Reborn

It was cold… truly cold

He felt a cold so frigid that it froze his mind, leaving him unable to think straight. It left his mind in tattered shard frozen in the howling wind of the explosion. His flesh, blood, and soul blown apart and frozen in the air as if they were suspended in a frozen time

He could see the motionless explosion from a perspective that wasn't his own, instead of his usual black vision, that had been blinded, even further by the blazing white light of the explosion he saw the world from a different viewpoint, one far lower and that blazed with color

The world he had once known to be a void black, speckled by the glow of mana had been replaced by another

This world shined purple with shades of orange, pink, and red. Shapes that he assumed to be trees sat in the background, merely outlines of purple and black, while a few shapes and forms lit up the scene, animals and purple painted varying degrees of orange and red and at its center…

Sat his body, or what remained of it, merely an eruption of color with few discernable limbs and features, its shape destroyed by an explosion from within, it would have already splattered across the landscape if it had not… stopped?

As he starred from below, unblinking and unmoving in his vision the body began to move, the blood began to seep back into the shattered chunks of burnt flesh and those chunks began to slowly move towards each other, as if magnetized

At first, he thought that perhaps by some miracle or gift his body was healing, causing him to let out a mental sigh of relief but he quickly noticed differences. As the explosion of color slowly began to fall in on itself, imploding almost, it began to take shape.

The feathers, that had burst from his body began to fly inwards, faster than any other part, like daggers in a hurricane and began to take shape, first constructing the shape of legs, then a torso, and soon a head and arms, creating a silhouette

A human silhouette, one missing eyes, and a hand

And soon, as if following an example his body parts, charred, scattered, and bloody followed suit

What was once his wings, wrapped around themselves, morphing and cracking into a pair of legs, the forming skin, that even in the world of purple shined white as snow. His clawed limbs became arms, one missing a hand and the other possessing clawed nails and what was left seen crafted into the torso and head, its skin young and supple, and its face revealing the body's age

Young, a small child of blood, gore, and feathers

And soon as the body's, forming began to reach its final, an eye formed in one of the sockets, shining a white that seemed to follow the example of the body, but was soon hidden by the long and black hair that flowed over it

And once the body had fully formed, its organs formed and now hidden by skin and tissue, its hair grown and its muscles, bones, and cartilage fully formed, his viewpoint changed. Moving as if floating and raising to the eye level of the soulless shell and staring deep into the still empty right socket before slowly going closer and closer

Fading to black

***

Gasp!

Waking as if from a bad dream, He sucked in oxygen, slamming it into his lungs as he regained consciousness

Alive!

He Was ALIVE!!

Laying on the cold ground of the forest he simply started towards the black sky, breathing and almost waiting for something to prove him wrong

But nothing came

He just laid there breathing

Eventually growing restless he began to get up, but quickly he stumbled, falling onto his face as his lack of a right hand threw him off. However, instead of his beak, lips and a nose slammed into the ground softly, rubbing in the dirt

Raising a stump and a hand to his face, he quickly ran his hands over his features.

Human

A nose, two eyes, and a mouth filled with blunt teeth

However deciding he had more imp[ortant matters to focus on right now he discarded this discovery, it was not his first time adjusting to a strange body and he didn't care if it was his last. Rising to a sitting position and from there to a standing one, he used a hand to brush himself off and opened his eyes

And two worlds showed before him.

In one eye he saw the usual view… just black

And in the other he saw the world, he had in his "dream" although now he released what he had seen was likely an outside of body experience, relating to his body's strange reconstruction

The world glowed purple and the life around him varied from pink to red, birds seemed like flickers and some of the larger animals, elk appeared to be fully visible orange constructs

Heat…That was what he was seeing

Whatever his new eye was seeing, it was likely a thermal rendering of-

He paused in his inner dialogue as a word stuck

Eye

the eye!?

Scrambling over to a puddle nearby, he quickly searched his newfound reflection, for what he was looking for. And low and behold, sitting in his skull, like a ball of fire in his reflection, creating both a purple and orange light in his eyes, was the eye he had so carefully cared for in his travels

Sitting in his socket

Sighing in both relief and frustration at the loss/finding of the eye, he dropped onto his behind, ignoring the tickling feeling it gave his skin. He slowly laid down for a moment, just letting the breeze wash over him and the sounds of the wildlife fill his sensitive ears. And with the wind came a scent, one he had momentarily forgotten, but one that now sent him upright, scrambling to his feet

Alice!