"You ain't real," Hawk said out loud. The owl seemed to recoil somewhat--it was constantly moving, constantly revolving around itself somehow, but little bits of it kept shearing from side to side. Hawk put an arm on the couch and spread his wings, hanging them low. He was vaguely aware of pale shapes forming near his face, and got the impression of jaws opening  and closing as he spoke. "Or, if you are...I ain't scared a' you."

He looked down, through a translucent structure that was coalescing around his head, at the form on the couch. All the color had gone out of everything--the odd multicolored light that had gilded the edges of their shape had disappeared now as well. The only thing left was the pale blue-green of the noisy smoke escaping their lips.

"Okay," Hawk told himself, and moved his arm to block the owl, which was now leaning over the couch looking down at the figure, its shape becoming sharper at the bottom, like a hovering dagger. As Hawk moved, he became aware suddenly of the ongoing high pitched tone in the room--because it stopped. "On purpose, this time."

He placed his hands over the person's mouth and saw that the ghostly shapes of talons had formed over them. The talons became more and more solid, more and more real, as he moved them towards the person's chest, until--

He pressed down, and the noisy smoke went in a loud rushing noise, becoming a bloom of light radiating out from under Hawk's hands--which were quite suddenly no longer his hands at all, but instead large taloned things covered in black and yellow skin--the multicolored light at the body's edges came back and the owl was now nothing more than an inscrutable glitch that squinted as though shying away from Hawk's actions--and Hawk was also aware that his head had changed as well, into something bigger and heavier and longer, and feathers were forming at its crown--