# Day 2 - Chapter 1: Haley's Feathery Awakening

I woke up with the egg still warm against my belly, and let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. I hadn't broken it. Good. I wasn't sure what it said about me that I'd spent the night curled around my own egg like a hot water bottle, but I was too tired to unpack that.

The dreams were still stuck to the inside of my skull. I'd been in the coop, squeezing through the wire door, scratching at the straw with my feet. Not my feet. Whatever my feet were becoming. I remembered the feel of dirt under my toes, the warm dusty smell of the nesting boxes, and a soft clucking that had come from somewhere deep in my chest. It hadn't felt weird at the time. That was the scariest part. In the dream, it had felt like home.

I lay there a minute, letting the fog clear. My mind was still thick with sleep, so I grabbed my phone just to do something normal. Scrolled the news, read three headlines, retained none of them. My thumb worked on autopilot while my brain slowly came online.

Finally I sat up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. My cloaca immediately sent a shiver rolling up my spine, that familiar hot little pulse. The kind I was already getting used to. Which was its own brand of terrifying. A day ago, being used to a cloaca would have made me laugh until I cried.

I pushed the blanket off my lap to check my tailbone, and there it was.

Feathers.

Long, white feathers, fanning out from the top of my tailbone in a neat little arc. Not the tiny pinfeathers Gibson had been sprouting yesterday. These were real. Full. They caught the morning light and shimmered like they'd been there my whole life. And under the skin, I could see more of them, curled and waiting, pushing up like they were already on their way out.

I should have been shocked. I wasn't. I'd lain there last night feeling the follicles prickle, and some part of me had known. When you wake up ready to grow a tail, at some point the feathers stop being a surprise. I reached back and touched them, running my fingers along the shafts. They were soft, but not fluffy-soft. …