[Alex's POV]
That night, Alex dreamed of Otto. She was playing with a little horde of blond girls with blue eyes.
"So that's where all the blond girl are," Alex thought. The little girls were screaming and laughing until they ran out of breath. It looked like they were playing some form of tag.
Otto looked at them, her smile so radiant it could light up a country. She looked like she was having fun. Not only that, she looked healthy and well rested as if she'd been on a vacation. Not a worry on her face.
"Don't you miss me?" he wondered as his heart reached out to her and she suddenly whipped her attention towards him. His heart stuttered as she looked straight at him, a confused frown twisting her happy expression.
"Of course I miss you," her heart reached out to him.
A little girl tugging at her skirt was asking: "What's wrong, mommy?" but it wasn't enough to break their connection. Then he heard a high whistling sound and he turned his attention towards it. He saw an older woman with blond hair and blue eyes inside a house. She yelled: "The kettle is heated!"
"Coming!" Otto yelled back and rushed off into the house.
After that, his dream went black.
"What now?" Alex thought. "Should I wake up? Or am I allowed to sleep in today?"
It hadn't looked like Otto was in a hurry to get back home. And it had been two long days. Maybe he should sleep a little longer?
So it was decided that he'd sleep in.
He started to roll to his back, but couldn't as something heavy lay on the bed behind him, preventing him from doing so.
How he'd love to find a more comfortable position to sleep in. For some reason, he was sleeping on his stomach. He never slept on his stomach. It simply wasn't comfortable. He tried to stretch, but that's when a series of strange events happened.
The first was a stabbing pain in his shoulders.
The pain was followed by one of his limbs accidentally hitting something close to the bed that gave a yelp and fell over.
And the last thing was the sharp pain that shot through him when said knocked over thing kicked said limb in retaliation.
"Ouch," Alex complained as he reluctantly cranked an eye open.
"Watch out where you put those damn things, will you? I do not appreciate being knocked over because you freaking moved," Yahya complained in return. It sounded like he'd knocked Yahya over who'd been sleeping on a chair by his bedside.
"Welcome back to the living," he said. He kind of sounded relieved. That must have been Alex's imagination. "I'm glad to see you finally move again. I freaking hauled your fainted ass back all the way from the (no longer) Petrified Mountain and you never moved an inch."
Alex stared at Yahya as his vision started to clear. Yahya looked a mess. He was covered in dirt and blood from their adventure up on the Petrified Mountain, and the hair on the side of his head was standing straight up from sleeping sagged on the chair.
"You're not going to make a habit out of making me drag you back every time, right? Thank God we'd left the horses at the base of the mountain. You're freaking heavy, you know that?! Certainly now that you've sprouted wings," Yahya continued to complain. In the same moment, Alex noticed a large amount of feathers next to him on the bed.
"UWA!" he yelped in surprise as he jumped up and tried to recoil away from what he thought was a very large bird, laying next to him on the bed, but couldn't as it appeared to be following him. What a huge bird! From what he could see from the corner of his eye, the wings must have been almost twice as long as he was tall. It was a miracle the bird fitted into the room at all!
His panic was interrupted by Yahya's laughter. This confused Alex even more.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
"Did you really freak out just now because of your own wings?" Yahya asked, still a huge smile splitting his face.
"I don't know what you're talking about, but humans don't just sprout wings overnight!" Alex snapped. But as he looked behind him, it started to dawn on him that Yahya might be right. It looked like the wings really were attached to his back. Alex peered over his shoulder as far down his back as he could.
"Jep, they're really attached," Yahya said, still a note of amusement to his voice.
"But... how?" Alex asked incredulously as he ran a hand along the brilliant white plumes. It was a very foreign feeling.
Like when you'd put your thumb in your mouth, you'd know that that thumb is part of your body. But put your own toe inside your mouth and it felt alien, just because you wouldn't expect your own toe to be in your mouth.
Well, touching these plumes felt a little like that. Alex could feel the soft plumes under his fingers and the soft touch to his wings, but the two didn't add up.
A violent shiver ran down his spine at the realisation that the wings really were attached to him. Again, he had the urge to recoil away from them, like a puppy chasing its own tail, but in reverse.
"What the hell did Intef do to me?!" Alex yelled, slowly starting to panic again.
"Beats me," Yahya said with a shrug. "As far as I know, brother didn't have any creator powers like you have. So unless you magicked them yourself, I guess they were already there. He just made them appear."
