Leareth is very relieved once they've successfully stepped through the Gate back north and nothing murdery has happened at all. "I am glad we made that trip, it is excellent when people are very impressed by you, but I am also grateful it is over now." 

"They can mostly be impressed with me remotely, though I would like to go back now and again."

Nod. "I will be less tense about you being more exposed once we have immortality set up for you. Speaking of that, I am mostly finished designing the artifact, though the final part will have to wait until you have a monkey - I could in theory link up your side of it now, but it is very likely I will end up having to do some minor redesigns, so would prefer not to duplicate effort and to instead keep you very very safe." 

"My memories will all come through intact, right?"

"They ought to! Maybe not perfectly, but that is the point of the artifact, to give the memories somewhere to go until they can be fully transferred to the specially-modified monkey brain. It would probably still be good to keep records, but - well, you do that anyway." 

"I will set up a monkey. I've got to work on getting the Gifts in, I think everything else I know how to do now - with some failure rate, admittedly, but if I get most of the basic changes applied to enough of them we can have our own breeding population to pull from as I need replacements for whichever one winds up being the unlucky winner."

"...Poor monkeys. Although I still feel far better about this method than mine. If your setup goes flawlessly and with no - interference - then I might consider risking switching mine. Although it may be harder to give monkeys true mage-gift, which I care a great deal about having." 

"Mine's higher maintenance - someone has to look after the monkeys in the meantime, and you have to apply all the final changes to each new one - but yeah, better some dozens of monkeys than a human."

"It would be intractable as a method if I did not have plenty of very secure facilities here in the north, where I can expect to hold off interference and thus keep suitable populations of monkeys alive. However, I do currently have that resource, and can expect to continue having it in the medium term while we figure out other contingency plans, so it makes sense to use it." 

Nod nod.

He hugs her again. "All right. We had better get back to work." 

Back to work it is. She gets underway on monkey skeletal changes across the population she has so she doesn't have to start from scratch every time she needs a replacement; she tries to do things in an order that leaves them mobile between sittings. When that's handled she can move on to sizing them up, and in parallel look for a good sort of winged bird - sparrows aren't really right for this.

Probably she wants some sort of bird of prey? There isn't a (non-extinct) species of bird on the continent big enough that its wings will lift a monkey's full weight, especially once she enlarges them, but an eagle might be a good start, in particular the eagles native to the Pelagirs borderlands are a good bit bigger than usual; they probably interbreed with Tayledras bondbirds, which tend to be larger than their wild counterparts. The eagles will be pretty unhappy in captivity, and annoying to capture in the first place, but if she wants a breeding pair that can probably be obtained. 

She can enlarge an eagle too! She wants a bunch but she's hoping to get the wings to breed true in the monkeys so she doesn't need an ongoing captive eagle population.

"Oh, I suppose that makes sense, to do the eagles first - I was not sure if you were intending to put wings on the monkeys and then change the size, but the former is probably easier. Although, they are going to be some very terrifying eagles. At least they do not also have Fetching." 

"They do not! That would be awful! I'm planning to leave that to the end of the unlucky single monkey's transformation, the Gifts."

"So it would not be something the breeding population of monkeys had? I suppose I am concerned there are scenarios where you might need to suddenly switch to a different monkey and not have time to do the Gifts part, but also it would not be a complete disaster as long as it worked at all, and maybe he could–"

He stops. Looks thoughtful. "If you were able to get this process down very reliably, you could give humans Gifts. I think that has not been seriously attempted before, because the existing methods were so risky and because humans already have, well, a breeding population of Gifted individuals, but - it would be revolutionary." 

"It's a risky procedure right now, but yes, it would have applications in that vein if I get much better at it."

Smile. "You are a shockingly impressive person." 

"Why thank you."

He smiles, and kisses her. "You are very welcome." 

Eeeeeeeee~!

Eagles arrive! Four of them, two breeding pairs. They're surprisingly big already, with wingspans of at least eight feet; their colouration is mottled brown, to blend in with the Pelagirs woodlands. They have wickedly sharp beaks, alarmingly large talons, and are not happy at all about being in cages. 

She will work with them when her reserves are in good order so she can Fetch off any attempts to harm her, and get underway on the process of figuring out how these wings differ from sparrows'.

The eagles' wings are longer relative to their bodies and quite broad, with feathers that can fan out to make quite a lot of surface area for catching rising air currents. The musculature is a little different. Overall, though, wings are wings.