You sit, quietly. It's weird to think about, but in this very moment your life is about to change. Massively. If you want it to. Hell, it's already changed a lot. You steal another glance at the Turkey woman and try not to visibly flinch when you realize she's looking square at you. Her gaze is lackadaisical and accompanied by a soft expression. At least, as soft as a hard-beaked face can give. You place your hand on the gear shift and almost follow through with reversing out of there when a realization hits you. For some reason, though it is unnerving, you don't feel like her staring at you is that unexpected. Something on the packaging mentioned this. You calmly and deliberately tuck the aviators into your shirt collar and pull the paper labelling from the passenger's seat. You can't help but try to seem rational now that you know you're being watched.
Observe as everyone you see flocks to you. It's third on the list of instructions. Well, you're definitely being observed right now. Does that count? She's still staring at you. You're intentionally not looking at her, but you can tell out of the corner of your eye that she's still doing it. You attempt to ignore her by doing the same thing; you look up at yourself in the rear-view mirror. Still fresh and even renewed on it, the final line of the instructions repeats itself in your head. If you need to have your life take off, spare a glance in the mirror. You think about it for a moment longer.
Just as deliberately as before, you pull at the aviators, removing them from their just recently decided holster. The motion feels lightning quick to you, and you only realize how slowly you were actually moving when the frames come into view as you actively maintain eye contact with yourself in the rear-view. You stop them just shy of actually being able to see yourself through them. You're really going to do this. It's not a question-- more like a reassurance. Briefly, you wonder what this will do to you and decide to think of your favorite bird just in case. You'd hate to end up a kiwi or something. No, if it was going to make you a bird, you wanted to be an eagle. A Bald Eagle. It wasn't patriotism or anything; you just thought they were cool and you don't ever see them around here. You grit your teeth. You're distracting yourself. You quickly push the aviators onto your face, maintaining self-eye contact before you can change your mind.
The difference is immediate, and truly weird. Weird because it felt like nothing happened at all. Truly weird because you can clearly see a different person staring back at you. An entirely different creature. The eyes are piercing, and you can't help but twitch your own eyes before realizing that this gaze is still your own. Still, though, it takes a few more seconds of dodging eye-contact with yourself before you internalize that fact. You are a bald-eagle person, and now was a human being. God your eyes are piercing. You pull the aviators off and their scraping against your beak coupled with a look at your hand breaks the spell you had on yourself. You look down at the glasses and gasp. A very muscular, male, and most importantly, nude body fills your view. You're absolutely covered in brownish-white feathers. They're packed tight enough against your body that you can just make out the chiseled form underneath. It would not be considered bragging to say you were a cousin of Adonis. Or his pet bird.
You crack a smile at your own joke and feel puzzled as that too feels no different to before. That shouldn't be the case because you're keenly aware of the bright yellow beak now filling your inner peripheral vision. A bright yellow hand rushes up to greet it, and you only just now notice the distinct look of your own hand. It looks inspired by the talon of a regular eagle, but still able to grasp things like a human. This leads to the next epiphany as you realize how good your vision is, and push your claw-tipped hand as far away from you as possible. Even at arms length, you can make out the tiny little rough textured skin with fine detail. You could do the same for the beak on your face if you wanted to. It's a good thing you can pretend it's not even there like your old nose, or else it'd be like holding a highlighter against your face all day.
You shuffle a bit as you start to feel your extra appendages. Your wings. All too suddenly, the truly weird feeling returns as they feel normal to you. Actually they feel cramped. You're not sure how you even got in the car with them, but it wasn't good enough. You pull the seat adjuster lever without thinking about it, and then as naturally as if you had been born with them, use your wings to push the back of the seat away. They were pretty much an extra pair of arms without the luxury of coming with another set of hands. The oncoming pins-and-needles feeling of being pinched goes away, and a sense of relief comes over you. You're brought back to your actual arms as a stray thought, which brings you back to your hands, which finally leads you back to your face.
A fake and intense smile fills your face as you bring your claw-tipped hands to inspect it. You feel the corners of your mouth curled up in a familiar fashion. Like lips. Even though your whole face is a lot longer than before, you seem to be able to move and more importantly, feel just like before. It's hard to explain. The best way to put it is that you've kept your full range of motion for displaying emotion. Another said emotion flashes across your face as your keen eyesight instantly flicks towards the magic shop. The turkey is moving.
