It was a couple of hours before we all went back to the house. Sometimes on weekends in the summer, we would stay out the whole night, but for now, the kids had school and we had work the next day.

It is always hard making that decision to fly back. The sheer freedom and relief of being in the sky is almost euphoric. There are many times I’ve fantasized about going completely off the grid and living on our own. We could sleep according to our natural rhythms, Niall and I could fly more frequently, Sybil would be more comfortable and less overstimulated, and Parker could stretch all eight of his limbs without worry.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we could handle the isolation that would bring. As close as we all are, I don’t think it would be enough, just the four of us. That, and—it’s morbid, I know— we all will die someday. It hurts to think about—I don’t want to imagine Parker, lifeless and still; or Sybil’s strong, quiet presence suddenly missing; or Niall, with all he means to me, just gone—but the isolation would mean whoever lives longer in the group would watch the others die, getting lonelier and lonelier until it’s finally their turn. I guess that feels as significant to me as it does, because realistically, the kids will probably outlive Niall and I, and it would be their future.

On the positive, not-death-obsessed side, there’s definitely safety in numbers too. When you’re connected to a community, people notice if you disappear. Heck, if you’re in the country and someone unfamiliar comes around your house, somehow your neighbor that’s three miles away will know, stop by with shotgun in tow, and make sure they aren’t bothering you. Whether it’s out of nosiness or kindness, it’s useful.

I don’t know if the scientists are looking for us. I imagine they are; our existence alone is a big enough investment to want to keep hold of us. We’ve taken precautions, but it always helps to have other people to act, even if only in some small way, as a defense.

Despite the difficulty, we managed to pull ourselves away and get the kids back too. They were more overtly disappointed than Niall or I, but they knew enough not to argue by this point. While both of us try our best to be understanding and give the kids days off when they need it, school is important.

By some miracle, both Sybil and Parker were in bed by 10 PM. Sybil probably stayed up to read after we left the room, but I wasn’t going to be super strict about that. Her sleep schedule is more in line with the rattle snake her DNA is spliced with, so there being a little delay in the time she goes to bed and actually falls asleep is to be expected.

I stood in the living room and stretched my wings tentatively, making sure not to knock anything over. Much like Sybil, Niall and I had trouble falling asleep because of our DNA. As adults, we had more freedom to make the less responsible decision of lounging around until we actually felt tired, and then wandering to our beds.

“Wine?” Niall asked from the kitchen, holding up the bottle of moscato I recently opened, his wings slightly outstretched.

“Mmm, yes, please.”

I heard the soft trickling of liquid spilling into glass before Niall came in holding two cups of wine, one mine and one his. The sharp, sweet scent hit me from across the room.

“Here’s your syrup,” Niall said, handing me my glass. He doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, so he likes his wine dry. I like mine to basically be fruit juice.

“Thank you,” I said, ignoring the comment and taking a sip. I pulled in my wings a bit so he had some room to move around. “So on a scale of one to ten, how tired are you?”

“Gosh, like an eleven, probably,” Niall sighed with a small chuckle. Without the kids around, he made no efforts to hide the sleepiness in his puffy eyelids, or the weariness in his shoulders.

“Do you still have weekends off?” I asked.

Niall nodded. “Yeah, but not for much longer.” He rolled his shoulders, eliciting a few popping sounds, and pressed his knuckles against the middle of his back, pushing in until it cracked.

“At least you have this one to catch up with some sleep,” I said hopefully.

“You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to that,” he agreed.

“How are your shoulders?” I asked. For both of us, having to keep our wings folded all day left our wings, shoulders, and backs pretty sore. Niall was usually in more pain out of the two of us, though, because his day was a lot longer than mine and more active.

“Well, I think they’re still on my body,” he murmured, looking down at his right shoulder. He flexed the muscle. “Yep, still there.”

I took a sip of wine and rolled my eyes. “You know what I meant.”

Niall shrugged, his eyes half-closed. “They’re how they usually are.”

“Do you want me to rub them?” I asked.

He shook his head. “You don’t have to. I know yours are probably just as bad as mine.”

“They’re not that bad. Besides, I want to.”

He hesitated, the gears turning in his mind. I could tell he wanted me too, but felt bad about it. I sat on the couch and pointed to the floor, deciding to make the choice easy for him. “Come on. Sit,” I commanded.

Niall laughed, the sound light and airy, more in his nose than anything. “Okay, fine, Boss,” he conceded, taking a seat with a grunt.

I set my wine down on the end table and rested my hands on his shoulders, squeezing lightly at first and then increasing the pressure. “That good?” I asked. I didn’t really need an answer; I knew how Niall liked his shoulders rubbed, but I always made sure to check anyhow.

He nodded. “Mh-mmm.”

I moved my thumbs in circles around his shoulders and neck, trying to smooth out the knots there. I rarely ever got one out, and if I did, it was never for long, but at least it loosened up the area. His wings were extended on either side, feathers brushing up against my knees. In spite of being so common, I’m always reminded of how beautiful barn owls are when I look at Niall’s wings. There are so many colors in his feathers: brown, orange, and gold, all layered on top of a bright, snowy white. There are shapes too—some are just amorphous flecks, but others are tiny circles and ovals that dot the tops of his wings.

I moved my hands lower, carefully inserting them between his back and wings. I pushed down against his back, around the base of the wings, and moved outward with my fingers. Where his back and wings met was usually the worst area, aside from the wings themselves. There was less I could do about them though; the best thing was just that he was stretching them out.

“That feels really good,” he murmured.

“I’m glad,” I said—and I was. It made me happy to know that even if I couldn’t do anything about how hard he had to work, I could at least make him feel better now.

“Hey, Dee,” Niall said sleepily.

“Yeah?”

“You should let me rub your shoulders too. I know they’re still pretty bad.”

