A cool breeze blows across your face, putting your mind at ease with a calm and dreamy feeling. The feathers of your wings rustle in the breeze, flexing and adjusting, letting you turn through the sky with barely a thought. Trees and rivers seem to bend and flow beneath you, so distant and yet so close. Your body seems to move effortlessly wherever you want it to go. Even realizing that you're dreaming doesn't ruin the experience. It's the kind of fantasy that could last forever.
The harsh jeer of your alarm clock sends you scrambling upright, each ring thudding in your ears. Well, so much for that. A quick slap is all it takes to silence it as you pull your blankets down and rub your eyes. The room is still dark with only faint moonlight shining through the curtains. Shouldn't it be morning? You stare blearily down at the digital display. The numbers "3:45" blink up at you dispassionately. Still over four hours until work. You fumble with the clock's tiny buttons and set your alarm to a more proper time. You pull your covers back up and close your eyes, glad that you can at least have a bit more time to rest as you wait for sleep to come.
There's a special kind of comfort that only warm blankets can bring. A few moments are all that you need to start drifting off again, but a sense of unease keeps you from falling asleep completely. You can hear someone else breathing quietly, leaning over you, even stifling a giggle. There shouldn't be anyone else in the room and yet you know that you aren't dreaming. But how did they get in? Slowly, carefully, you open one of your eyes just a crack, not wanting to startle the intruder and let them get the jump on you.
You open your eyes just a crack. You can see the intruder standing there, a big reddish shape. Your eyes adjust as you see the intruder lean closer, yellow eyes gleaming inhumanly. It's a huge scarlet macaw, fluffy and fat. It stands up with a straight posture, just like a man. Its curved beak opens into what might be called a grin, as if it's reveling in your confusion. It stands with a straight posture and folding its wing-like arms over the bright red feathers of its downright paunchy looking belly. It leans down closer before you can react, examining you with huge yellow eyes. "Aww, did I wake you up?" The parrot's voice is reedy and croaky but clearly male. You might have thought that the bird was someone wearing a suit, but his eyes look around the room and his beak clacks softly as he chuckles. "You were having such a wonderful dream too."
A hundred questions are raised in your mind all at once. Most importantly, how could he even know what you were dreaming? The macaw has a very calm but playful demeanor even as you struggle to keep from panicking. "Sorry about your clock. I can never figure out how they work!" He seems to be holding something under his wing but the long colourful feathers keep you from seeing what it is. "But now is as good a time for a ring as later!" He snickers as if he just told a hilarious joke. "Allow me to introduce myself." He picks up your alarm clock and shakes it a few times, The digits on the display scramble and flicker for a few seconds before spelling out the word, "R:IO." He seems to be quite nimble with his hands despite having no visible fingers.
"Your name is Rio?" You ask him as you see the name on the alarm clock, wondering how he even did that the clock's digital display. But you have more important questions on your mind. "What the heck are you doing here? What do you even want? I'm calling the police if you don't leave right now!" But the fat parrot only laughs at you. "Good! So full of questions, you are!" He pushes you back with a feathery hand, swaying towards you like a drunk and boorish friend. "And you got my name right! You certainly are a clever little cookie." He refuses to leave. Your gaze wanders down to his wing just as you prepare to ask him again or even force him out of your home. Something is glimmering there, the tip of a bright golden scepter. There's a smiling caricature of a macaw on the tip, but you aren't sure whether it's Rio or some other bird. It looks almost like what you'd expect to see a king or queen holding, at least if they were insane and bird obsessed. Rio hefts it up with a feathery arm and holds it in front of you with a relaxed ease that suggests that it's made of more than just gold. Your find yourself staring at it, transfixed by something more than just beauty. Rio coos and holds the scepter up in his wing, pointing it directly at your chest. "A clever little cookie indeed..."
He holds the rod up as if he's about to hit you with it. But he doesn't, even as you raise your hands up to protect yourself. The inset emerald eyes on the parrot headed staff shine brightly as a brilliant golden light pours out of them and washes over your body. Your skin prickles and tickles wherever the light touches, passing through your pajamas as if you weren't wearing anything. The thought of fighting back keeps crossing your mind as Rio takes a few steps towards you, but whenever you look up at him you lose all desire for resistance. In fact, you almost have to fight off the urge to smile. "Good! Good!" Rio exclaims as he hops toward you, still bathing you in the light's radiance. "Very good!" There's a feeling of soft insulation around your entire body, like being underwater but without the obvious wetness. A shiver passes down your spine, giving you goosebumps and making all your hairs stand on end.
