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Flight of Fancy
20 December 2012 09:56 pmDescription: A crow therian is stuck in a car during a trip and dreams of stretching his wings.
This day was making me wonder about the real possibly of a living hell. I was also beginning to realize what is must be like for an animal to have to spend its days in a small cage. Everything was closed in and there was not even room to really turn around nor to stretch. I was stuck in a car going down the interstate with the rest of my family for the next ten more hours whether I liked it or not. And while I had never really ever considered a car to be like a cage before, this mind numbing long drive was beginning to change my mind.
I stared out my window to see the many trees and greenery wiz past in a light slow motion blur. I was thankful that at least the view for most of this trip was going to be nice. It was just trees, open fields, and sometimes a few crop fields in just about every direction. We rarely came within sight of any kind of city or town. It was kind of nice that way, though a little dull and boring after a while.
I couldn’t say the same for everything inside the car though. I sat in the back of the car with my brother on the other side of me while my parents sat in the front. They had the radio tuned onto a station for their kind of music, and while I had nothing against the music, I couldn’t take listening to it for the whole trip. So instead, I listened to my MP3 player mostly, drowning out their music with the sound of my own.
I shifted my weight one way and then another. I then attempted to stretch my legs as best I could in my cramped little space. I even tried to stretch my arms forward and then backward as far as the confines of the car would allow to little success. I glanced over to see my brother asleep - his face against the window of his side of the car. Seeing that the coast was clear I then stretched my arms outward even going as far in my desperation as to lean toward the center of the car so that my other arm could also get a little bit more of a stretch.
“You having trouble back there?” Asked my mom from the driver’s seat, her eyes still focused on the road in front of her.
“Ya, this whole drive down there is my problem.”
“Well you’re just going to have to survive until we reach our next rest stop where will take a break and get dinner. Then it will be just another hour after that.”
“When’s that?” My mother didn’t answer for a moment as we came up and then passed a few highway signs. “About another three hours.”
In defeat I relaxed back into my seat with an aggravated sigh. Even though I was glad to be on vacation and to be going to see family I hadn’t seen in years the drive was driving me crazy. Flying would have been better… but then again, flying on my own power would have topped both. But I would just have to suffer for a while longer until our next stretch break to get out and stretch my legs as well as phantom wings.
In my mind’s eye I could easily imagine myself the way I saw me sitting in the back seat of a car going fast down the highway. Instead of seeing my physical body I saw a common crow standing there. Just your average common crow. Nothing special there.
It was my phantom wings which were really giving me problems now, but I’d rather not bring that conversation up. I could see it now, “Hey, Mom, Dad, just so you know I’m a crow. Ya, I don’t mean physically, but I am one regardless. I’ve always been one and I’ve known since I was really little. You see there’s this term called therianthropy and…” I couldn’t see anything good coming out of that discussion.
My brother was cool though. I’d told him some time ago and he had been okay with it from the start. He even bought me a really cool poster he’d found with crows all over it. Well actually, they were in reality ravens, but it was the thought that counts. It was still an awesome poster none the less. Though, of course, he sometimes used puns and phrases like “bird-brained’ and such on me from time to time, but even before I’d told him we would always be calling each other silly names. At least with those I could take them as an ironic complement on being bird brained indeed!
Either way though this car trip was getting on my nerves. I couldn’t really move much and I was bored out of my mind. It was nothing but long concrete and assault which cut between pasture and farmland along with the occasional forest along the way. The route we were taking was going to avoid a lot of cities and towns. The most exciting thing I had seen all day had been when we passed an open field with a small herd of deer grazing. At the moment though, there was nothing but road and forest. I was just happy of all routes we could of taken, this one was the shortest in the overall trip.
Along my arms I felt my wings enlarged to match my human body. Extending from arms was the sensation of dense and complex layer of contour feather and flight feathers. My phantom wings continuing off my fingertips some length away. They were dense. I could feel the volume and relatively light weight of them on my arms. A bird ebullient of an elbow and wrist basically matching up with my physical ones. All of it roughly ended around my shoulders were the feeling just faded away.
