by Logan Jacobs
“Lizzy, you okay?” I mumbled right before I passed out.
I woke that self back up to find my self gently rising and falling up and down with the unconscious breathing of the wolf beneath me.
I climbed off her, took a few steps, and then my eyelids dropped, and I fell down unconscious again.
“Get back up, damn it,” I yelled at my self. “It’s just me now. I’m depending on me.”
Another of my selves tripped over another of my unconscious bodies that I couldn’t see in the dark, so I physically shook myself awake and dragged myself over to reunite with my other selves.
My consciousness was so bleary by then that it took a few stops and starts, but I gradually shepherded all of my selves back over to the golden apple tree where Florenia, Ilandere, Elodette, and Willobee were still peacefully snoozing.
I all stood in a circle facing inward and each time one of my selves started to slump over, I slapped my self in the face or shouted in my ear.
“Come on,” I yelled. “I’m better than this. I said I’d watch the fucking apples, so I will.”
“I stay awake through the whole night all the time to keep watch over our camp,” I told my selves. “There’s no reason this time should be any different.”
“This might be some kind of magic, but having four selves is pretty magic too,” I added. “I’ve got my backs, right?”
To pass the time and keep my selves engaged, I started playing hand eye coordination games against my selves, like resting one of my hands under another self’s hand and seeing if I could pull it out and slap the top of my other self’s hand before my other self withdrew it. Normally, this kind of activity wasn’t really any fun, because it was pretty much a perfect tie every single time, or the self in the position of an inherently slight advantage would win every single time. Tonight, however, it was actually unpredictable, because even though my brain was sending the signal to move to each of my bodies at the exact same time, the slightly more tired ones at the moment processed the signal slower.
I started running races against my selves from one tree to the next. I started wrestling with my selves. Physical competitions like that actually did provide good training, because I was the closest match that I could have, although I preferred when possible to race or fight someone whose abilities were slightly superior to my own rather than equal. Anyway, at this point, I was all so tired that when I ran, half the time I crashed into trees or bushes, and when I wrestled, if I failed to free my self from my own chokehold immediately, half the time I would just fall asleep in my arms.
No matter what I did, even when I accidentally bumped into one of them, none of my other companions woke up. Not only did we all feel unnaturally tired in this garden, once they fell asleep, it was an unnaturally profound sleep that I couldn’t interrupt even though I tried. Normally that might have worried me, but we had talked to enough villagers about the golden apple situation that I knew I could expect them all to wake up in the morning unharmed. Once the golden apples had vanished.
“Fuck I’m bored,” I groaned.
“This is miserable,” I agreed. I didn’t usually talk to my selves aloud, since I of course knew every thought that passed through my own mind anyway, and there was no real point, but when there was no one else to talk to, sometimes it just felt more satisfying to process a conversation that way.
“Kind of surreal though,” I remarked. “This has to be one of the weirdest nights I’ve ever had. It almost feels like being on some kind of drug. I’m not sure if I’m just imagining everything that’s happening right now.”
“I’m not sure whether or not I’ve imagined pretty much my whole life,” I said.
“I’m all going to sleep through the whole of tomorrow, Willobee can be in charge for the day,” I declared.
“How much longer do I think it’ll be?” I asked my selves. “How much longer can I keep this up for?”
Then I all fell silent thinking, Not much longer at all.
Because something undefinable in the atmosphere had just shifted. The air might have felt a little warmer, the plants might have smelled a bit more fragrant, or that might have just been my senses’ best way of approximating the more… vivid feeling that suddenly filled the garden.
At first I looked to the open gate to see if anyone was walking through and to the walls to see if anyone was trying to scale them, but there was no sign of any disturbance.
Then I looked up into the sky and saw what looked like a shooting star approaching from the distance. It could have been miles away, it could have been a few hundred yards, since I didn’t know what size it really was, but somehow I was absolutely certain that it was heading my way.
“Holy fuck,” I breathed.
Then two of me, no longer feeling so tired at all, flung my selves at the golden apple tree and clambered up through the branches to its crown while the other two waited down below. It was not only taller, but sturdier, than a standard apple tree, although it was otherwise shaped similarly.
As the shooting star approached the mayor’s garden, more details began to take shape. It had appeared to be a blinding white flash at first, but as it came closer, it picked up a sort of vague golden hue, and then that continued to darken and redden until I was staring at what looked like a mass of swirling flame that reminded me of the desert fire god Pyralis.
Then, the red gold glowing orb got close enough that I realized it wasn’t an orb at all. It was a massive, human-sized bird, with a sharp beak and black hawk-like eyes and a glittering body and wings with feathers that looked like flaming streamers.
As this fiery hawk-like bird dove straight for the top of the golden apple tree where I was perched twenty feet up, I hid my selves as best as I could among the leaves. I squinted at the incoming fireball through my fingers, because it was so blindingly bright that it was like staring at the sun and I felt like it would ruin my vision.
I didn’t know whether it would burn me on contact or not, but I knew that I had two spare selves in reserve, so as soon as the bird came within reach, I both leapt.
