((ooc: Continued from Don't it just warm your heart?))

New York in the Autumn. There was a certain settling, shifting feeling to the air; a sense of something soothing lost, and something with chill claws come to take its place. 

Cold. It was starting to get cold.

On the roof of the Mansion, a god was realizing that he was not a weathervane. As much as the day's chill breeze would like to make him. Even under the eaves there was no escape, though there were considerably more squirrel nests.

It was the subtle aroma of burning that guided him to the windowsill, where he was not to be disappointed; though the external woodwork was new, a certain charred scent lingered still around the edges. A clearer sign could not be given by a god himself; clearly, this was where the phoenix was meant to perch. The sunlight here was superb. The building blocked the wind; the sun basked in the glory of his fiery feathers; the world was good.

After a moment of content preening, the god settled down with his head tucked under his wing. Around him, thin curls of gray smoke drifted up from the windowsill where it blackened under his talons. Fire in the sky, and fire on his feathers: moments as perfect as this did not come around everyday.

Mornings were curious things. Sometimes he looked forward to things the day held in store. Oftentimes he had absolutely no desire to have to go and face them. His bed was usually very comfortable, especially when he didn't have to wake up and leave all at once, and had a moment to lounge in the not-hot.

Except when the room was sweltering, and he'd slept in later than he meant to, judging by the light streaming through the window and casting a nice, clear, bird-shaped shadow on the floor.

Aiden slowly turned towards the window, already dreading what he might see.

The bird. Was back.

His hands tightened around the faint silvering on his palms; burns might scar oddly, but scar they did and they proved that the prior encounter with that thing had been no dream. Could this be a dream? Please let it be a dream. Aiden pinched himself, but the trickle of adrenaline only sharpened his view of the fluorescent turkey.

Why had he put the fire extinguisher away? Not that it had really helped all that much. Oh god was the windowsill already burning?

This really had to stop. Aiden forced himself through the oppressive heat to the window and knocked on it. "Can't you find some other window?" he said plaintively through the glass, sweat already dripping off every point it could find. Please, crazy bird, go find someone else to torment who actually wanted heat!

Knock knock.

The god lifted his elegant crimson neck from under his wing, and turned golden eyes on the parishioner on the other side of the glass. It was a mere boy; black of hair, gangly of stature, with face flushed pleasantly warm. Ah, so he had been basking in the god's heat; this was well, then. And his eyes—odd-colored, with one a shade of silver not frequently found in purely mortal men. So a mutant, then? Or perhaps a fledgling demi-god?

The god of the windowsill foofed his feathers into a more voluminously impressive state, and reached out his beak to the window pane.

Tap tap, he replied.

The silver-eyed petitioner had made some sort of inquiry, but between the window's glass and his own wing, he had not heard it clearly. If they were to have a civil discourse, it was only natural that this barrier should first be lifted.

The bird tapped back. Aiden had retreated as soon as it started moving, but it showed no signs of its previous aggression. Was it really the same creature? Was there more than one of them? Oh no, what if the area was inhabited by an entire species of burning turkeys?

Either way, this one didn't seem to know what he was saying or hear him or whatever. He sighed and rubbed some of the sweat off his forehead and into his hair. "What's up with you and this window?" he said before warily brushing the window's latch with his knuckles. One, two - okay, it wasn't burning hot. "Time to move, bird," he muttered, trying to wave the bird out of the way of the window before opening it.

He immediately regretted the rush of heat, but he made himself stop retreating after a few steps. "Would it be possible for you to find another window?" he asked miserably, starting to notice actual damp patches in the carpet now. Sheesh, he was already feeling light-headed and dehydrated. He didn't know how much more of this he could take.

The young mutant was not exactly the politest of creatures; in fact, Bennu rather got the impression that the child desired him to leave. This, however, was clearly one of the many misunderstandings between them that opening the window would address. They would have a pleasant conversation about this; everything would be well between them, and all ruffled feathers would soon be smoothed.

The window was opened.

>> "Would it be possible for you to find another window?"

The bird god alighted on the floor in front of the child. With a cordial bob of his head, he burst into a column of flames so hot they burned a blinding white; this was simply how he shifted. It was only polite to take on a form in which they could understand each other.

The god, rather more human like, was now ready to have a civil conversation on this topic with the chi—

Oh dear.

He should have known that the bird would hop right in like it owned the place as soon as he opened the window. He gave it plenty of room - more room than he'd give a diseased wild animal, to be honest - and waited to see just what the crazy bird was going to do next.

Apparently it was going to kill him. Oh yay. The rush of heat exploding outwards from the sudden pillar of searing white flame slammed into him like a physical wall, and he felt his neck crack in his last moments of trying to escape the heat; then the skyrocketing temperature made it into his core, the world greyed out in a shattered rainbow kaleidoscope, and then simply stopped.

With the benevolence of a god, Bennu scooped up the child, and carried him to the infirmary. For some reason, he knew exactly where that was; almost as if he had been here before. Divine inspiration: the only explanation.

---

The next day.

New York City in the Autumn. There was a certain inevitable feeling to the air; a sense of a cycle bound to repeat endlessly throughout the ages. Winter was almost upon them, but while the gold colors of Autumn lasted, the god would bask in the waning sunlight.

On a windowsill.

On the windowsill.

He did not know why, but it felt rather like home.

Aiden wasn't feeling very happy anymore, even by his post-spring standards of happy. He was exhausted, he'd woken up in the infirmary the previous day, and then he'd had to go and train with Cafas afterwards anyway. The only positive to that had been knowing that there was probably no physical damage left behind.

There was plenty of exhaustion, physical and most especially mental, left behind, and it was with that exhaustion that he hauled himself out of bed to see the bird on his windowsill again.

... oh, what the heck. At least the bird seemed to leave for a bit whenever he nearly died. Aiden shoved himself out of bed, rapped a warning on the glass, and hauled the window open before limping to the far side of the room.

Rap rap rap.

The god's head elegantly unburied itself from under his wing; he turned one golden eye upon the noise's source, and benevolently gazed through the window at the young man contained on its other side. He was a young thing; less than two decades old. Yet a scar on his face told that he was not lacking in experience in the ways of this world. Even so, he was still willing to open his heart and his window to a perfect stranger to spare him the cold of the outside.

Bless his soul.

The bird accepted the invitation with the greatest of politeness, giving a quick hop and a flutter of wings to land on the nearest available perch: the headboard of the nearest bed. There he settled his feathers in the warmth and comfort of the room, and gave a nod of benediction to the welcoming boy as he extinguished his flames.

It would be in poor spirit to burn his host's belongings, after all. Bennu was no god of hospitality, but he had known a few in his time.

Well, other than the entrance of the heat, this seemed to be going... marginally better. No flames of fury and chaos and death, at least. For now. He couldn't get any closer to the wall, though, or farther from the firebird without leaving the room.

Aiden waited.

And waited.

And the bird didn't seem inclined to do anything more than perch on Persi's bed. Aiden shifted nervously, sweat starting to seep through his old clothes and roll into his eyebrows. "Er..." he started, but then had to pause to haul his voice back out of his heels. "Would... would it be... maybe... possible... for you to... er... borrow a different windowsill?" he asked plaintively. "Pretty much everyone else here handles heat better than I do..."