Usually they didn’t bother me, but being stuck in the confines of a car was not only making my physical body stiff but also my wings too. And I didn’t like it one bit. The times that they did ache a lot like if they started bothering me during a long college lecture a good stretch and slight ‘flap’ would usually remedy things quickly, however in a car that was physically impossible really.
At a loss, I leaned against the car and hoped that I might sooner or later fall asleep so I could get away from it all for a while. My eyes wandered to gaze outside the car watching the green blur again. Staring out across the landscape made my mind begin to wander itself. At first I thought of everyday things and concerns - some how managing to continue to pay for next few years (or more) of college to get my Bachelor’s degree in medicine in hopes of becoming an RN plus continue to try and save up so I could own my own place, even if it was just an apparent first off. Then my mind began to move elsewhere - I remembered the talk of a possible get-together or ‘howl’ on the therianthrope forum that I frequent. A gathering that might take place just a few hours drive from home, and I hoped it came to actually pass because I wanted that kind of a vacation for a few days. Going camping with a couple of other therians in my rough area seemed really nice especially if a few people from last time also were able to go. After a while, my mind began to slip into daydreams.
At first, it was the mental image of a crow flying just above the braches of tresses. Eyeing the ground for any hint of something interesting, possibly tasty, or possible danger. The sky was a clear blue outside a few dreamy wisps here and there. The crow’s wings were wide spread, flapping every so often when the winds weakened.
It was just a crow. Just a common regular crow, but that mental image of a crow was me. They say some of the simplest things can make you happy and I have to agree because just imaging and thinking about being a crow and flying was what often made me happy. If ever I was feeling a little off or down, often just thinking about actually being a crow rather then just the having the identity of one would usually cheer me up. It made me think of what such a shame that physical shifting was actually impossible and only found in fiction because what dream life of being able to go back and forth it could possibly bring.
So I just let my mind daydream on like that - flying this way and that. Nothing overly fantastic or action packed, just a crow doing stereotypical and everyday birdie things. Nothing riveting by far but it didn’t have to be for me. I let myself drift away, hoping I would drift into dreamland, however I was fully awake. I was disconnected to the outside world but my mind was still going. I could still sense and see the outside world but my little daydream held more precedence. The outside world didn’t matter just then. The trip was long and I had little else to do to pass the time.
I was flying then. The ground was whizzing by, not around me, but below me. The clear sky above me and the wind of my flight brushed hard against me. With a single wing beat I could feel the thrust of my powerful flight muscles on my chest as wings forced down on the air and wind. I could see far and wide, endless expanse all around me.
I didn’t know what kind of hallucination or so called out-of-body experience this was but I didn’t care in the end for what it truly was. I just relished in the feeling of it while it lasted however long it might. I didn’t care if it was a dream or not. I just enjoyed what I felt and saw. I enjoyed feeling like a wild crow.
I couldn’t feel my body anymore. It wasn’t anything like a simple daydream, and if I was actually dreaming instead I couldn’t have changed anything of the dream if I ever had some bizarre reason drive to. I could fly where I wanted, but I couldn’t just change anything else. I saw through a crow’s eyes and not a third person perspective watching myself. All I felt was the shape of my crow body. The wing’s opened wide, the hard beak, my body covered in countless feathers, and everything else.
All I could be was a crow flying. I dipped my wings a little to drift down closer to the tree tops. Closer to the tree tops I lost the wind’s lift and I began to have to pump my wings to keep from falling out of the sky. Just below me the trees fell away into open land -crop fields. A strong gust of wing ran over me and I took the opportunity to gain altitude. I wanted to go higher, and so I did. Slowly and gently I began to clime up into the sky.
