B35C7 - Marco and Rachel get Cockatiel

It was the touching part that made me nervous. That plus the fact that I expected Tennant to show up looking wise and mellow and incinerate me with a wise, mellow Dracon beam.

Rachel had already acquired her bird and begun to morph.

<Hey, guys.> Tobias called from high above. <Tennant just went into his office. And, urn, Marco? Some reason why you're dancing?>

"Very funny," I muttered.

I reached my hand back toward the bird. Slowly.

"That's how you're supposed to nyufgh -" Rachel whispered as her mouth shrank and hardened into a beak.

The cockatiel backed away and cocked his head to strike. I dived! Wrapped my hand around him. Hah! Swallowed the pain as he took another vicious peck at my hand.

"Go nighty-night, you monster."

He went into the trance.

Seconds later, I set him back on his perch. I resisted the impulse to yank out one or two feathers as payback. Took a deep breath and tried to focus.

Just relax, I told myself. Let the morph happen. Be the bird. But my heart was still pounding. And my finger still hurt. The first thing to change was my head. It began to shrink. From normal size to the size of a cantaloupe. To grapefruit. To orange. To just slightly bigger than a cherry tomato.

<Oh, that's a nice look,> Rachel said. She'd finished her morph and was perched on top of a cage. <Now your head finally matches the size of your brain.>

I would have made a witty response, but my mouth was turning hard like a fingernail. Slowly growing out of my face and forming a sharp, hooked beak.

My skin felt ticklish, then began to ripple. Feathers. I looked at my hands. From each of my pointer fingers, one gray feather sprouted. Then a second. Then a third. More feathers sprouted. Faster and faster. A flood of feathers rolling down my arms like a swollen river raging through a valley. Until I was covered with them head to toe.

The trees and bushes seemed to shoot up into the air as I shrank. Down to a very vulnerable size. A foot long. Weighing only a few ounces.

Then my tiny human feet began to change. My five toes mushed together. Two long toes sprouted from the front of the mush. Two more sprouted out of where my ankle had been.

My legs shrank until they were barely an inch long. Just short stumps growing out of my baseball-sized body. My shoulders slid down my back. My miniature arms stretched outward like branches on a tree, flattening themselves into lushly feathered gray wings.

Suddenly, the bird's incredible sense of hearing kicked in. I could hear every flutter of every feather of every bird in the room. One was grinding his beak. Another was digging through his food, looking for a particular seed. And every cockatiel was talking, laughing, singing!

"Twoooit, twoooit, twoooit," I said excitedly.

<Marco, what are you doing?> Rachel said.

"Twoooit, twoooit, twoooit!" <I'm singing,> I said. "Twoooit! Twoooit!"