She walks with a gait one might expect a person who is half-human and half-turkey would walk. You don't actually know if the distribution is fifty-fifty, but there is enough human in there to function like one. She displays this by giving you another smile once she herself notices that you've noticed her. The magic shop door chimes as she steps out onto the sidewalk and lazily makes her way to your car window. You don't realize what she's doing until she leans down towards your car window. That leaning definitely gives away that there's something underneath that plumage. You mentally kick yourself out of it and roll down the window for her.
"Hey--" she cooes curiously, "is everything okay? Do you like your purchase? You've been sitting in front of the store for a while."
"Oh!" You say with a start. That's true. "Uh, I'm just fine. I've just been sitting here enjoying my new-- sunglasses." Sitting in your car and enjoying your sunglasses. The genuineness of actually saying that to another living being would've made you cringe had you not been distracted by the fact that having a giant beak did not hinder your capability of speech in the slightest.
"Mhm," she hums back, knowingly, having just as little trouble with her own beak before saying, "you know, I can tell that I'm probably not the same as I was when I woke up this morning." You automatically give a sheepish look like you've been caught, and it must have translated very well because she simply laughs in response.
"It's all right, you followed the rules and didn't open your product in the store, so that's on me. Besides, I can't actually tell what's different, and I quite like my life as it is at the moment, so it's whatever."
You visibly relax, and her smile becomes a bit sly.
"Still, I've never seen another bird person until now, and I would really like to chat until that becomes unknowingly untrue for me."
She resets her stance.
"My shift ends with the store closing, which is always at sunset. Magic shops are like that. So how about we meet back up then and grab a bite?"
Before you respond, you quickly notice that her eyes weren't meeting yours. You follow her line of sight and can't help but gasp as it leads to your groin. She was totally getting an eye-full! It's only now that you realize that your balls are visibly present. Seems like you were more human than bird in some places. Another laugh brings your gaze back to the turkey woman. You must look scandalized because she brings up her winged hands in defense. Huh-- her wings are also her hands. Is it because she's flightless? Odd.
"Sorry, it's just that it's obvious you haven't been like that long. You're checking yourself out like you're a new car."
"Well," you start-- and it's more defensive than you meant, "that's because I haven't been. I wasn't a bald eagle person until just a minute ago."
"See that wild," she gives a bewildered gesture, "I remember you being like that the whole time I was helping you. Ha, it's no wonder you didn't seem interested in me."
You briefly consider telling her that she used to be a tall, lanky twenty-something guy before realizing that that may be overstepping something. Instead, you respond to her offer.
"You know what? Sure, let's get dinner. I have no idea what I can and cannot eat now so it'll be something."
"Well," she shrugs, "if you're like me you can still eat anything you want. Turkey if you want, but I doubt you'd be able to legally find Bald Eagle meat."
"We can talk more about it later," the Turkey woman continues when you give her an odd look, "the name is Analeigh."
Before you can return the favor of disclosing your name, a dire sounding alarm goes off. It's coming from the turkey-- Analeigh. Out of seemingly nowhere, the phone she was browsing earlier materializes as she desperately swipes away at the screen. She displays some noticeable difficulty.
"All right gotta go like right now, I've got an app-- magic-- that alerts me when there's a high probability of another customer being able to find the shop and well--" she holds up the phone screen to you as if it finishes her sentence. It's literally just a white screen. She turns to leave, shouting about not forgetting, and already the door has been flung open with her stepping inside. You watch as she returns to her fold-out chair and sits down. Instead of browsing, however, she eyes the door knowingly. You give a chuff as she sees you staring and shoos you away.
You pull back on the gear shift and back out of the parking spot. You make your way down the parking lot to the exit. You stop for a pedestrian who seems to reflexively give you the stink eye before immediately looking down when you return fire. You're probably the king of stare-downs for all eternity from this point onward. Speaking of which, where are you even going now? You've got a date tonight now. That's nice-- you weren't even the one to initiate it. But what to do in the meantime? You could make more birds. The aviators are in the hand, not controlling the steering wheel. You're spinning them around by rolling an open temple between your clawed index and thumb. What will your first action be as an Eagle-man?