The ground below me lost out and everything began to seem to grow smaller as the distance increased. The horizon became fully visible to me as the sky took over the land around my sphere of perception. A whole new world of movement had opened up to me. My world had depth and dimension now instead of simply being stuck along and near the ground. My movements were free and only limited by the power of my wings.
I could fly. I could finally do what I had always felt right, even if it was just an abnormally detailed and vivid dream. That didn’t matter. I could fly wherever I wanted to. I was free. That mattered to me. My wings tilled one way and my direction changed. I changed my wings another way and began to fly lower toward the ground…
“Hey?! Hey!” I bolted awake in an instant, sitting up straight in a daze with the side of my face stingily slightly were it had met window glass from which it had just been pealed away from. My brother gave my shoulder another nudge with his hand. “Hey, you wantta stretch you legs or what?” I looked around in a flash to find we were parked at a gas station. My parents were already out of the car filling up the tank and my bother’s car door was already open. Rubbing the side of my face that had been pressed up against the car and giving a light yawn I unbuckled my seatbelt, opened the door, and stepped out of the car in a daze.
I stepped a few feet from the car and stretched my arms and my phantom wings for a nice and long moment. I was then that I really started to look around and started to get my bearings from being jolted awakened that I happened to look up in the sky and noticed the sun was still somewhat low in the sky. I felt a sign of unease and loathing creep back over me, realizing the I hadn’t been asleep that long at all. At a loss I began to walk over to the gas station door to see if I could find something to snack on.
“Don’t get anything to eat! After this we’re headed up the road to go get some dinner!” I heard my mom over my shoulder yell. I stopped and turned around to look back toward the car.
“What do you mean? What time is it?”
“Its nearly six o’clock.” I let the time sink in but I couldn’t quite grasp what that meant in space of the trip outside the fact I had been asleep for hours. I asked about how much longer till we got to our distention.
“About an hour.” Said my father and at that I was relaxed. Thinking back whatever amount of crazy I had experienced during the trip had made time fly by in perhaps the best way possible. It left me hoping that it marked things to come over the rest of the trip.
This day was making me wonder about the real possibly of a living hell. I was also beginning to realize what is must be like for an animal to have to spend its days in a small cage. Everything was closed in and there was not even room to really turn around nor to stretch. I was stuck in a car going down the interstate with the rest of my family for the next ten more hours whether I liked it or not. And while I had never really ever considered a car to be like a cage before, this mind numbing long drive was beginning to change my mind.
I stared out my window to see the many trees and greenery wiz past in a light slow motion blur. I was thankful that at least the view for most of this trip was going to be nice. It was just trees, open fields, and sometimes a few crop fields in just about every direction. We rarely came within sight of any kind of city or town. It was kind of nice that way, though a little dull and boring after a while.
I couldn’t say the same for everything inside the car though. I sat in the back of the car with my brother on the other side of me while my parents sat in the front. They had the radio tuned onto a station for their kind of music, and while I had nothing against the music, I couldn’t take listening to it for the whole trip. So instead, I listened to my MP3 player mostly, drowning out their music with the sound of my own.
I shifted my weight one way and then another. I then attempted to stretch my legs as best I could in my cramped little space. I even tried to stretch my arms forward and then backward as far as the confines of the car would allow to little success. I glanced over to see my brother asleep - his face against the window of his side of the car. Seeing that the coast was clear I then stretched my arms outward even going as far in my desperation as to lean toward the center of the car so that my other arm could also get a little bit more of a stretch.
“You having trouble back there?” Asked my mom from the driver’s seat, her eyes still focused on the road in front of her.
“Ya, this whole drive down there is my problem.”
“Well you’re just going to have to survive until we reach our next rest stop where will take a break and get dinner. Then it will be just another hour after that.”
“When’s that?” My mother didn’t answer for a moment as we came up and then passed a few highway signs. “About another three hours.”
