While You Were Sleeping

A "Winds of Change" Story

By Brian Eirik Coe

I'm pretty sure that waking up from a four month coma must be a shock. Waking up and discovering that the world moved on without you must be more that just a little jarring.

I'm certain, though, that waking up from what amounts to a four month coma that started the morning of the Change has got to be worse.

Tim was sitting on the clinic exam bench and staring at his hand, almost like he still didn't believe that it was there. More than one time, he's reached up and pulled on one of his polished horns as if he hoped that it would snap off. Maxine stood by him a long time, an arm held reassuringly around his broad back.

He looked at Maxine and me again. "I'm still not sure I understand. Why did this happen?"

While a few doctors took samples for testing, I filled Tim in on what had happened as best as I could. I tried to tell him about the day of the Change and the months after. I'm not sure how much he believed, but he had a hard time disbelieving his senses.

It took a while, but he finally sighed heavily. "So I guess I'm a bull for the rest of my life." he said flatly.

Maxine hugged him again, "I always said that you were bull headed, so I guess it fits." He closed his eyes and leaned against her shoulder. It was a lot to absorb in a hurry, but he seemed to be handling it about as well as could be expected.

I leaned against the counter in the exam room and stroked my hand across Kim's back. She looked at me curiously a moment, and then pulled my hand down a little with her beak, stepping onto it. I moved her up to my shoulder where she stepped off. I looked up to see Tim staring at me. "Is she stuck, too?"

I looked at Kim a second and then back. "In a way, but not like you were. She got hurt in this form, so she can't shift back without risking more injury. She's still her underneath." I ran a talon through her chest feathers, "But I miss you in morph, Kim."

Tim looked at me curiously. "Wait, you mean that she can do it voluntarily?"

I nodded, "A lot of us can, maybe a little more than half of everyone. In fact, I'll bet that you can. Some of us even picked up other abilities."

"What do you mean?"

I thought a second and then shifted to my favorite Gyr falcon morph, upsetting Kim a bit as my shoulder got narrower. "Sorry, Kim. Anyway I can look like other birds of prey if I'd like." I shifted back to my normal self. "I've seen a real wide variety of powers. Shields, energy absorption, the ability to manipulate matter, illusions. Everything you can think of."

Tim looked at Maxine curiously. "Can you do something like that?"

Tim couldn't have know the nerve that he struck, but he did seem to realize that he'd touched on something. Maxine suddenly looked uncomfortable. "I need to get a little air, Tim. I'll be right back." She avoided looking at me as she left.

Tim looked back at me both with curiosity and anxiety. "What's wrong? What did I say? What happened to her?"

I sighed, "Maxine is actually very powerful. For one, she can cause people to switch forms."

"Huh? I don't understand."

"I'll put it to you this way: She made a mutual friend a body double of me a couple weeks ago. He's a deer morph, but he looked exactly like me, down to my wings.. On top of that, she can actually force people into their norm shape..."

"Norm?" he interrupted.

"Sorry, normal animal. It's kind of a new shorthand term. Anyway, she can do it even if you don't have the ability to do it yourself. She did it to me, with my permission mind you, a couple weeks back. Something went wrong and, well, I nearly ended up like you were a little while ago. Except that I was in the wild. A few more hours, and I'd probably have been lost."

I shuddered a little when I finished saying it. I'd never really talked about that day to anyone. It's not like I'd tried, there wasn't much to talk about. Things had happened fast after that. Jon had changed forms and we found ourselves on the road to Canada. We just never had time to go into it. More than that, Maxine had left us almost right away. There had never been time to make sure that she knew I didn't hold a grudge.

I suddenly realized that she might still be blaming herself for what happened to me.

He looked at his hands again. "I guess the world really is different."

I nodded, "Just remember: Everything that you ever knew is wrong."

Bryan stepped in a moment later. "Brian, Jon's here."

Tim furrowed his brow. "Jon?"

I smiled. "The mutual friend I told you about. Your sister met him down in California. Hope you like deer."

A look crossed over his face, and his tail twitched a little. "How close a friend?" he asked quietly.

I looked at Bryan a second, who was mirroring my confused look. Then I looked back at Tim. "Well, close I guess. I mean, boyfriend / girlfriend close."

Tim slid off the exam bench, balancing well on his hoofed feet. "I'd like to meet him."

Bryan and I shared another glance. Tim's demeanor had taken a huge shift almost instantly. He went from confusion to focused so fast that it felt like a different person. Then I realized that he was Maxines older brother. Often, that was the same as saying overprotective. But, there was no use worrying about it. I doubted that Tim would dislike Jon.

Besides, Jon had a shield if something did go wrong.

We stepped out of the exam room and walked down the hall to the still nearly empty waiting area. Jon and Maxine were locked in a long embrace. I could see that he was whispering something to her, and that she was crying a little. Tim walked right up to the pair, but stopped just short of making his presence known. Finally, he grunted slightly.

Maxine looked up and smiled as she wiped a tear away. "Tim, this is Jon. I met him down in California. Jon, this is my brother, Tim."

