Phoenix

"Uh, is that normal? The crying or the screaming or whatever...?" asked the second voice.

"Maybe. The old body can fire off all sorts of weird hormones and neurotransmitters as it burns away, which can have strong effects on the new body—or bodies," said the first voice. "Are those tears? I guess that means at least a fragment of you got transferred over. Griffins don't cry."

"Birdcat, you think your whole species is so tough and grizzled?"

"Not at all, scale-butt. What I meant was that literally we don't cry. Having tears come from your eyes during moments of extreme emotion is a side effect of using facial musculature to express your emotional state. Humans and dragons do that, but not griffins."

"Huh."

Alstrom was still too overcome to do anything—he couldn't move, speak, or even stop sobbing. But gradually over the course of several long minutes he started to get used to all the new sensations and he began to get things under control.

His breathing calmed and he managed to squint open his eyes. The world was still bright and intense, but now he could see without being blinded. He was in a forest, surrounded by blackened grass and loose feathers everywhere. Sitting in front of him were two quadrupedal creatures—a griffin with feathers of slate-grey, and a huge drake with scales of flat blue. The griffin looked to be about his size, but the drake seemed ridiculously large, bigger than any dragon Alstrom had ever previously met. But as he kept staring at this strange dragon, Alstrom found memories rushing into place as he suddenly remembered everything.

The griffin wasn't just any random griffin; she was Sunfire in a smaller body. And the dragon wasn't just any dragon, he was...himself. Which therefore meant that Alstrom (as he thought of himself) wasn't actually Alstrom—this fact was confirmed when he glanced down and saw that instead of scales, he had feathers of dark brown.

He was a griffin.

Sunfire took a few steps closer and raised several feathers that were running down the back of her neck in a crest. Alstrom somehow knew this gesture combined with her posture to indicate encouragement, but where this information had come from he could not discern. There were memories in his head that did not belong to him, so it seemed the transfer had somehow worked. He had been a dragon, who was now in a griffin's body, with some memories copied over from a real griffin.

Alstrom (the griffin) coughed, gasped, and tried to get his mouth working. "Ahhk...mmrff...nahhh..." He was struggling through an intense sense of dissociation. This blue-scaled dragon in front of him wasn't actually a big dragon—he was just a normal sized adult drake, which meant that Alstrom was the one who was small. He was a fluffy little griffin kitten, and his damn beak wasn't working like his snout had used to. "Ahkk...gkk..."

"Is it trying to talk?" asked the dragon—the original Alstrom.

"Sounds like it," replied Sunfire. She sat down on her haunches, but leaned in towards Alstrom (the griffin). "Who's in there? Are you me, or are you him?" she asked, tapping her forepaw against her own chest, then gesturing to the huge blue-scaled dragon in turn.

"Akk!" Alstrom finally managed to get his throat clear. "Fuck!" he screamed.

Sunfire leaned back, her crest feathers drooping back down. "Really? Your first words ever for this new life, and that's what you choose?" She turned to the dragon. "Sounds like he's a copy of you, not me."

Alstrom struggled to his feet. His legs felt wobbly, but surprisingly enough he managed to remaining standing. "Eh? I'm a griffin? I'm not a dragon anymore. I'm a damned birdcat! I'm Alstrom...but I'm not? I'm a copy. A copy put into a griffin's body?!"

Alstrom (the dragon) had a rather amused expression, and Alstrom (the griffin) suddenly had an intense desire to run up to his old body and slap that smug look off his face. Had he always been such a self-assured twat? "So it worked? Wow. What's it like in there?" asked the dragon.

"It's a damn—squawk—mess! I'm covered in feathers and everything sucks! Whose dumb idea was this anyway?" Alstrom paused as this thought confused him. "You were the one who agreed to this process," he said, pointing at the dragon who had he used to be. "But I'm the one in this body? Except that I was you? You're Alstrom, but so am I?"

