86 floors sounded so much more reasonable when Maya was at ground level. Okay. Maybe reasonable was the wrong term, but Maya was bound and determined to make it. She wasn't the only one.

"Are you an aspiring tower runner?"

"No." Maya wheezed, taking her third break at the 65th floor. The jogger in his matching yellow velour track suit kept on going up those infernal stairs. Maya was going to be sore tomorrow. Her cheeks were flushed and her brown and white striped hair was sticking to her forehead. "I just... really despise... being in tight quarters." She huffed and puffed her answer, but the jogging banana was already gone.

Some people were just plain crazy.

Another advantage to taking the stairs? Anticipation. By the time Maya walked out onto the 86th floor observation deck, she really appreciated how very tall this building was.

And the wind! Maya laughed out loud as it slammed the door shut behind her. Gutsy little gust. She pulled her hat out of her coat pocket and pulled the knitwear low over her ears. She was prepared this time!

The elemental slipped past the tourists and right up to the safety fencing without fear. She was finally taking the time to see all the sights on the city she'd lived in for over 5 years. Maya planned to enjoy this.

It was great, having somewhere secure to return to. A home. Plus the free food, showers, and warmth did wonders for giving him the strength and comfort to forge out into the wild winter (not really, but plenty cold without shelter) to explore his new territory.

The most famous landmarks were, of course, the place to start. The random fellow shelterer who had suggested this particular building probably hadn't realized what high wind thought of wings.

Crow had taken the elevator. It hadn't occurred to him just how windy it was going to be that far up; for someone made out of birds, he didn't exactly spend a lot of time anywhere near this high off the ground.

Plus there was the part where he did. not. fly with the wings he currently bore, which poked out of an experimentally modified winter jacket (better than a bare back, at least) just enough to clamp tight. The wings which flicked out to correct his balance when the first gust of wind shoved him sideways to try and slam the heavy door shut on his foot. His foot was not injured, but mostly because the gust caught his wings with ferocious glee and sent him careening towards the railing.

He caught the railing, but not without adding a new line to his mostly-faded bruises. He clung to the railing with his clumsy, slippery mitts and carefully tucked his wings away to keep the wind from sneaking underneath them again. It was cold, and he didn't want to have to try to reclaim his scattered donated clothing from however many city blocks the wind would love to spread them across.

"Probably should have waited for a calmer day," he muttered to himself, heedless of the people around him. A couple of humans were probably eyeing him, since he was undeniably a mutant, but he was more occupied with the cold and not flying over the railing and then eventually the view itself.

And then going back to clinging to the railing. Mountains, okay. Apparently that didn't translate to extreme heights.

The air elemental leaned into the wind and clutched the guard railing so that she could look through the slats and see down the length of the building. She had come here for the sights, but now that she was here Maya found that she was enjoying the heights more.

> "Probably should have waited for a calmer day"

Maya peeked over her hand to the boy that wasn't too far from where she was standing. The most notable thing about him were the wings poking out the back of his coat. Black wings.

She should reserve her judgement, but the last man who had black wings gifted her a freshly severed human tongue.

Either way, she saw an opportunity to make someone less miserable.

"Does the wind bother you?" Before she had really thought about it, Maya accessed her power and subtly shifted the winds from whipping so violently around the guy. If he took a step in either direction, it would be worse since she had simply diverted the currents of air, but at least while he enjoyed the view, he would be sheltered in the little pocket of calm air she created around him.

Satisfied, she turned back to the railing. The cars on the street were itty bitty!

Crow noticed the drop in wind and the voice at roughly the same time and processed each observation separately. Less violent wind was very nice, and he was able to relax the muscles in his wings slightly. They were still tensed, but he pulled on the old bruises less. Plus it felt less likely to set off muscle cramps. Those were such a pain.

Now, voice. Female, moderate age, clearly not anti-mutant. He pulled his gaze away from the dizzying height. Nothing stood out about the woman. Not cold-proof, with the bundling and whatnot.

"These wings are happier to catch a gust than to carry us," Crow said dryly but amiably, and then curiously stretched an arm sideways. The wind caught abruptly at his fingertips, and he withdrew them. "Did you...?" he asked, and then smiled faintly. "Thank you."

