He turned the hand over and curled the fingers inward to inspect the claws. The claws looked like modified human nails. The nails were about a couple inches long and curved slightly before coming to a point. He then opened the hand to look at the inside. It was padded much like a human hand only the padding thin due to the hand's inherent boniness.
He turned it back over and began to trace a finger up and down the length of our forearm to feel the hair like feathers covering it. They were thicker and longer here except on the underside where the layer of feathers was thinner. He stopped the finger on the back of the forearm before shoving the claw into the arm and tearing a long bloody gash along its length.
'Ow! What the--why did you.....oh," I stopped my angry outburst when I noticed the wound closing.
'Just checking something,' he said, watching the wound finish closing before sticking the bloody fingertip in our mouth to clean it.
After cleaning it, he ran the claw along the teeth before selecting one and, taking a firm grip on it, yanked it out.
'Ow! You know you should really stop doing that,' I snapped, being more than a bit irritated at him. 'Just because it'll grow back doesn't mean it won't still hurt and I can feel that pain too!'
'Sorry'
He held the tooth up to the sky to see it better. When he looked up at it, I noticed it was still night. I could see the moon and the stars in the sky beyond our hand. They appeared to me to be shinning far more brightly than normal. He must've had really good night vision in his original form because, up until now, I had assumed the sun had risen from the brightness of the light.
The tooth he held up to the light was smooth, rounded and sharp with a slight curve to it, making it appear like a sturdier version of a snake tooth and had a long root to securely anchor it to the jaw. The tooth also had a semi-translucent smoky color to it. When he was done examining it, he put the tooth in his mouth and swallowed it so the material would not go to waste.
By then, the wound on our arm had healed without a trace except for the blood that had come out when he had first made the wound. The blood that the wound had left behind was a bright red color, a brighter shade of red then a normal human's would have been, and it had a silvery shine to it that made it look like it was some kind of red liquid metal instead of actual blood. He licked and sucked at the blood on our arm in order to clean it and the feathers covering it so he wouldn't get the blood all over our body as he used our hands to explore the parts he couldn't see.
He ran his hands over the back and tail of the body feeling the varying thicknesses of the layer of feathers covering them. They grew very thick in wide stripe down the back of the body and over the top of the tail to the tip. The stripe started at the base of the skull, widening when it passed the wings to cover the base of each one before returning to its original width, and narrowing with the tail when it went down it. The ones on rest of the back and tail grew in the same thickness as the ones on the top of the forearm. He plucked a few of the feathers from various places from the back, tail, and the stripe to see what color the feathers were. The ones from the stripe were pure white while the ones from the rest of the back and tail were a velvety black.
He ran one of our hands through the feathers on our head and found them to be very long. He brought the hand to our face bringing the long feathers with it without pulling them from our head so he could see them. He let the long feathers slide through our fingers having them show off their appearance to us. The feathers were very long and strait. They were also very white making the body to appear to have long white hair that came to a stop a few inches below our collar bone.
He flexed the wings forward so he could examine them next. They were black on the back and mostly white on the inside with black streaks following the wing bones lying just below the skin. The feathers on the wings grew very short and thick making them feel fuzzy and soft to the touch. They were jointed and ribbed like a real bat's wing with a similar bone and joint configuration. The individual joints however had a bit more flexibility to them than a typical bat's wings.
The only places free of the hair like feathers were the fingers, palm, and most of the face with a pair of black eyebrows as the only exception. The face lacked a proper nose too. Instead, there was a bulge and a pair of slits on it as if something had covered the real one and put the slits there so we could breathe.
'A bit vain now, aren't we?' I asked jokingly, amused by his thorough examination of the body.
He ignored me and bent a leg to bring the foot closer for inspection. It too had claws on it and the layer of feathers covering the body thinned down when it reached the ankle, leaving the majority of the foot bare. The claws were more bird like and bigger than the ones on the hands with four on the slightly elongated toes and a fifth opposable one where the heel should be.
He flexed the foot to test the range of motion it had. Flexing it showed the toes and the heel claw could be moved independently of each other. It also showed the toes were flexible enough to have the tips of their claws almost touch the bottom of the foot when the toes were curled. This flexibility combined with the opposable heel claw meant the foot could be used to manipulate and grasp both small and large items and various surfaces.
...................
After hearing Vin* speak, a thought occurred to me. I carefully put Silver's reins on their hook before turning around to stare at him. He shrunk back from me on his cot.
"What do you mean by proof? I asked him.He yelped and hid under his dense, protective blanket.
"Forget I said anything!" He cried, his voice muffled.
"No! I will not!" I told him.
I storm across the shed's floor to his cot and grabbed a hold of his blanket. In his weakened state and with Shadow's strength amplifying my own, he could not resist me as I tore off his only protection from me. He curled into a fetal position in his exposed state with his arms up to protect his head. He refused to look me in the eye and I glared down at him in a mixture of rage and disgust.
"Now let me rephrase the question. Why would monsters need proof before killing my dog and threatening my family!?" I demanded.
"Please don't kill me!" He pleaded.
"I won't have too if you tell me the truth." I told him. "Why would the forces of evil need proof? What am I to them that they would need proof before hand? Because, last time I checked, they didn't need a reason to terrorize people."
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