You stumble back into a corner, realizing that it's impossible to get away. "Is that better?" Rio coos, leering over you. You hold your hands up seeing your fingers bend and fuse, long feathers sprouting and unfurling all across your forearms. As hard as you try to flex your fingers, they've become little more than useless stubs. Your wing feathers are beautiful, a vibrant blue across the top and brilliant gold underneath. But you shake your head. "No!" You yell at him. "Why are you doing this!?" Your voice has a reedy, gravelly tone which already sounds a bit like a parrot's squawk. The sound catches you by surprise. Rio clicks his beak and smiles. "I'm helping you! Haha, what a silly bird..."
He holds the staff down right over your face, close enough that you can hear a rhythmic hum as the light spreads down over you even more. "But-" you stammer, feeling a vibration in your throat. "Buh..." You close your eyes, feeling a desperate sense of shame as your voice comes out as nothing more than a loud, throaty squawk. Your tongue feels stiff and round and your lips feel hard, too hard to bend and shape into words. The noise comes only from a vibration in your throat. It's embarrassing despite how natural the sound feels to make. Perhaps being natural is what makes it embarrassing?
You blink up at the staff with beady eyes, as you feel your mouth, teeth, and nose tremble and fuse into the stubby beginning of a curved beak. Rio continues, "Ever since I found this staff, my life has been so so so much better." You look up at the staff, seeing the bright green and blue feathers across your forehead, the same feathers that you can feel prickling in your skin. The skin of your cheek sags and then grows tight as it's tugged around the base of your rapidly growing beak. "It showed me your dream, hee hee. Sneaky peeky." Soft down spreads across your belly. You can feel your stomach bulge and push out, stretching the fabric of your pajama shirt. "It brought me here... So I can make your life better too!"
The glimmer of the rod's light draws your eyes towards it, making it hard to think of anything else. You might have been afraid or embarrassed, especially now as you feel your birdlike thighs spreading apart, making your pants fall into a pile around your scaly feet. You can only cower back, filled with shame as you feel every part of your humanity slipping away. You almost want Rio to be more terrifying or imposing. You want to resist or fight back. But he only smiles and reassures you. "Good... Good..." His voice is like a gentle coo as he leans down and pets across your beak with a winglike hand.
You feel dizzy and lightheaded as the world around you seems both clear and strange at the same time. Part of you knows that this room is still your room, or that it used to be, but it doesn't feel like home anymore. It's as if you've wandered into it for the first time. You hold your wings up and spread out your feathers, barely remembering the feel of fingers. Rio continues petting you, making you feel a bit humbled and humiliated, but it's comfortable enough that you don't want him to stop. You look up at him and around your old room, realizing why the atmosphere is so strange. Everything looms around you, seeming wide and large. Even your pajama shirt seems to grow around you, eventually covering you like a blanket. It prickles your feathers when it rubs the wrong way.
Rio still holds you as he reaches down and tugs your shirt off, leaving you staring down at the bright looking feathers of your round belly. He lowers his rod towards your head, holding it so closely that you can feel its vibration inside you, from your beak down to your toes. It makes your eyes water and your feathers tingle. "Good bird..." Rio whispers. "Now, say hello..." You look up at him, suddenly confused. Why was he asking you that? He sighs, clearly wanting you to speak for him. "Can you say hello for me? Hee hee..." Rio still laughs in the same maddeningly amused way, the corners of his beak curled into a savage grin. "Say hello!" Cold metal touches the feathers on the back of your head, sending a shiver down your spine. Everything goes white.
You wake up.
How did you wake up? You know that you weren't asleep. You feel safe and comfortable, as if you've been here a long time. And yet you know you were somewhere else before. Where were you? You can't quite remember. You hear a calm voice talking to you. You can't understand what it's saying, but you know what it wants you to do. "Hello! Say hello!" It's not Rio's voice. It's a human voice, but you can't understand it. When you hear that sound you can only think of one thing that you were supposed to do. "Say hello!" The voice commands. You tighten your feet around your perch, feeling a bit insecure. You look up at the human face, its expression strange and distant, so uncolourful. You open your beak tentatively. "Hello?" You make the sound in your throat. The human holds up a bright, colourful grape and rubs it at the side of your beak. You accept the offering graciously, closing your eyes as you swallow it and feel the cold juice in your gizzard. You had done well.
You still see an odd figure sometimes. He's a parrot like you, but big and fat and with a face that smiles broad as any human's. He talks like a human too, whispering things when nobody else is around. He chuckles when you see him and laughs when you talk to him. It's as if he knows something that you don't. You quite can't understand why, but it fills you with shame and embarrassment.
