speed, wind direction, moisture in the air, and barometric pressure.
How he was aware of the latter was a complete mystery.

He remembered someone telling him that Pegasi could infallibly sense the weather, but their connection was magical.  This was most definitely biological data being put through an instinct so primal and well honed that it could provide more accurate predictions than a computer, though likely not infallible.

As Wrenn finished inspecting the information his instincts were offering him, he was suddenly hit by the sounds.  Being out of doors, the sounds matched the scope of the environment.  Rather than bleeding together into the white noise most human ears picked up in a big city, he could start to separate out strands of sound; the varying pitches of car engines telling him what size vehicles were on the road, the whine of an overpassing passenger jet, and the thrum of the fan system somewhere behind the Bureau that provided heating and cooling.

It wasn’t perfect, he could still detect a threshold at which certain noises were too garbled to be made sense of, but it was still awe inspiring, especially when taken in conjunction with what he was seeing.  Somehow his mind was assigning the sounds concrete sources, and he could feel them emanating from either spots behind or to the side of him, or places he could see in front of him.  That only served to magnify the sense of scale the world projected.

It was the sounds that finally brought Wrenn back to reality; he realized a great deal of what he was hearing could be attributed to miscellaneous noise from the mob of reporters and press that occupied the rest of the steps.

He decided to shelve the exploration of his senses once more, and pay attention.  
Sildinar was going to call on him to speak soon, and babbling inanely wouldn’t exactly do what he was experiencing justice.

The golden hued Gryphon stepped up to the bank of microphones the press had setup.
They were set well for his height, given that they had been calibrated for Celestia.
“Greetings.  I am Sildinar, and I am a representative of my kind here to introduce a friend.  
As you know, our species inhabits parts of Equestria to the north of Celestia’s realm.  Like Pony kind, we value our friends, and we care for our own.  Unlike Ponies, we can and do fight militarily for what we love, and we do it gladly.”

He paused and swept the crowd of camera lenses with his piercing gaze, “We aided in the defense of this very Bureau when it was recently attacked, and the PER was most certainly not ready for us.  We do not engage in warfare lightly, nor half heartedly, and we consider your species to be friends.  For some time, we have had secret accords with your government, kept this way in order to facilitate this moment.  Because of this, we consider the PER and the HLF to be combatants, aggressive enemy armies.  And so today, we go to war, first with our words, then with the actions that follow, and then with weapons and beak and claws.”

He paused to let the words sink in, “Humanity knows little of us, but we intend to remedy that.  You will doubtless have many questions about the nature of our lifestyle, our mentality, and our culture, which we will happily answer.”

He glanced back at Wrenn briefly, “First, I wish to answer a more poignant question.  You are curious as to why you’re here.  Why would you be asked to cover the conversion of a soldier, an event so similar to the many who have gone before, and the many who will come after, that it is hardly noteworthy to you?”

He stared at several cameras in turn, “Because this conversion is not like any that have gone before, and sets the precedent for many that will come after.  Because this conversion is our first act of war, and more importantly, it is a new gift to your kind.”  Sildinar gestured to Wrenn.

His heart was racing.  Not with anxiety, but with something akin to the thrill of battle.  
Making history was a chance very few beings in the universe got, and Wrenn was overwhelmed that he was one of the few.

He stepped forward to the podium.

“Hello.  To date, the Conversion Bureaus have offered you escape from your impending extinction through Ponification, and exclusively through Ponification.  Today marks the first day where that is no longer the case.  Today, you have a new option.  I’m Lieutenant Isaac Wrenn; and incase you missed it... I am a Gryphon.”

The sudden silence only reigned for a tenth of a second, before it was deafeningly supplanted by a chorus of questions.  A mad scramble for answers.

Wrenn raised his voice to be heard, and the effect, amplified via the microphones, overbore even the thunderous clamor.

“I *know* you have questions....” silence again, “...That’s why we’re here.”
He gestured to each of his friends in turn, “Sildinar, Varan, Kephic...” he jabbed his ‘thumb’ talon back at his own chest, “...and myself are here to give you a complete picture of this alternative to Ponification.  I can tell you right now, it’s a very different future.  Ponification dampens aggression, but we are an aggressive species.  Ponification is free to all, but Gryphonization has a set of requirements.”

Wrenn raised his voice slightly again, to ensure no one interrupted him, “I understand that may be unpopular at first, but our species lives by a strong sense of morality, and we have no desire to bring anyone into our kind who doesn’t already have a strong moral compass.  Some of you won’t wish to join us, our lives are made up equal parts of peace, and war, or the hunt.  
This is not an adventure for the timid, or those seeking an eternally peaceful life.”

He imitated Sildinar, sweeping the crowd of lenses with his gaze.  He hoped he was coming across as partly intimidating, partly outgoing, and partly awe inspiring, though he was afraid he was just coming off as hot air.

“This is an adventure for those who aren’t ready to hang up the sword for the plow.  For those who believe in fighting for a greater cause.  For those who want to be able to get up, and knock upstarts like the PER and the HLF on their collective ass, because they threaten our life, our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness.  I expect to have days of peace, to settle down sometimes, and maybe write, or learn to sketch.  To become part of a rich culture.  But I also expect to be able to get up and heft a sword, or a rifle, when its time.  To answer the call of battle.”

Wrenn stared into several lenses in turn, trying for a slightly less intimidating expression, “When I stepped into that conversion room this morning, I could barely see.  Now I can see every hair on the head of every reporter, camera tech, and sound guy out there.  What is it like to be a Gryphon?  Like nothing I can easily describe.  Simple words do it a grievous injustice, but its all I have.  Imagine feeling like you’ve just stepped out of a fog, and into the real world, for the first time in your whole life.  Imagine knowing that you’re part of something, that the very nature of your species means that you have family; brothers and sisters.”

He swept the crowd again, “The PER wants to take away your choice.  Your free will.  
Celestia, and the Bureaus, and the Gryphon Kingdoms? They’ve just *given* you a new choice.  
And take it from me, its a *good* one.”

Wrenn stepped back, and Celestia returned to the podium to deliver closing remarks.  
Wrenn and the other Gryphons stood beside her, two on each side, until she was finished.
The moment she was done, the five of them hustled back into the Bureau.

The crush of reporters was instantaneous and violent, and none of them wanted to be swept up in it.  Wrenn guessed that most of the next day would be exclusives, panels, and interviews, with barely a break for food.

For the first time, Wrenn decided he wanted the attention.  Not for his own sake, but so that he could make more attempts at describing what he was feeling, and seeing, and experiencing.  
He wanted others like him to see the good in Gryphonization.  He wanted it to succeed, more than ever.

Once the doors had been secured, Celestia smiled at him, “Well done Isaac.”
Sildinar nodded his assent, “You sell yourself short on your speaking skills.”

Wrenn shrugged, “I didn’t think it was *that* good.”

Kephic punched him lightly in the shoulder, “You’re kidding, right? That was a fantastic speech.  Even Varan thought so.”

Varan grinned, ever so slightly.

Wrenn yawned, a maneuver that opened his beak wide, “Well, I’m not sure about the rest of you but I’m starved.  They say Conversion burns up all the energy in your metabolism, and I could use something fresh and meat related.  And I really want to learn how to eat with a beak.”

The final remark elicited laughs all around.