> "These wings are happier to catch a gust than to carry us,"

Blink. Maya let her head fall the short distance to rest against the metal bars in front of her. Ugh. Black wings and speaking of himself in the plural? This kid was bad, bad news. And yet, he was still polite. That surprised her enough to turn and look at him again.

His skin, what little of it was exposed to the nippy air, was splotched black and white in some pattern she couldn't quite make sense of. There was something about him that made her think of him as young, though now that she was really looking, he couldn't have been too much younger than herself.

She sighed, unable to make up her mind. Today her pale skin showed translucent enough that the shadows of her skeleton, her teeth and even the tongue in her mouth were sometimes visible. These less-than-solid days made her irritable.

"Do you fly?"

With the wind streaming between them, he likely couldn't hear that. So Maya adjusted the streams of air. The wind, as it passed over her ruffled and tugged at every bit of clothing and hair, checking for ways to get in. Then, she was through, safe in the same calm space as the guy. It made talking easier. It also gave them a bit of personal space as tourists that got too close were buffeted back by the air.

Maya tried again. "My name is Maya." She did not offer her hand, but left them on the bars of the safety railing. She wasn't unfriendly, just cautious. "Do you fly?"

Did she say something? He blinked at her, but until the wind around her died down there didn't seem to be anything to do. He waited, and then she spoke again. Hopefully it was the same thing.

A name! Crow liked getting names. They were nice, and it was hard to be friends without knowing names, although there were work-arounds. Like his name! It wouldn't work very well to try to introduce each and every member of his flock to people, either by expecting them to remember or by having to come to some sort of agreement about them all. He knew who everyone was; that was enough. And way easier.

"Crow," he replied cheerfully, briefly flicking a thumb at himself. "Not as nice a name as Maya but easy to remember." He took another peer over the railing. So high! "Not together like this. Our balance is... well, last time we tried we nearly broke a wing. Wasn't fun at all."

Crow? It took her a moment to piece it together. Oh! The markings on his body were bird shapes. That together with the references to himself as more than one person... "You break apart. Into... the birds marked on your face? The crows?" She processed everything that Crow had said to her with new insight. Oh. So he wasn't crazy. Or at least any crazier than a mutant usually tended to be.

"I break apart too," she added hastily, "otherwise I probably wouldn't have figured it out." It seemed that all together, this crow wasn't able to fly. She wondered if he wanted to. Instead, she figured that she could stand to have a polite conversation with him.

"Where are you from, Mr. Crow?"

A tourist fought through the harsh wind, stumbling into their bubble of calm air. He wandered up to the edge near Maya with a completely bewildered look on his face. Well, there went their illusion of privacy.

"Face, arms, everywhere. Our wings aren't marked - that would sure look weird! - but we're there too." Crow flicked a shoulder casually. It was very nice when people caught on to his system quickly. If they did, he didn't have to work to explain things in a way they could understand without breaking their minds too much. Sometimes messing with people was fun, though. Only a little. He didn't want to actually be mean to most people, after all.

Crow grinned freely. "Don't you get so much better a perspective when you aren't all crammed into one point?" he asked cheerily, entirely heedless of whether or not he might be crossing any boundaries. She was nice, she had a clue, surely she wouldn't mind some congenial verbal proximity. Her own line of questioning confirmed his subconscious musings.

"Quite a ways north and a loooong ways west. We started out off the coast, actually, but haven't been near our home ocean in a long time. Life moves onwards and all that. Not much point in wishing for the past to come back or anything, and if it did it would undoubtedly come with all the unpleasantries that clung to it for the first go-around!" Private and secretive Crow was not. He was probably slightly more tactful than secretive, but even that might be debatable at times, since if he decided (and remembered) to keep something quiet he could. Probably.

> "Don't you get so much better a perspective when you aren't all crammed into one point?"

Crow's assertion made Maya smile. "I hadn't thought about it like that, but I suppose you're right." Her "vision" was much, much broader and more accurate when in her incorporeal form even if it did lack things like color and aesthetic detail.

Hmm. North and very far west, so... California? Maya wasn't sure that she had ever been to California outside of an airport. Did he migrate? Or, wait. Wasn't migration temporary? It was a bit confusing to figure out how much this Crow was bird and how much he was man. "I hear your ocean is cold. At least this one isn't as bad. Uh. When it's not winter, I mean."