"I definitely didn't make them myself," Alex mumbled as he thought about what Yahya'd said.
Could they already have been there? He remembered his out of body experience when he'd been caught between life and death, and how he'd felt as if he was floating. Intef had clearly seen him. Had he seen these wings too? Had they really already been a part of him?
"But why do they have to be so huge?!" Alex asked in annoyance as he tried to stretch one of his big wings and found that it reached well passed the edge of the bed. And yet, he was glad to notice they moved at will. It wasn't difficult to make them move and they didn't feel specifically heavy either.
"How did you even manage to get me inside?"
"You fold up nicely," Yahya said with a small shrug and yawned. "If you'll excuse me now. My bed is calling."
"Just one moment," Alex said as he watched how the tips of his wings wiggled back and forth to get a better feel for them. Yahya waited patiently until Alex was ready to say whatever it was he was going to say.
"You've hidden Otto from me, haven't you?" he said and watched Yahya's eyes go wide. That was all the confirmation Alex needed.
"I don't know what you're talking about?" Yahya asked nervously as he avoided eye contact and slowly took a step backwards.
"Oh, I think you do," Alex said, still focused on moving his wings. "You've been gathering all the girls with blond hair and blue eyes into one place. I think it started as a way to help me, so that you could brag about how you've been loyally awaiting my return but-"
That's when Alex noticed Yahya had stepped outside of the room and was grabbing for the edge of the door, ready to slam it shut.
"No, wait!" Alex yelled, but it was already to late. Yahya slammed the door shut and soon, the sound of the lock turning echoed through the room with a final "CLACK!".
"He did not just lock me up?!" Alex grumbled annoyed and then yelled loud enough for Yahya to hear him: "WE WERE NOT DONE TALKING!"
The next thing he heard, was the front door slamming closed, a horse's startled neigh and the clopping of hooves against stone in a hurried rhythm.
"What now?" Alex thought as he forced himself to get out of the bed and look out of the large window. "Where is he going in such a hurry?"
Alex had a bad feeling about this.
Now that his full power had been restored, he could feel Otto's presence. He was drawn to it and he knew exactly where she was.
And Yahya was racing straight towards her.
Alex sighed. He felt sore all over. This was not the moment to play tag! He heaved another sigh and started to plan his next move, rolling his shoulders as he thought.
Yahya had locked the only door in the room. It would be very easy for Alex to unlock the door, even without the key. Heck, he could even make the lock disappear completely, but he was contemplating another solution.
Yahya was moving at an incredible speed by horseback. Alex wouldn't be able to catch up. Not even if Yahya had somehow not taken the fastest horse in the stable.
If he wanted to catch up, he'd need to fly. Which, coincidentally, was possible because of his newly gained wings. And yet, Alex did not look forward to this solution.
For one, he was afraid to fall. There were so many things that could go wrong. What if his body couldn't keep up? His shoulders were already burning, even though his legs were carrying the majority of his weight.
Well, it was a risk he'd have to take. Yahya was steadily closing in on Otto's location and Alex was afraid of what he'd do once he'd get there. So he opened the window and took a step onto the large windowsill.
In front of him was a five meter drop.
"That's a long way to fall," he thought to himself. Not that he was scared of heights. On the contrary, he loved them. He wouldn't be climbing trees all the time if he didn't. But still, thinking of falling scared him. He'd always make sure to have a hold-on to some tree branch. The lack of one was terrifying and yet exhilarating at the same time.
Once again, he reminded himself that he didn't have the luxury to doubt. He needed the quickest way to travel, and being this high up from the ground would definitely help with taking off.
So he swallowed hard, wishing he had a little more space to run up to the edge, and jumped off.
He would have loved to tell you that he easily glided horizontally and stayed more or less at the same altitude that he had started from, but truthfully, he was only descending a little less slowly than when he would be falling.
Luckily, he'd managed to angle his wings correctly enough to be sort of gliding through the air.
His body was keeping up better than he'd thought. The pain he'd expected to feel because of the shift in weight wasn't there at all. So Alex dared to flap his wings once.
Immediately, he shot up through the sky so fast, it made him wonder how fast he could go if he actually tried.
"I'm flying," he thought as a huge grin appeared on his face. Alex laughed and spread his arms, revelling in the feeling of the wind rushing past him. It looked like he might develop a new hobby, next to climbing trees.
"I'm coming Otto!"