Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tommy, personally, loathed how he was.

Especially as his stomach rumbled from hunger, limbs weak from lack of nutrition while he tried to not stumble around too much around the forest.

Despite how much easier it’d be if he could just kill a rabbit or cow, Tommy knows he’d end up throwing up from the taste of blood, from the meat in a stomach not made to consume meat.

His wings aren’t worth him starving - not at all, actually. They’re small and weak, and only used for gliding. Practically useless. Tommy knows he’s meant to be a bit faster, a bit stronger, a bit more durable, but he can’t be any of that without a good source of food.

Right now, as he walks through a forest searching for a berry bush, his stomach growling, he thinks of how this starvation is not worth his useless wings.

Still, Tommy doesn’t want to die, even with a respawn possible. Dying from starvation is the worst way to die, he knows, because your stomach stings and you just want to eat but you can’t, and you’d rather not suffer through the torture of starvation, and wish you could die quickly-

But you can’t even build up and then fall, because your wings won’t let you, they’ll just spread out and slow your fall until there’s no pain of impact at all-

So, Tommy didn’t want to starve.

That’s why he walked through the forest, feet slightly muddy from the dirty floor. It had rained last night, and if Tommy didn’t already know so from the smell, he did now. Except he did know, as last night he’d crawled up into a tree, trying to gain shelter. It had worked alright, but he hadn’t gained much sleep out of fear of falling.

Although a fear of falling didn’t make sense, for it was the one thing that couldn’t hurt or kill Tommy. 

Tommy continues his search for berries. He knew which berries were good and which were bad at this point, after learning the hard way with a sick feeling and throwing up and wondering if that was the end, or learning the better way through watching birds or forest animals eat the berries first. He’d assumed if birds could eat it, there was a small-ish-but-still-there chance that he could eat it. He was less bird than he was human and human was closer to raccoon and deers than birds, he thinks, so if raccoons and deers could eat the berries, it was rather likely that Tommy could eat them, too.

Tommy wishes he could eat fish just from watching bears sometimes catch fish near rivers or streams as he hung in a tree.

Tommy continues searching for berries, but to no avail. He keeps on the outlook for any plants he could eat, too, but there’s not many he can find. He does take the ones he does find, and tucks them in his pouch after eating a few. 

There are so few shrubbery in this forest, it mainly being of trees and grass. Still, Tommy is desperate, and there are footprints of deers still there from the wet mud, there are feathers of birds left hanging off branches, all of which means there are animals surviving here, and if they can survive, so can Tommy.

Tommy has always survived.

--

Tommy has always survived. 

This feels like a fact of the universe at times, on days where Tommy stays in trees and tries to lay as comfortably as he can, on days where his mind drifts to a past ugly and depressing, on days he stays still and thinking and unmoving until his stomach begs for food.

These days feel like every day, and they blur and blend until Tommy can’t quite tell the days apart, and he doesn’t think he could if not for the small notebook in his pouch that has drawings of berries with x-marks and checkmarks next to them and days of months that he copied off a calendar to make his own calendar in his notebook where the days are marked off one by one, a routine he does nightly-or-daily depending on how one looked on it, as Tommy stayed up too late or woke too early.

Tommy has always survived.

He does not want to have survived, does not want to have been a survivor.

He remembers a comfortable bed, a soft blanket over him, and a nice warmth from a fireplace. He remembers laying in bed with his mother and father, their own wings large and grown and beautiful, how they ran warm despite the fire being put out at night (when the light could show and reveal their small cabin in the woods).

He remembers a flame tickling at his heels, and how the flame had not burned but felt friendly. He remembers how mean and unfriendly the people were, trying to burn and burn, setting fire to their home and the surrounding nature.

He remembers his mother and father telling him to run, their home burning behind them, and their wings spread out protectively, their beautiful wings that Tommy had yet to even begin to grow, their heritage…

He remembers hiding in the dark, covering his mouth so his sobs wouldn’t escape, trying to muffle even his breathing, and praying that he wouldn’t be seen, that the dark would hide his blond hair.

He remembers waiting for hours, hours upon hours, only to run and run.

Needing to run.

Tommy has always survived.

It is a painful fact.

--

Tommy’s finally found a berry bush. These are safe berries, his mind thinks, but his hands still itch towards his pouch to check. He checks, because last time he didn’t check, he’d mistaken a dangerous berry for a safe one, and he’d thrown up nothing and nothing over and over again.

These are safe berries, and he picks them up and eats them, as much as he could, before stuffing some into his bag for later and remembering the location even if the berries wouldn’t be there later.

His pouch is made of leather and string and some iron, too, and he’d fashioned it the same way he saw some passing adventurers or travelers wear their pouches. His pouch was too big to be a pouch, and it was probably a bag, but he preferred the word pouch. He needs more leather for more small-bags, where he puts herbs. He might even need string or wool or leather, or more small materials for if his clothes are ruined, or he needs more bandages, or on occasion if he needs to carefully stitch his skin together.

Tommy memorizes the berry bush’s location, stretches out his wings despite how it slightly aches to do so, and decides to look for any stray cows coming to the forest, or to find an empty plains where he can safely kill a cow (and loathe the way he cannot eat the meat, what a waste, how evil, that there is food in front of him that he cannot eat, even as his stomach is too-empty- too-empty-too-empty .)