In defeat I relaxed back into my seat with an aggravated sigh. Even though I was glad to be on vacation and to be going to see family I hadn’t seen in years the drive was driving me crazy. Flying would have been better… but then again, flying on my own power would have topped both. But I would just have to suffer for a while longer until our next stretch break to get out and stretch my legs as well as phantom wings.
In my mind’s eye I could easily imagine myself the way I saw me sitting in the back seat of a car going fast down the highway. Instead of seeing my physical body I saw a common crow standing there. Just your average common crow. Nothing special there.
It was my phantom wings which were really giving me problems now, but I’d rather not bring that conversation up. I could see it now, “Hey, Mom, Dad, just so you know I’m a crow. Ya, I don’t mean physically, but I am one regardless. I’ve always been one and I’ve known since I was really little. You see there’s this term called therianthropy and…” I couldn’t see anything good coming out of that discussion.
My brother was cool though. I’d told him some time ago and he had been okay with it from the start. He even bought me a really cool poster he’d found with crows all over it. Well actually, they were in reality ravens, but it was the thought that counts. It was still an awesome poster none the less. Though, of course, he sometimes used puns and phrases like “bird-brained’ and such on me from time to time, but even before I’d told him we would always be calling each other silly names. At least with those I could take them as an ironic complement on being bird brained indeed!
Either way though this car trip was getting on my nerves. I couldn’t really move much and I was bored out of my mind. It was nothing but long concrete and assault which cut between pasture and farmland along with the occasional forest along the way. The route we were taking was going to avoid a lot of cities and towns. The most exciting thing I had seen all day had been when we passed an open field with a small herd of deer grazing. At the moment though, there was nothing but road and forest. I was just happy of all routes we could of taken, this one was the shortest in the overall trip.
Along my arms I felt my wings enlarged to match my human body. Extending from arms was the sensation of dense and complex layer of contour feather and flight feathers. My phantom wings continuing off my fingertips some length away. They were dense. I could feel the volume and relatively light weight of them on my arms. A bird ebullient of an elbow and wrist basically matching up with my physical ones. All of it roughly ended around my shoulders were the feeling just faded away.
Usually they didn’t bother me, but being stuck in the confines of a car was not only making my physical body stiff but also my wings too. And I didn’t like it one bit. The times that they did ache a lot like if they started bothering me during a long college lecture a good stretch and slight ‘flap’ would usually remedy things quickly, however in a car that was physically impossible really.
At a loss, I leaned against the car and hoped that I might sooner or later fall asleep so I could get away from it all for a while. My eyes wandered to gaze outside the car watching the green blur again. Staring out across the landscape made my mind begin to wander itself. At first I thought of everyday things and concerns - some how managing to continue to pay for next few years (or more) of college to get my Bachelor’s degree in medicine in hopes of becoming an RN plus continue to try and save up so I could own my own place, even if it was just an apparent first off. Then my mind began to move elsewhere - I remembered the talk of a possible get-together or ‘howl’ on the therianthrope forum that I frequent. A gathering that might take place just a few hours drive from home, and I hoped it came to actually pass because I wanted that kind of a vacation for a few days. Going camping with a couple of other therians in my rough area seemed really nice especially if a few people from last time also were able to go. After a while, my mind began to slip into daydreams.
At first, it was the mental image of a crow flying just above the braches of tresses. Eyeing the ground for any hint of something interesting, possibly tasty, or possible danger. The sky was a clear blue outside a few dreamy wisps here and there. The crow’s wings were wide spread, flapping every so often when the winds weakened.
It was just a crow. Just a common regular crow, but that mental image of a crow was me. They say some of the simplest things can make you happy and I have to agree because just imaging and thinking about being a crow and flying was what often made me happy. If ever I was feeling a little off or down, often just thinking about actually being a crow rather then just the having the identity of one would usually cheer me up. It made me think of what such a shame that physical shifting was actually impossible and only found in fiction because what dream life of being able to go back and forth it could possibly bring.
