Flyboy's flightless surprise

[Ava]

[Refs]

Oh Cayde. Poor sweet, innocent. stupid Cayde. The All-Mother and Lady of Autumn were not people you would seek anything fashion as a favour for. It's not that they wouldn't, it's more that something like that would actually be asking too much of a literal higher power. She wasn't going to abuse what time they've already given them like that.

She seemed content with Cayde pressed up against her. This was nice. This was very nice. And then he got up. What? No, this wasn't supposed to happen. Well, at least not now. She didn't plan for after this but now the boy was up and moving to the kitchen to make...food. She gave this look of questioning. Just because she was a falcon didn't mean she could have human food. Cayde just didn't allow it for some reason. She rolled her eyes, raw dead animals were fine too. It was meat and meat was good.

Oh well, she wasn't going to question of chastise him over it. He seemed happy. Thrilled to bits, really. She got up to stretch, might as well do something instead of laze around in her new form. Although... As she got up and stretched her back by raising her arms and leaning back slightly. This was a different feeling from being a bird.

[Sparky]

[Refs]

    Cheerful, bright, bubbly, and warm. Cayde continued to hum that happy tune as he prepared a meal for his best friend in the entire world. It was exciting, being able to do such a thing! Bacon? Crispy and delicious. A nice pile of slices for the apex-predator queen herself. Pancakes? Fluffy, golden-brown. Give it a flip and stack em three high with lots of butter and drizzled with pure maple syrup. Cayde considered making something for himself, but after he finished the first plate, something had begun to nag at his body. It overtook any hunger he might have had. The young pilot didn't let whatever it  was show, though, as he set the plate on the coffee table before Ava, alongside a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. 

    The blond haired boy settled down back on the couch next to the grand woman and smiled wider than ever. He was giddy. Excited. He couldn't wait to see how she'd react! Oh she's going to love them! It's so much different than anything she's had before. All sweet and buttery and fluffy and delicious. There's no way she's not going to love em! A clean, silver fork was stabbed into the top of the pancake pile, a butter knife set beside the stack. There was no way Ava hadn't seen them use these before. Given she grew up along Cayde's family, there was no way in hell the woman hadn't seen the family use these utensils all the time when they ate. Save for when they had things like sandwiches or other foods one ate with their hands. 

    In all the years they'd been together, she had to at least understand, from experience alone, how to use these things given Ava watched them eat with them two to three meals a day for years on end. That was like, the easiest thing she could know about being a person at this point. Right? Oh gods please don't be super dumb and clueless right now. 

    One can only hope.
    
    Cayde, however, was slowly losing a battle he had no chance of winning. While all the excitement of Ava's human form had distracted from it for a moment, there was on fact that really could not be forgotten or ignored right now.  Cayde hadn't slept. At all. He pulled an all-nighter. Quickly fading, nodding off more and more each second, the young pilot was really trying desperately hard. He so badly wanted to see Ava try his food! He wanted to see her reaction! He wanted to see it so, so bad. 

    Hold on Cayde. Just a bit Longer. You can do this. You can...! Fighting with every fiber of his exhausting body, screaming in protest every second he spent awake, the young man held on. The young man held on just long enough to see her take her first bite, to see her reaction. Immediately after, though, with a big, dopey smile, sleep finally won it's battle. The young pilot passed out with the flip of a switch, slowly, falling to the side and into the realm of sleep... resting up against Ava as he did so. 

[Ava]

[Refs]

The food smelled good. Actually, good was an understatement. It smelled delicious. He placed the plate down in front of her as well as those weird shiny sticks he used to eat with. She sat there and stared at the food, wanting to finally try this stuff but she seemed troubled as to how to use those sticks.

Cayde would hold these sticks. That was a start. She reached over to pick up one of them. It had a single ridged edge and was flat on the other side. Now, mind you. She knew he used these. She didn't pay enough attention to figure out which was used for what and how. She held it awkwardly, the knife end sticking out behind her pinky, the handle sticking out slightly between her thumb and index finger. She knew it went into the food to pick it up. Here goes nothing... 

She moved her arm down to stab the food. It seemed to grab onto the food but not in a way that would actually pick up the food. There was another stick, with four prongs lined up. Maybe that would work? She was a smart bird. Ava placed the knife down on the table and picked up the fork instead, holding it in a similar fashion as the knife. She stabbed it into the food and tilted it. It seemed to actually grab. What was the point of the other thing? Absolutely useless thing. Sheesh.

Ava picked up the entire pancake, trying to figure out how Cayde could eat like this. He made it look so easy. Ava preferred her method, using her talons and just shredding stuff with her beak if need be. She leaned forward and tried to use her now human mouth to take a bite and grab the food. Man she must have looked like a total idiot. She did. She absolutely did. She knew that and hated that. But she was still going to try to eat this food that Cayde made. She wasn't going to disappoint the boy. At least give her credit for trying to human, okay? This was hard!

She would rather just grab this stuff with her tal- hands. That's what they were called right? They were as close to her talons as she could get but no, she'd try to properly human for Cayde. This was awful. Why would they make eating so complicated? She managed to get a bite of it and then tried to swallow the bite whole. Birds didn't really chew on food. The pancake itself was tough to swallow. It was just so squishy? It was fluffy and sweet, the maple syrup the only thing helping the pancakes go down. She gasped after, Ava thought that pancake was going to get stuck in her throat. The sweetness was a taste she never had before. It was different, but she wasn't impartial to it. 

Next was the bacon. Meat. Not raw though. It was cooked and seemingly hardened. She used the fork to try to pick up a piece. She was successful until it fell off and she had to try again. She managed after a few tries to get a piece of bacon balanced on the fork and then took a bite. It didn't break like the pancake did so she did what she could to put the entire piece in her mouth. It was a much different taste and feel than the pancake and meat she was accustomed to eating. It was tough but juices flooded out along with grease that gave it some kind of savory flavour raw meat didn't. The meat itself was tough, crisp but not burnt to the point where it was crunchy. She tried to swallow, gagging a bit as it was an entire piece of bacon going down her throat instead of a bite. It was scratchy against her throat, not a feeling she'd like. Surely humans had a better way to eat? Right? 

When she was sure she wasn't going to die to a stray piece of bacon, she looked around to see Cayde was out cold. She guessed this was a better chance for her to not use these stupid metal sticks and use her hands instead. She tore them into smaller chunks and and them in more manageable bites. She still couldn't figure out chewing but now that the food was in smaller pieces, it was better for her to focus on the flavours instead.These tastes were all too new for her but she wouldn't mind trying them again.