For some reason, I felt like I'd slept for longer than normal. That wasn't something particularly surprising as I expanded a lot of energy to absorb the bird. However, the tiredness that lingered was something new. It felt unbearably heavy and I wanted nothing more than to return to sleep. Unfortunately, there was a more pressing issue that didn't allow me that luxury.
That was learning how to fly.
Yes, the experiment turned out successful. Thanks to the number of creatures absorbed, I could now muster enough energy to transform fully into a bird. However, looking like one and becoming one was two very different things.
I might be able to imitate the form of the bird perfectly but my skills were lacking. How the bird viewed the world was also vastly different from how I viewed it. With a sharper sense of sight and hearing, I now understood more details about my environment. Things that eluded me before were now crystal clear to me.
Although the bird did not possess much intellect, it had a keen sense of time and something called instinct. Instincts were very strong feelings that compelled me to act before I could understand what was going on. For example, I spotted a worm earlier and before I knew what I was doing, the bird's body had pounced and gobbled it whole. Strangely, the worm was not absorbed. Instead, it went into the stomach of the bird.
The battle between behaving like the previous host and behaving like myself was tough. The bird's memory and mine were sometimes blurred. While I could leverage on the bird's knowledge and memories, I couldn't imitate its experience. This body was a replica and there were many first times for me including eating. Walking was the first challenge I had to overcome. It wasn't simple and I often ended beak first in the soil.
After hours of practice, the sun was now high up in the sky and the air became hot. The bird would take into the skies and ride on the wind around this time. However, as I had never been a bird, I never knew how flight worked. From the past memories, flight was experienced by falling from great heights. It seemed very simple. All they had to do was flap their wings in the right direction. Once they could manage that, taking off was relatively easy. They simply flapped.
Readying those heavy wings, I extended them as much as possible and flapped with all my might.
***
Nope. It's an utter lie! How do birds do this? I don't know how they flew but flapping didn't work. Looking at the fallen feathers around me, I devised another method. If height was a factor to trigger the flight skill, then all I had to do was jump from a tall place.
Putting my newly acquired walking skills, I started the journey. From memory, there was a cliff near the seaside at the end of this forest somewhere in the opposite direction of the rising sun. If this doesn't work, I don't know what will.
***
Staring down at the edge, I kicked a small pebble and watched it roll of the cliff, bouncing on the sharp edges of protruding rocks before landing in the sea with a small splash. The ripples didn't travel far and the waves continued crashing against the cliff as if nothing had transpired.
Would that be me if this experiment failed? I shook my head. No, don't think about it. The bird learnt how to fly by falling from a high place, this was probably how it should be done.
To prevent any second thoughts, I closed my eyes and jumped.