The man that had pushed into their calm pocket edged away from the pair of mutants. Were they so scary? People were silly.

"How many of you are there?" Maybe that would help her unravel the question of his bird to man ratio?

Crow grinned. It was so, so, so nice to chat with someone who had a similar view of the world. Not necessarily opinions or interpretation, but not the limited sight of people who were only themselves and nothing more. Not that he looked down on them! No, not in the slightest! It was just nice to not have to constantly try and see things from a smaller perspective.

He nodded. "The currents along the coast travel south, so it's arctic rather than tropical water passing by. Fends off the hurricanes, at least. Can you imagine all the natural disasters we'd get otherwise? Earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches, and hurricanes? At least the mountains take out any real chance of tornadoes." For once, Crow wasn't merely referring to himself when using the plural.

Crow smiled as disarmingly as he could at the nervous stranger. It may not have been as effective as intended, given just how obviously a mutant he happened to be (or seriously in love with black and white, if his wings were ignored for a moment), but it was an honest, welcoming smile. The smile of someone who didn't react to an uncomfortable, prejudiced stranger with any negative emotions whatsoever - though if the man chose to do more than leave, in the vein of his discomfort, Crow would be just as happy to give him a hand over the railing.

Crow blinked. How many? That was an odd question. "Couple dozen. It's hard to do a headcount when everyone is 'one.'" He shrugged and smiled again. "Not enough to blacken the sky with furious wingbeats or to lift a person, unfortunately. That could be fun." Probably not the best choice of words to reassure the human. Oh well.

A couple dozen? Maya rocked back on her heels. Whoah. He was jam packed with crows then.

"Lifting a person up?" Maya grinned with more than a little mischief now. "It's pretty fun. Especially when they don't suspect a thing." She winked at Crow. Not a flirtatious kind of wink, but a playful kind. Maya hadn't pranked anybody in a long time and even then usually it was someone else who came up with the idea of mischief first.

It made her long for those innocent days she'd spent at the Mansion. She hoped Jude was doing well there.

"My gramma was afraid of birds." Maya wasn't sure what made her volunteer that information. She hadn't thought about her grandparents for a long time now. "But I'm not." She was hasty to add. "I spend too much time flying with 'em." Well, not lately, but usually. Typically.

She used to anyway.

Oh, Crow was jealous! He grinned. "If we were able to lift anyone, it wouldn't be particularly sneaky," he said drily. "And we admit it wouldn't be nice to drop most people." Sure, some could earn a less than accidental drop, but the average person certainly didn't, and there were easier ways to take out a bad person than dragging them into the sky for a long drop and a sudden stop. "Sounds like your trick is much nicer," he said cheerily, and eyed up the nearest stranger.

He angled his head. "Birds are what birds are," he said neutrally, hardly an advocate for birds in general. He did kind of enjoy terrorizing magpies, after all. Clarification. He loved terrorizing them. "Crows are pretty laid-back, though. Frequently lazy, not too territorial, and happy to warn before taking drastic measures." He grinned briefly. "We aren't good at agreeing, though. Social doesn't always mean agreeable."

Maya's laugh was almost musical. "No. It's not nice to drop people."

>"Sounds like your trick is much nicer,"

"I don't want to hurt anyone if I can avoid it, no."

Wow. Was this ever the wrong conversation to be having near a poor human. The guy pulled out his cell phone to answer a call or make a call and started to try to push his way back through Maya's slipstream. The phone slipped right through his fingers and whooshed out toward the drop. It skittered to a stop just past the railing, but probably within arm's reach.

Maya watched him struggle to move toward the phone without going too quickly since the wind was at his back. She lessened the intensity of the wind, but it would be like holding back the water in a dam. All that power would have to go somewhere eventually. She would hold onto it in the mean time so this poor human could get away without being blown over the safety railing.

All the while Crow chattered happily about the qualities of crows. Frequently lazy, loud, and social but not always agreeable? "That doesn't sound too different from humans when you put it that way." She let her voice drift back to Crow so that he could hear her properly without having to turn back to face him. The human was nervous and therefore taking his time reaching past the safety railing for his phone.