I shook my head. “You don’t have to.”

“Yeah, but I want to,” Niall said, leaning his head back and meeting my gaze. His eyes were glassy. They were same color as the dark, cold blue waves off the coast. The extra shine only made them look more like little discs that somehow held a bit of the ocean inside.

“You’re very tired. You should go to bed after this.”

“I will. But I can do that first,” he said. Then he pointed at the ground next to him and grinned, which looked comical with his face upside-down on my legs. “Sit.”

I rolled my eyes. “Stealing my quotes now, are we?”

“Yep. And your place. So move.” He stood up and started nudging me to trade places with him.

I couldn't help but smile at his groggy insistence. “Fine.”

The floor was warm where he had been sitting. I took my seat there and let my wings spread out, feeling the roughness of Niall’s jeans and the cool, firm surface of the couch against them. I finished the last of my wine before Niall started rubbing my shoulders. His hands were calloused, but his touch was soft and tentative. He cared enough to want to help with my discomfort in the same way I did his, but he isn’t as comfortable massaging me. Neither of us are particularly big, probably as the result of the DNA, but I’m still quite a bit smaller than him. Even with his palms firmly on my back, his fingers can still reach well passed my collarbone on the other side.

It had been funny when we had first moved out here. We had been adjusting to normal life, where most people didn’t have random animal parts, and had experienced the discomfort of keeping our wings folded in for such a long time. One day after work, I gave him a massage, and then he insisted on giving me one too. I knew something wrong when he put his hands on my shoulders, paused, and stiffened.

“Wow.”

I looked up at him. “What?”

He stared down, his blue eyes studying me. He looked unsure. “You’re just…really tiny.”

I hadn’t really thought much about my size before. I mean, I knew how I compared to the others in the lab, but with so many children of different ages, spliced with different animals, it was normal to have a lot of variation. In the combat training the scientists had begun to teach us years prior, I did have to learn to use other people’s body weight against them; that was probably the closest I came to being self-conscious of my size. But I trained with people who dwarfed me, people who were similar in size, and people who were smaller than me. Abnormally sized people were kind of normal. I figured the same was true for Niall, seeing as we were in the same cohort.

“…Yes…?” I said, half statement, half question. I wasn’t sure where he was going with that.

Niall was flustered, his cheeks reddening. “I just,” he started, stumbling over his words. “I don’t…well, I guess I feel like I’m going to break you—and I don’t want to break you…”

I blinked and laughed.

I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“Well,” I began, trying to think of an appropriate response. “…I don’t think that’s realistic.”

Niall scratched the back of his head nervously. “Oh, well, yeah—I mean—I guess,” he stammered. “I guess—just, well, let me know if I’m pressing too hard or, um, hurting you.”

Since then, he’s occasionally remarked on my size, but seldom seems as nervous. He’s still cautious, especially at first, but then gets more at ease. I guess it feels weird initially, but we’re pretty comfortable with one another.

Tonight, he started with my shoulders and slowly worked his way up my neck, to the base of my skull. It wasn’t where most of my pain was, but I noticed he started doing that more a couple of years ago, after I remarked how good it felt. His thumbs ran in circles along my spine, going down again until they were between my wings. My muscles felt sore as he pressed down, but in a pleasant way.

“You have a really bad knot over here,” he murmured, circling his thumbs around an area at the base of my right wing. I felt the protests of my muscles, more sensitive there, with an almost audible clicking to the rhythmic movement of his fingers.

“Yeah, it’s been there a few days,” I commented.

“You should’ve let me know it was bothering you.”

I shrugged. “It’s not really anything worth mentioning.”

Niall sighed, and I imagined he probably rolled his eyes too. “Dee, I love you, but sometimes you’re just dumb.”

“Well, that was rude,” I said, pretending to be offended.

“Not as rude as not taking care of yourself,” Niall retorted.

“Oh? What was that?” I pretended to have not heard him. “It sounded like Niall was trying to take the splinter out of someone else’s eye, but he couldn’t get close because there was a whole log hanging out of his own.”

Niall laughed. “Kudos for the metaphor. You lost some points for not crediting Jesus, though.”

“There’s no law against that. The Bible is public domain.”

“Touché.” He continued to press down and then paused. “Okay, I think I can get this out, but it’s gonna hurt like hell for a few seconds.”

“Go for it,” I told him.

“Alright,” Niall said and pushed harder, increasing pressure until the pain became unpleasant. I breathed through my nose as his finger lingered, sending sharp shocks of pain outward. I mentally counted the seconds, and got to twelve before he pulled his hand back.

“How does that feel?” he asked.

As the pain receded, the area felt looser and freer. I wiggled my wing a little, no longer feeling the knot rubbing between it and my spine. “Really good, actually. I think you got it out.”

“Oh, yeah!” Niall pulled his fist in an expression of victory. “Who’s the man?”

“Well, not you, bird boy,” I chimed in, looking back at him with a smirk.

Niall frowned and looked down. “Foul. Uncalled for,” he replied, feigning offense.

“Fowl? I thought you were part owl,” I retorted.

He laughed and played with a strand of my hair. “You really are a nerd.”

“I think that’s just code to say I’m smarter than you,” I teased.

Niall grinned, looking down at me for a few moments before he responded. “Yeah, you caught me.”

Niall played absentmindedly with my hair, and I leaned against his legs. We sat like that for some time, enjoying the quiet and one another’s presence. I closed my eyes and rested my head against his knee. It was bony and not all that comfortable, but it was warm. His fingers tickled my scalp as they ran in and out of the strands of my hair.

Outside, a few crickets chirped. They were brazen to be out this early in the season, when frost and snow were still threats. Oddly enough, it made me feel thankful to be inside, resting in the warmth of our house against one another.