I don't remember falling asleep.

That's the thing I keep coming back to when I try to piece the night together. One second I was lying on my front with my tail hanging off the edge of the mattress, listening to Rayan pace through the wall, and the next I was somewhere else entirely, and then I was here.

The dream was all warm and dark and low to the ground. I was walking on dirt. I could feel grit under my claws, and there was this long low building with a red light over the door, and I knew somehow that it was mine, that everything in it was mine, and I was so happy about that. I kept turning my head sideways to look at things because that was how you looked at things, and my neck moved in a smooth little jerk each time, and it felt completely natural. There were other birds around me, all of them nodding and murmuring, and I nodded back. I understood them. I don't know how, but I did.

I woke up drenched.

Sweat ran down my temples and pooled in the hollow of my throat and I was so hot I'd kicked the blanket off in my sleep without knowing it. The room was grey, barely morning. The little window over the bed showed a sky the colour of dishwater.

Rayan was still asleep in the other bed. On his back. Mouth open. One arm flung out. He sleeps like he's been shot, he always has.

I sat up slowly and looked down at myself, and then I made a small sound I didn't mean to make.

My torso was covered. Not all of it, not evenly, but there were feathers now, real ones, running in two soft tracks up from my hips toward my ribs, black near the centre and dark at the edges, and when I touched them they were warm and smooth and mine. There were more on my shoulders. More down my spine, I could feel them against the sheet when I moved. And my tail. I reached back and found it and it was longer than it had been last night, heavier, the feathers longer and stiffer, and it moved when I told it to, and also sometimes when I didn't.

I sat there breathing for a while. That's all. Just breathing, and staring at …