I grabbed it by the talons, and I also landed on its back with my arms wrapped around its wings to pin them and keep them from flapping. The bird wasn’t hot to the touch at all despite looking as though it were made of pure flame. It just felt like feathers and scales, like an ordinary bird, and slightly warm with the warmth of a living creature.
The firebird emitted a piercing squawk of terror that reverberated throughout the garden.
Then the bird and my two selves tumbled together through the air down to the ground twenty feet below. One of me sprained an ankle on landing, so I quickly reassimilated that self and sent it back out again, but my other two selves that had been waiting on the ground already were also there to surround us immediately. The bird wasn’t going anywhere. Not without answering for its thefts first.
Just when I was wondering how, exactly, I was going to make a bird talk, and whether a magical bird like this might have the ability to use human language, it disappeared from my arms. Or rather, it contracted into something else. Most of the streaming feathers seemed to absorb into its skin, and its aerodynamic bird body transformed into the sleek body of a naked woman, except that she retained the massive wings.
I probably would have been shocked enough to let go of her reflexively, especially if there were only one of me, but there were four of me surrounding her.
And I had seen this shit before.
“My friend does that too,” I told the strange woman, “except she turns into a wolf, not a bird.”
She was stunning, with long, curling, red gold hair, black eyes, and a slim yet voluptuous figure much like Florenia’s. Her skin was pale and subtly incandescent. She looked a bit alien and definitely dangerous to mess with, like she was designed to lure you to some kind of magical death.
She stared at me for a long time as I continued to grip her by the wrist, ankle, and wings and I started to worry that maybe even in her quasi-h
uman form, she still couldn’t talk.
Then finally she said, “I don’t turn into a bird. I am a bird. I can wear the form of a human for a little while when I wish to.”
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Uh. That’s fun.”
“What do you want from me?” she demanded.
Well, now that I had actually seen the apple thief in person, there were a few other things I wanted from her, but would never demand from someone who was my captive. So I just said, “I want you to stop stealing Galeurn’s golden apples. And to explain why you’ve been doing that.”
“Because they nourish me,” she said simply.
“Well, they don’t belong to you,” I said. “They belong to Galeurn. And this village cherishes their apples, especially the golden ones, and it upsets them when they go missing.”
She shrugged a pale shoulder. She was as totally unselfconscious in her nakedness as Lizzy and Florenia were in front of me, even though we were strangers, not lovers. I wasn’t sure if that was a personality thing or maybe a species thing, if she really identified more as a bird and didn’t even have a human concept of modesty.
“If they were not valued I would not care for them,” she said. “I only like exotic fruits. And I only like to steal them, once I have found them in remote parts of the world. That is exciting to me.”
“Well,” I said, “you have to stop stealing Galeurn’s apples, or I can’t let you go.”
“How did you stay awake, anyway?” she demanded. “All four of you? This has never happened to me before.”
“I didn’t,” I answered. “I fell asleep a bunch of times, I have no idea how many times. But I just kept waking my selves back up again.”
“I do not think I understand you,” the firebird sighed. “My magic has never failed me before.”
“Well, I had a hell of a time managing it, if that makes you feel any better,” I said. “And all my friends with only one body each are out cold.”
“These bodies all belong to you?” she asked.
“Yup,” I said. “Four and counting. I know it’s a little weird, but I have a feeling you’re probably not going to judge me for it.”
“Well, they are very nice,” she said. Her tone wasn’t flirtatious, it was matter-of-fact. She didn’t really interact the way most normal humans did. “The only way they could be improved is if you had wings. I feel so sad for creatures that do not have wings.”
“Eh, it’s okay,” I said. “I get around. Horses. Carriages. Camels. That sort of thing. On foot too, I run pretty fast, you know.”
“But you cannot fly,” she said. “You can walk, you can climb trees, but there are places you could never reach on foot. Yesterday I was in the Kirajistan steppes, where the steepest regions are too perilous for any human to navigate.”
“Oh, were you harvesting parcantewli melons there?” I asked.
An expression of surprise flitted across her shimmering marble, black-eyed face. “How did you know that?” she asked.
Instead of answering I said, “They’re pretty delicious, but kind of a bitch to get them cracked open. Have to use a hatchet. I bet you just use your talons and beak though, huh?”
“Well… yes,” she said. “Are you going to let me go now?”
“That depends,” I said. “Do you swear not to steal the golden apples of Galeurn anymore?”
She sighed. “They don’t really need them! They have lots of apples.” That response actually made me feel better, because if she had been willing to promise instantly, then I wouldn’t have known whether she had any intention of keeping the promise. But the fact that she was resisting suggested that her word meant something to her.
“Yeah, but these ones are special to them, and you have lots of options for exotic fruit too,” I pointed out. “I mean, if your wings are really so powerful and can carry you anywhere, even over the steppes of Kirajistan? These golden apples seem like pretty low-hanging fruit compared to that, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
She just blinked at me. I didn’t think she recognized the expression as anything other than literal. She probably didn’t talk to too many humans.
“Fine, I promise,” she sighed. “Do you wish to possess me now?”
“Er, what?” I asked.
“I’m not going to keep you in a cage or something, I would never do that,” another of my selves said. “I just needed to hang onto you to make sure you wouldn’t fly away without promising.”