"Whenever griffins have a fission of consciousness, we usually both take new names to help keep things from getting confusing," Sunfire suggested.

"Ah." Alstrom the dragon nodded as he had a sudden revelation. "So that's why you griffins always have such stupid names like Maplecray or Giggledew! It's because you have to come up with new names every thirty years, but you can't reuse names from the past because the memories would get confusing! I get it now."

"Exactly!" agreed Sunfire. "Sunfire isn't a stupid name, though," she quickly added. "Besides, my consciousness wasn't split, so I can keep going by Sunfire. You two are the ones who need to figure out new names. At least one of you will have to change name; it's going to get confusing if you both go by Alstrom."

Alstrom the dragon shook his head. He pointed a paw towards the tiny griffin version of himself. "I'm not changing anything. He can be the one changing name since he's the griffin. It's like we're brothers now, except that I'm older than you, so I make the rules. How about we call you, uh, Tiny?"

Alstrom the griffin shook his head, but this gesture made him lose his balance and collapse back onto the forest floor. "What? Don't you call me Tiny you miserable, arrogant twat. This is all your fault. If we're brothers, then you're a horrible older brother."

The other Alstrom just looked amused. "You know what, I'll give you this much—you've got a lot of spunk for such a tiny little griffin. How about we call you, Spunk, instead?"

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you too, Spunk."

"If I might interrupt?" Sunfire said. "I have more experience with coming up with new names than you two. How about...Gale?"

Alstrom (the griffin) frowned, and he felt the feathers above his head rising up automatically. "Gale? Why?"

"Griffin and Alstrom makes...Galstrom, which shortens to Gale," Sunfire explained. She looked pleased with her solution.

Both Alstroms turned to stare at each other, then at Sunfire. "That's so stupid," they said in unison.

"But I'll take it," continued the newly-born griffin. "At least it sounds like something fast and powerful—Gale! Yeah, that's not so bad."

"Alright, so now what?" Alstrom asked.

"Now that we've got the names settled, we check the second most important part." Sunfire walked over to Gale, and before he could react she shoved him over onto his back.

"Hey!" he grumbled, but Sunfire ignored his complaint and pointed towards his underbelly.

"Well look at that—you lucked out and actually got a male body. I guess that should make it easier for you to adapt to your new life."

"Eh?" Gale stared at the space between his legs, feeling confused once more. Somewhat obscured behind all his feathers, a short tube of flesh dangled from his loins. "Is that my...it just dangles out? Male griffins don't have genital slits?"

"No. Males have what's called a sheath. And hey look, I've got one too." Sunfire raised a hindleg, revealing her underbelly, where she also had a penis.

Alstrom snorted. "So you're a he now."

"No, I'm not really picky about being called either a he or a she. Look at this..." With her (his?) hindleg still raised, Sunfire used a forepaw to gesture lower down on her underbelly. "I've got the female parts too, cause I'm a herm. That's what happens when you have male and female griffin children sharing a womb—the male's hormones makes the female grow a penis too. End result is a herm, with maximum compatibility for whatever you desire."

Gale couldn't help but stare at the griffin beside him. "That's so weird."

"Yeah, it is," Alstrom agreed.

Gale sat up straight, and he started using his paws to prod and explore his body. "Actually, now I kind of wish that this body was a herm, or even female. I wonder what sex would feel like..."

Alstrom chuckled. "You little pervert!"

"Hey, I'm you, remember? So you're a pervert too! Hey, Sunfire, how long do griffins take to grow up?"

"It'll be five years before we'll hit full maturity," Sunfire said.

Gale sat back on his haunches and grabbed his sheath with a paw. "So I have to wait five years before this thing works? Hm. That's a long time to be abstinent. At least it's better than waiting twenty years, like a dragon."

"No, no; you don't have to wait. It will be five years before you can reproduce and trigger a new lifebond, but if all you want is an orgasm you can do that right away," Sunfire replied nonchalantly, to which Alstrom and Gale both gave her shocked looks.

