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She combs and combs the world aside and there is another world, just ahead, and she steps in.
The combed-away hole closes behind her. She puts her comb in her pocket.
Thanjen helps Exaltation learn to fly
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wind_on_my_face
“It would still try to look where it wants, and it would get tired and scared when it couldn't, and maybe die of that.”
(Creepy creepy creepy. How do we change the topic?)
(Creepy creepy creepy. How do we change the topic?)
"Look," she says, "if I want to be a griffin, that's a sort of creature that's like an eagle in front and a lion in the back and it can fly and stuff, it's okay if my regular body has to hang out inside the griffin, how do I do that."
wind_on_my_face
(Okay, that is an acceptable change of topic.)
“Um.”
Think.
“That should work okay. I think you can do it” (without any extra eyes) “as long as you want to be a big griffin, so your head goes where its head is and there's room for the rest of you. Let me try—”
He starts pulling up the miscellaneous glass around and reforming his original bird shape.
"Griffins aren't supposed to have human eyes," sighs the girl, but she sits back and waits.
wind_on_my_face
“You can put lenses over your human eyes that will make them look different.”
(Better than torturing fish.)
Okay, so what do griffins look like? The body is — mostly a lion, he thinks? — and lions are light brown. Light brown pigment in the glass, for starters, done.
Head of a giant eagle. Eye position — tricky. No, wait, she's already dedicated enough to this to want to try to see through fish eyes. Okay, optics so forward-facing human eyes can look sideways instead. Disguising tints. Nothing to be done about blinking.
He knows being a quadruped in the obvious way is terrible for the neck no matter what, so put legs in the front legs. Big griffin. Feet aren't human, so hide the human feet in the knees. Eagle feet.
The hind end won't contain any of her (his, for now) body so it's just a lion-shaped shell, but that doesn't matter to how it will move. Put some ballast in for balance. Cargo space.
Wings. Eagle wings. She probably wants to look like a live animal, not just have the form of one, so detail the feathers and coloring. Feathers other places feathers go.
“How's this?”
(Better than torturing fish.)
Okay, so what do griffins look like? The body is — mostly a lion, he thinks? — and lions are light brown. Light brown pigment in the glass, for starters, done.
Head of a giant eagle. Eye position — tricky. No, wait, she's already dedicated enough to this to want to try to see through fish eyes. Okay, optics so forward-facing human eyes can look sideways instead. Disguising tints. Nothing to be done about blinking.
He knows being a quadruped in the obvious way is terrible for the neck no matter what, so put legs in the front legs. Big griffin. Feet aren't human, so hide the human feet in the knees. Eagle feet.
The hind end won't contain any of her (his, for now) body so it's just a lion-shaped shell, but that doesn't matter to how it will move. Put some ballast in for balance. Cargo space.
Wings. Eagle wings. She probably wants to look like a live animal, not just have the form of one, so detail the feathers and coloring. Feathers other places feathers go.
“How's this?”
"That looks mostly great except -"
She has a lot of strong opinions about coloration and where the feathers should blend in to fur and so on.
She has a lot of strong opinions about coloration and where the feathers should blend in to fur and so on.
wind_on_my_face
He tries to adjust things. His mock-bodies come over to give him a look at his mock hindquarters. (The same skill that let make up an almost acceptable griffin on the spot is evident in their perfectly human appearance.)
Eventually, he has it right! "Good. That looks like it's supposed to."
wind_on_my_face
He starts teaching her how to make it.
Since she doesn't have much glass she will have to make it carefully thin and maybe load some unclaimed sand instead of glass in the back to get the weight distribution right (she can work on claiming it later), but it's still doable. If she insists, he will share his stores of pigments so she can get the coloring too. It's very, very faintly bluish, though, because the glass made from the sand was bluish.
He's still walking around as a bigger griffin for the reference. It's clearly not his dearest wish to be a griffin too, though.
And how is she doing with the eyes-on-the-side-of-the-head optics?
Since she doesn't have much glass she will have to make it carefully thin and maybe load some unclaimed sand instead of glass in the back to get the weight distribution right (she can work on claiming it later), but it's still doable. If she insists, he will share his stores of pigments so she can get the coloring too. It's very, very faintly bluish, though, because the glass made from the sand was bluish.
He's still walking around as a bigger griffin for the reference. It's clearly not his dearest wish to be a griffin too, though.
And how is she doing with the eyes-on-the-side-of-the-head optics?
She takes to it like a natural.
wind_on_my_face
Well, that's surprising. Humans: what interesting variation will they come in next?
“I imagine you would like to learn to fly, next.”
“I imagine you would like to learn to fly, next.”
"Yeah!"
wind_on_my_face
(If she can fly, then she can definitely leave the island under her own power. Because she sure didn't arrive here in a boat that still exists anywhere he saw, and he searched carefully while they were making glass.)
“Okay. There are two ways to start. One is you learn taking off first, and you have to deal with the ground being right below you. The other is I take you up really high and you work on starting to glide while you're falling. That can be scary. Which way do you think you would like better?”
“Okay. There are two ways to start. One is you learn taking off first, and you have to deal with the ground being right below you. The other is I take you up really high and you work on starting to glide while you're falling. That can be scary. Which way do you think you would like better?”
"I'm not scared of heights."
wind_on_my_face
“Okay. You've finished claiming and reinforcing your body, right?”
(She probably has, or she wouldn't be at all comfortable inside that griffin shape, but, safety, don't assume.)
(She probably has, or she wouldn't be at all comfortable inside that griffin shape, but, safety, don't assume.)
"Mostly."
wind_on_my_face
“Okay, let me know when you've finished. And while you're working on that, let's get you some energy so you can flap. Make another thing that slows down like you did before. It doesn't need to be on the ground, so just make two small parts that can turn against each other.”
He makes a thing that might be intended as an example: it's a cylindrical cup sort of like the eye casing, with another cylindrical part on the inside, but both parts have grooves and bumps that plausibly could be used to grab and turn them.
He makes a thing that might be intended as an example: it's a cylindrical cup sort of like the eye casing, with another cylindrical part on the inside, but both parts have grooves and bumps that plausibly could be used to grab and turn them.
She copies this design.
wind_on_my_face
He shapes his so that it fits onto hers, and starts spinning the inside parts. This apparently useless activity turns out to be rapidly increasing the stored energy in her spinny thing — hundreds of times more energy in just a few seconds than she was storing using her muscles in the practice sessions.
"Wow."
wind_on_my_face
Eventually, that bunch of glass feels full and the particular sensation of there-is-stored-energy-here starts spilling into the nearest other stuff — her griffin-shape and her body.
She could direct it to flow somewhere in particular if she wanted.
She could direct it to flow somewhere in particular if she wanted.
She spreads it around all the bits of the body she will want to move, mostly the wings but also the neck and legs.
"I think I have my whole body now."
"I think I have my whole body now."
wind_on_my_face
Eventually, two things happen at the same time: she feels full all over, and she suddenly feels hot in the spinning thing.
He stops spinning it.
“There! You've got all the energy you can hold right now.”
He stops spinning it.
“There! You've got all the energy you can hold right now.”
"Weird... how much is it? How could I hold more?"
wind_on_my_face
“About thirty gigajoules. You hold more by claiming more stuff so you can put energy in it. That's one of the reasons why I keep more of me around.” The ex-birds wave a little. “But unless you're planning to do something really big, you don't need more than a fraction of that. I just gave you a full charge because I have a full charge and I have it because I'm overly fond of being prepared for anything.”