“That is not what I meant,” she said. “I would never relinquish my freedom to a man, any man. I would sooner die.”
“… Then what did you mean, exactly?” I asked warily.
I all let go of my grip on her limbs. But she didn’t fly away or change back into a giant bird, as I half expected her to do.
“Do you wish to fertilize my eggs?” she asked. “I don’t think they would be viable, but you never know. And if it worked out, you would never meet them anyway, but somewhere in the world, your offspring would have beautiful wings, even though you yourself are forever doomed to be flightless.”
“Yes,” I croaked. She was beautiful, not more beautiful than Florenia, but beautiful in such a strange and alien way that I would have done just about anything in that moment for the chance that she was freely and nonchalantly offering me without even being asked. When else was I ever going to get the chance to fuck a fiery winged woman with skin that looked like it was painted with sunlight? “I mean, of course I do. But… are you sure? I mean, you don’t have to do this or anything, just because I… caught you.”
“It is not easy to catch me,” she said. “Only one man has ever done it before you, and I offered him the same chance. He accepted, and he did not regret it. You will not either. I believe that if a man can resist or overcome my magics in some way that enables him to catch me, then he has a form of power I do not, which would be worth passing on to my brood. So, I think it is worth a try. Or four tries, in your case.”
She did ask twice, sort of, but she didn’t have to ask for a third time.
One of my selves stripped off my clothes while she watched, before any of me touched her. I wanted her to make a fully informed decision, because this was going to be awkward if she didn’t know much about human anatomy and was expecting some kind of birdman hybrid anatomy. I didn’t even know anything about bird anatomy, or how birds fucked, but I just hoped the firebird understood that if we were going to do this, it was going to have to be the human way.
It also unsettled me a little that she never smiled or gazed at me through her lashes the way other women did when they were trying to flirt with me, but I guess that was because she had just never picked up those human mannerisms. Her intense black eyes did gleam with what I thought was excitement, though, and when I stepped in to embrace her and brushed my hand against one of her nipples, it was definitely hard.
Her cascading golden tresses and her perfect ivory-skinned body were illuminated by her flaming wings. My other three selves stood back and enjoyed the sight as my first self began to engage with her, kissed her, and ran my hands along her marble back and through her curly mane, then reached down between our bodies to the patch of coarser golden hair between her legs and slid my middle finger into her tight entrance. She was wet and ready for me. When she felt my finger enter her, she sighed and tilted her hips toward me to push it farther inside of her.
I pulled my finger out and wrapped my arms around the firebird with the intention of laying her down on the ground. I wasn’t quite sure what positions we could do without injuring her wings, but she didn’t seem to have any fear of me despite the way I had grabbed her and knocked her twenty feet out of the air when we first met, and I had a feeling she wasn’t fragile the way ordinary birds were.
But she wrapped her arms around me in return and then, instead of allowing herself to be lifted, the firebird pumped her massive wings so that they showered sparks of light into the shadows around us and bore us both several feet into the air. I was startled and refle
xively clutched at her as we continued to rise, this time not trying to grope her or pleasure her, just trying to get a grip somewhere that would prevent me from falling back to earth.
Then she flipped herself onto her back with her wings still pumping to suspend both of us. I was pretty sure that normal birds couldn’t stay airborne in that position, but the firebird seemed able to maintain it easily, so I didn’t worry about it, I just clung onto her like a table, a beautiful human-shaped table. She had her head tossed back, her arms flung outward, and her legs spread, bent at the knees with her calves and feet dangling down, so that her whole body was sort of arched toward the sky. I kept one arm wrapped around her back with my hand gripping the juncture of one wing at her shoulder blade and used the other to guide my cock between her thighs. By this point we were about fifty feet off the ground and spiraling in lazy circles, so it was a good thing it was a really snug fit.
It felt amazing, but I also had a weird sense of vertigo, and in midair, it was hard for me to gain any good leverage for thrusting. The firebird, however, seemed to be used to the lack of a solid surface beneath us and had much better airborne physical coordination than I did. She wrapped her legs around me and rocked her hips from beneath me with much more power and speed than most women could manage even with a solid surface under them. I quickly gave up on trying to contribute to the rhythm and accepted that fifty feet off the ground, we were in the firebird’s territory.
Then, she rotated us into a vertical intertwined position again and closed her wings to bring us into a near free fall. The sensation of her thrusting combined with the head rush of falling somehow combined into a feeling of absolute ecstatic freedom that brought me to orgasm a second before she pumped her wings to slow us down, and we alighted safely on the ground.
That self collapsed in a panting heap, while the firebird reached out her shimmering arms for my next self who was ready and waiting.
That time, we reversed positions. We stayed on the ground, for which I was thankful since I still collectively felt a little dizzy, and I lay down while she straddled me. Then I bucked my hips and watched my movements course through her body and set her pale breasts and her golden hair bouncing. I watched the point of our conjunction where my shaft split her open, and the dazzling sight of her flaming wings spread out behind her. Then they flared even brighter and blinded me completely for an instant as she arched her back and climaxed with a bird-like cry.