"Wait so I could just...rub myself off right now?" Gale asked.

"Yep. You won't be able to ejaculate for five years, but you can certainly masturbate." Sunfire rolled over onto her back and made a rubbed her own sheath a few times, then she moved her paws lower and pointed to an orifice which was partially covered by her grey feathers. "Or we can have sex, which works great to relieve stress. Uh...that offer is open to you—" She pointed at Gale, then at the dragon who was several times larger than them both. "—but not really to you, Alstrom. I mean, obviously you won't fit inside me. Sorry."

Alstrom glanced around and swallowed nervously. "This feels...wrong."

"Why? We were just having sex a short while ago. Surely you don't feel that griffins are that unappealing," Sunfire replied.

"No, it's not about your being a griffin. It's about you being all small and...child-like. It just feels wrong." Alstrom shook his head. "I don't know. Children are supposed to be pure and innocent, and sex is such a mature, adult thing. That's just a basic fact of drakken society—we treasure hatchlings and protect them, because they aren't ready to protect themselves. But I guess griffins don't think of children in the same way we do. Now you're a child, except that your mind is the same and you're mentally an adult, so... But I still think it feels wrong to think of you in that way."

"Oh? It makes you feel wrong?" Gale stood up and he tested his stance until he was sure that his legs could easily support him. In had only been a short time, but now he was able to move around surprisingly well for only just having been born. The tiny griffin trotted over to Alstom and started humping one of his hindpaws. "Does this make you feel awkward? Does it?"

"You really are a tiny little pervert!" Alstrom picked up a large feather from the ground and poked the little griffin's side with it, forcing him to stop under the tickling onslaught. "Sunfire, you must be a real deviant, because I'm a paragon of virtue and this behaviour can't have come from my duplicated mind alone."

Sunfire stretched out her wings and cleared her throat. "Ahem! No, this is all you."

Gale twitched as the feather tickled his side. "Ahk! Help! I'm being assaulted! No, more than that—I'm being sexually assaulted by this giant pervert dragon! Mmff!" His mock pleas for help were smothered as Alstrom grabbed even more loose feathers off the ground and dumped the over him.

Gale managed to burrow out of the feather pile just in time to see Alstrom glance around the forest clearing where his camp was. "So many feathers, but I expected more gore. What happened to your old body?"

"It burned away, converted into pure magic which powered the lifebond and transferred or copied our minds," Sunfire explained. "All that's left of my last life are all two young, healthy, possibly insane griffin fledges, and a whole mess of feathers."

It was true—hundreds of brown feathers were scattered around the clearing, spread out in a circular pattern around them. The ground was also slightly blackened from where the magic had burnt it.

"So what happens now?" Gale asked. He and Alstrom both turned to Sunfire for the answer.

"Well, the lifebond has been done and it seems to have worked. It'll be a few days before we have enough strength to fly, and then we can start heading back to my home eyrie." Sunfire nodded towards Gale. "That is, if you don't mind sticking with me for a while. I can introduce you to other griffins I know, and tell you more about our society to help you integrate in."

"I guess that's the plan," Gale agreed. "I'm a griffin now, so I don't expect I'd be very welcome back in Avaeria. Wow, this is really so strange. It's going to take a while to get used to this."

"Alright. First though..." Sunfire turned towards Alstrom, and she awkwardly pawed the ground as she prepared to ask him another favour. "Do you mind flying us back to the Rasterin Mountains? It's a long journey for two fledges."

"And now I'm forced into parenthood," Alstrom muttered, but he didn't sound upset. "Sure, I can fly you two over to the Rasterins. And I suppose you need food too?"

Sunfire nodded. "As you can see, griffin fledges are born far more ready to face the world than dragon hatchlings are, but you're definitely a much better hunter than us."

"I know it." Alstrom walked over to the vizriak carcass, which had been partially scorched by the rebirthing magic, and was now looking crispy. "Go ahead, tuck in."

Gale and Sunfire trotted over.

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END