Jon stuck out a hand to shake in greeting. "Maxine just told me what happened. I'm glad to see that you're alright."

Tim paused before taking the offered hand. He seemed to be appraising Jon, though I had no idea how. He snorted a couple of times, his tail twitched and his ears flipped, but it was hard to tell what he was thinking. Jon stood there, looking more and more like an idiot, with his hand outstretched. He almost started to pull it back when Tim finally accepted it.

"Nice to meet you, Jon." He said curtly.

Maxine slapped him on the shoulder good naturally. "Oh Tim, stop it. Don’t forget that you don't look harmless anymore."

Tim actually looked hurt at that. "You never said that I looked harmless before." Maxine just rolled her eyes.

Bryan cleared his throat. "How about we all head out to lunch or something. I'm sure that Tim wants to see how different the world is."

Jon scowled at Bryan, something Bryan seemed to winch slightly at, and shook his head. "We can't. Jack will be along any minute. He was meeting with someone when I left your house."

Tim shook his own head. "Can't go for a little bit anyway. They want to get the results of some tests they ran before they release me." Then he put his massive arm around Jon's shoulder. It was obvious that Tim was at least twice as heavy as my white-tailed friend. "Besides, I want to get to know Jon a little better."

Jon looked a little terrified, but allowed himself to be led to a chair in the back of the waiting room with Maxine in tow. Bryan started to follow, but I put a talon on his shoulder. "Bryan, hold up a second."

"Hmm?"

I jerked my head toward Jon. "What was that look about? I haven't seen that look in his eyes since, well, since he went after you the other day in the hills."

Bryan glanced down at Jon, "I was hugging Maxine when he walked in. He didn't say anything, but, you know..."

I hung my head, "Great. We'd better diffuse this pretty quick. Though, it looks like Tim is going to be enough for Jon to deal with right now." I said with a smile.

Bryan laughed, "He's adjusting well."

I smiled, then stopped. "Bryan, close your eyes a second."

He looked at me curiously. "Huh? Why?"

"Just do it." He did and I reached out a talon to his horns. I carefully gripped the fragment of glass that I saw and pulled. It had been jammed into a small crack on the surface of his horns. "Okay, open them." He did and I showed him the glass. "Where'd you do that?"

Nervously, he ran a hand over his horns. "It's a bit of a long story." He seemed to consider something a moment. Then he leaned against the wall, "Brian. I think that I need to say something to you, and if I don't do it now I'm not sure I ever will. I'm not sure exactly how to say this, but I'm sorry."

I frowned and pulled my head back. "Sorry? For what?"

He sagged slightly against the smooth, pale green wall. "I failed you. God, I nearly let you die. I would have let you die..."

I looked at Kim in confusion, who shrugged her good wing. "Bryan, you're not making any sense. When did you almost let me die?"

"The other day, when you lost it." Bryan whispered. "Jon accused me of letting fear rule me. He was right. After everything that had happened to me, what was happening to you hit me hard." He shuddered. "I wanted so badly to help you, and when push came to shove, I broke down."

"Bryan, That's not your fault. You've got nothing to be sorry for."

He continued, seeming not to hear me. "Jon was depending on me, Maxine was broken up and you were so close to being lost that you may as well have died. I could have saved you, but I failed."

"Bryan, you didn't fail..."

"I had it all worked out in my head. I was going to ask Maxine to give me Kim's norm shape and I was going to try and convince you to..."

I grabbed him by one of his horns and brought his eyes in line with mine. "Bryan, will you listen a minute? First of all, this wasn't your fault. It was no ones. It was an accident. Secondly, I didn't die, and I'm not lost. I'm here. I'm fine. It all worked out."

"And if Jack hadn't been there, you would have died." he said simply.

I rolled my eyes and looked at the ceiling. "Fine, beat the hell out of yourself over this if you want. But know this: I don't blame you at all. Hell, I haven't really thought about that day much. I try to avoid it and the memory is muddled anyway. You think that Jack being there made the difference? Maybe, but I'm not so sure." I stopped, momentarily trying to figure out why I said that.

Bryan looked up at my pause. "What do you mean?"

I frowned, trying to figure out just what I did mean. I thought back to that early morning, struggling to recall the memory of waking up in that tree. I'd been startled awake by a sound and had flown out, partly to escape and partly to investigate. I'd been close to flying away, but something...

I looked at Bryan curiously. "Did you try at all? I mean, did you yell at me or something, the way you did with Tim?"

Bryan nodded. "Yeah, but you were up so high, I doubt that you could hear me."

I shook my head. "Sound carries really well straight up. You'd be surprised how high." I thought more about that day, struggling to reform the fragmented, dream-like images. Then I smiled and looked at Bryan. "If it makes you feel any better, Jack couldn't have done it without you."

