test flight [ non-warriors visual art ]

[beau]

[ this is just a silly little ‘get to know your character’ exercise i did, following the prompt of ‘write a scene of your character at a different age’. this particular scene features covey, a character involved in the new league roleplay that can best be described as an avian human. this takes place when he was 13 years old and just beginning to experiment with flying. ]

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Rusty fire escape steps creaked under Covey’s feet as he hurried the climb to the top of a building. It was an old structure, abandoned a while ago. Covey thought it might have been a bakery at one point. Directly behind it was an empty lot, with only a few loose pieces of litter strewn about. It was perfect for a little experiment.

Listen, if his mom was going to get mad at anyone about this idea, it should be the people who decided to air a special of Rigor this evening, discussing his handmade set of mechanical wings and how they functioned. It all lined up a little too perfectly, honestly. And it wasn’t even that difficult to sneak out with Covey’s mom working a night shift at the hotel this particular night. He just had to make sure he didn’t die doing this, otherwise, he would definitely get caught.

Finally, he reached the top of the building. A few pigeons cooed from the other side of the rooftop as Covey clambered up. He cast a glance behind him: the street was empty, as it almost always was. It was in a part of town that had been ruined in a Chainbreaker attack and that nobody had bothered cleaning up yet. Occasionally a few homeless people would set up camp in this area, but nobody who would give you trouble. The boy looked back forward, staring at the empty lot. The excitement buzzing in his veins was beginning to give way to doubt as he looked down toward the ground. A fall from this height would definitely break a few bones.

Covey’s hands flexed in and out of fists as he walked closer to the side of the roof, then balled so tightly that his fingernails dug into his palms as he reached the edge. A sudden sound caused him to flinch and his wings, which had been tightly pressed against his back this whole time, to twitch away from his sides slightly. It was just a pigeon taking flight, evidently because Covey had gotten too close to it. He watched as it flapped its way across the empty lot and to a nearby tree. Okay. Yeah, okay. He could do this. Covey stepped up onto the ledge, arms and wings spread, and leapt off.

His heart sank to his stomach as the sensation of free falling filled his body with adrenaline. He was going to die, he was going to die, he was going to- oh shoot! His wings snapped out, almost out of instinct, and finally, air caught underneath him. Suddenly, he wasn’t falling. He was flying. Well, gliding, but Covey didn’t pay much mind to the detail in the moment. A huge, goofy grin split his face ear to ear. He didn’t even care that the wind was whipping his hair into his mouth, he was flying. A triumphant laugh bubbled from his chest as he continued to soar across the lot. After a few seconds of gliding, Covey attempted something new. Slowly, he tipped his left wing downwards, leaning with the motion, and his flight pattern began to veer to the left - heck yeah, he was figuring this stuff out.

The landing was a clumsy one. Upon realizing that hitting the ground was imminent, the boy kicked out his feet in a scramble to catch himself. Unfortunately, this only served to throw him more off balance and he found himself laid out on his back, the breath knocked out of him. Crap. He lay there a moment, catching his breath and bracing himself to sit back up. Okay, carefully now, don’t pull any under-feathers… “Ouch!” Covey huffed a sigh, now officially sat up. He turned over onto his stomach and picked up the unfortunate feather which had been pulled, rolling it between his fingers. Propping his head up on his elbow, he looked to the building’s rooftop and found a pigeon staring curiously back at him, probably thinking ‘What the hell kind of bird is that?’

Covey got to his feet and dusted off his shirt and pants. Dropping the feather to the ground (what, it’s not like he could do anything with it) he set off for the fire escape again. His mom wouldn’t be home until 2 a.m. and he was going to nail that landing.