#z apparently used to love a story about a blackbird learning to fly

[ashmcgivern]

Brother, We have a lot of catching up to do it, it seems. I see you have interesting company in the big and little sense. I must say I did always kind of envy your lack of necessity to higher powers, even our own parents, to tell you right and wrong. You have a strong moral compass, and even if I didn't follow it, I've learned to respect your conviction over the years... Which is why it pains me a little bit to see that you're so reliant and so slow to accumulate stability, decision, and honestly purpose. This is quite disheartening, so I decided to give you a little push. Regards, Lilith .

Zeal's sister, Lilith, planted a little bit of a seed inside Zeal shortly after they met, attempting to give him bat-like wings that draw from their infernal legacy. There's a lot of complicated things going on here but the long and short of it is that Zeal has really adverse feelings to this piece of him, so this gift comes with reservations on his end.

Over the course of about a month or so these bat wings have been growing in, and would have rapid spurts of growth whenever Zeal tapped into his infernal abilities OR had angry thoughts towards Lathander. After a while he realized he could sit down and deconstruct his feelings about having fiendish blood and redirect where these wings would go, resulting in black feathers starting to sprout and the structure of the wings themselves changing to be more bird-like.

The wings are very ugly right now since they're in a sort of transitional state, so Z is very self conscious about them (he is, after all, a bit vain). But he's happy overall with the progress he's made within himself to redirect these feelings of his and own up to what and who he is.

Also, his horns are turning gold. More on that later ;)

#dungeons and dragons #tiefling #character design #wings #dnd #aiben #zeal #theres a lot to unpack for the boy!!!! #he actually got his full fledged wings last night #but i want to draw something special for it #the black wings are actually very thematically appropriate because of some story stuff #z apparently used to love a story about a blackbird learning to fly #according to lilith anyway #hed make her read that story to him a lot when they were super young #so the black wings are very much the blackbird has learned to fly #they will be transforming into white eventually as he continues to grow and change