So I just let my mind daydream on like that - flying this way and that. Nothing overly fantastic or action packed, just a crow doing stereotypical and everyday birdie things. Nothing riveting by far but it didn’t have to be for me. I let myself drift away, hoping I would drift into dreamland, however I was fully awake. I was disconnected to the outside world but my mind was still going. I could still sense and see the outside world but my little daydream held more precedence. The outside world didn’t matter just then. The trip was long and I had little else to do to pass the time.
I was flying then. The ground was whizzing by, not around me, but below me. The clear sky above me and the wind of my flight brushed hard against me. With a single wing beat I could feel the thrust of my powerful flight muscles on my chest as wings forced down on the air and wind. I could see far and wide, endless expanse all around me.
I didn’t know what kind of hallucination or so called out-of-body experience this was but I didn’t care in the end for what it truly was. I just relished in the feeling of it while it lasted however long it might. I didn’t care if it was a dream or not. I just enjoyed what I felt and saw. I enjoyed feeling like a wild crow.
I couldn’t feel my body anymore. It wasn’t anything like a simple daydream, and if I was actually dreaming instead I couldn’t have changed anything of the dream if I ever had some bizarre reason drive to. I could fly where I wanted, but I couldn’t just change anything else. I saw through a crow’s eyes and not a third person perspective watching myself. All I felt was the shape of my crow body. The wing’s opened wide, the hard beak, my body covered in countless feathers, and everything else.
All I could be was a crow flying. I dipped my wings a little to drift down closer to the tree tops. Closer to the tree tops I lost the wind’s lift and I began to have to pump my wings to keep from falling out of the sky. Just below me the trees fell away into open land -crop fields. A strong gust of wing ran over me and I took the opportunity to gain altitude. I wanted to go higher, and so I did. Slowly and gently I began to clime up into the sky.
The ground below me lost out and everything began to seem to grow smaller as the distance increased. The horizon became fully visible to me as the sky took over the land around my sphere of perception. A whole new world of movement had opened up to me. My world had depth and dimension now instead of simply being stuck along and near the ground. My movements were free and only limited by the power of my wings.
I could fly. I could finally do what I had always felt right, even if it was just an abnormally detailed and vivid dream. That didn’t matter. I could fly wherever I wanted to. I was free. That mattered to me. My wings tilled one way and my direction changed. I changed my wings another way and began to fly lower toward the ground…
“Hey?! Hey!” I bolted awake in an instant, sitting up straight in a daze with the side of my face stingily slightly were it had met window glass from which it had just been pealed away from. My brother gave my shoulder another nudge with his hand. “Hey, you wantta stretch you legs or what?” I looked around in a flash to find we were parked at a gas station. My parents were already out of the car filling up the tank and my bother’s car door was already open. Rubbing the side of my face that had been pressed up against the car and giving a light yawn I unbuckled my seatbelt, opened the door, and stepped out of the car in a daze.
I stepped a few feet from the car and stretched my arms and my phantom wings for a nice and long moment. I was then that I really started to look around and started to get my bearings from being jolted awakened that I happened to look up in the sky and noticed the sun was still somewhat low in the sky. I felt a sign of unease and loathing creep back over me, realizing the I hadn’t been asleep that long at all. At a loss I began to walk over to the gas station door to see if I could find something to snack on.
“Don’t get anything to eat! After this we’re headed up the road to go get some dinner!” I heard my mom over my shoulder yell. I stopped and turned around to look back toward the car.
“What do you mean? What time is it?”
“Its nearly six o’clock.” I let the time sink in but I couldn’t quite grasp what that meant in space of the trip outside the fact I had been asleep for hours. I asked about how much longer till we got to our distention.
“About an hour.” Said my father and at that I was relaxed. Thinking back whatever amount of crazy I had experienced during the trip had made time fly by in perhaps the best way possible. It left me hoping that it marked things to come over the rest of the trip.