Now Bryan looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"I wasn't 100% eagle, I know that now. There was some part of my that was human, a part that really didn't care much about being human, but it was human nonetheless. It understood you, and tried to obey your commands to land. But the eagle was stronger, and I guess your power doesn't work on instinct. The best that I could manage was to stay in the area." I clasped him on the shoulder. "I was too high for Jack to do anything. That's why they used Kim as bait, to bring me lower. Without you, I'd have left before Kim even arrived." As if to emphasis the point, Kim rubbed her head against mine.

Bryan looked at me, a slight smile on his face. "So I didn't fail you?"

"Fail me? Between you, Jon, Jack and Kim, I think I owe you all my life. It's just that I didn't realize it until now."

"You wouldn't lie to me now, would you?" he asked with a smile.

I grinned. "Of course I'd lie to you. I'm the symbol of the U.S. government for crying out loud. I'll tell the truth as often as they do." I clasped him on the shoulder. "But not about this. Thank you for what you did."

Now Bryan seemed a little uncomfortable. He'd been carrying that guilt around for more than a week. He simply shrugged. "Uh, you're welcome."

I looked across the room and Jon and Tim. "I think that we'd better rescue Jon. I had the impression that Tim would gore him just for looking at his sister."

Bryan laughed and we started across the room. We got within earshot just in time to hear Jon talking to Tim about his Power. Tim was shaking his head. "I can't believe that. You've been shot at and absorbed the energy?"

Maxine was grinning now, "More than that, he absorbed energy from a small earthquake."

"I don't believe it."

Jon stood and looked at Bryan and I with a knowing smile before looking back at Tim. "Hit me."

Tim looked taken aback by the request. From what little I'd picked up, I got the impression that Tim hadn't been a physical slouch before the Change, and now he had the musculature of a bull to back him up. This wasn't the kind of request a person like that got. "You're joking." He looked at the amused expressions on everyone's face and then turned back to Jon. "You're not joking." He shrugged. "Okay." He stood up from the chair, his tail twitching oddly. "Is there anyplace that I shouldn't hit? Someplace not protected?"

Jon shook his antlered head. "Nope. I'm 100% covered. Anytime that you're ready. My shield is already on."

Tim looked one last time at Maxine, seeming to ask her silent approval. She nodded with a slight smile. Tim shrugged. I had the impression that he'd wanted to be able to do something like this to one of her boyfriends for a long time. He drew back and threw a punch straight at Jon's head...

...which connected and sent Jon flying backward into the wall, heavily denting the plaster.

Maxine screamed and raced to Jon's side, and Tim quickly looked at us in totally confusion. "What the hell..."

He was interrupted by a shriek from Kim. I quickly looked at her as she seemed to get heavier on my shoulder. I drew in a breath as I realized that she was shifting out of norm, despite the broken wing. She started to fall off my shoulder, and I caught her and eased her to the floor. She seemed to be desperately trying to stay in norm, crying in pain as her broken wing turned into a broken arm, but for some reason it wasn't working. "Kim! What's wrong? What's happening?"

Then Bryan shouted. "It's Tim!" I looked at the confused bull morph and suddenly realized that his horns were glowing! "He's canceling out our Powers!"

I looked at the apparently unconscious Jon and back at Kim, and then at Tim again. "Turn it off, damn it!"

Tim looked frantic. "How?!"

Bryan jumped up on a chair to get to eye level with him and grabbed him by the horns. "Calm down. Close your eyes and calm down. Breath deeply." Tim started to jerk his head away instinctively, but then seemed to think better of it and complied. Quickly, the light dimmed from his horns. The massive bull morph sagged, shaken, into another chair.

It was too late, though. Kim was back in morph, and she'd passed out from the pain. I hefted her into my arms even as two nurses ran over to see what was going on.. "It's her arm." I said simply, a tremble in my voice. One of them took her from me despite my protests and laid her on a gurney while the other raced over to check on Jon.

Jon was bleeding from his nose, and he suddenly snorted a couple of times, spraying blood over Maxine, Bryan and the nurse. His eyes popped open, rolled back in his head, and closed again. The nurse hefted him up with Bryan's help and placed him on a gurney as well. They quickly wheeled him back even as a doctor raced out to investigate the commotion.

We tried to follow, but an orderly stopped us. "They'll be fine." he said, "But let the doctors take a look."

I started to protest, but Bryan gripped my arm. "Let them work, Brian. We'll just be underfoot."

That left the four of us staring at each other in the waiting room. Tim was looking at Maxine with wide eyes. "I didn't mean to hurt him. You all said..." He shuddered a little. It'd been a rough day for him, and was only about noon. Maxine sat next to him and tried to comfort him.

Bryan sat down and looked at me. "You okay?"

I nodded, "I'm fine. Just worried." I tilted my head a bit. "Bryan, if he was canceling Jon's power, and even Kim's shift, then how did you calm him down?"

He just shrugged. "Old fashioned psychology, I guess. Or my power is stronger than his."

Jack chose that moment to make his entrance. He spotted the four of us sitting mournfully in the waiting area, Maxine and Bryan specked with blood, a highly depressed bull morph and no Jon or Kim. He sighed slightly. "Serves me right for being late. I guess that I missed all the fun..."

Copyright 1997, Brian Eirik Coe

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