The Birdness in Me, a Bird-Like Dragon
by Yumemoto, Ryuu ~ 480 words, estimated 4 minutes read.
Prior to knowing the alterhuman community and all the terms under its umbrella, I had a strong interest in all things birds. Now, with more knowledge of various forms of alterhumanity, I’m never sure if that is because of paratype feelings or perhaps familial, as my sort of caretaker growing up was my younger sibling, who has something going on that I would categorize as alterhumanity with phoenix.
Maybe I could call birds a special interest. But I don’t actually know what counts as an autism brand of spin. I really need help with that, masked as much and as long as I have.
Now, onto the paratype feeling.
Appearance-wise, the only bird part of me is my feathers, sometimes wings, sometimes quill. But I have a lot of birdness in me like there are catness or fishiness or any sort of animal components in other dragons. I connect certain behaviors and instincts to birdness. The desire to build nests high up on some cliff face, perhaps overlooking the ocean. "Preening" as a word that feels right. Chirping and screeching, though those arguably can just as easily be considered purely draconic behavior. I don't migrate according to the season, my sibling does though, lending more my feeling on them being somewhat alterhuman.
And I took that paratype and put it into the enfield heartlink.
An enfield is “a mythological creature made up of body parts of other animals. They are known to generally have the head of a fox, the body and forelegs of an eagle and the hind and rear legs of a wolf (some variations also add lion and greyhound parts into the mix).” -> quoted from An Irish Mythical Creature – The Enfield.
Art by William O'Connor
My version of enfield so far contains the paratype feeling of birds from me, and the paratype feeling of a three-tailed kitsune from my fictohearttype. As for the wolfness that may or may not be there in my enfield 'type, well, my partner is a wolf.
It all kind of strengthened my connection towards birdness, however sideways it is.
My partner also joked about me being, or at least hearted with, a rupicola rupicola, aka the Guianan cock-of-the-rock.
Image from Flickr, by Johannes Pfleiderer
Very pretty, also Very Orange ("and very derpy!"). Kinda why they thought of me. While it didn’t evoke much strong feeling in an alterhuman sense, it is still something that I held some importance with, because of this connection and memories. It is being drawn onto my alterhuman/queer identity heraldry.
Ultimately, I’m tangled with birds a lot because of my alterhumanity and general strong passion and interests. Often, I have to turn to bird-related things to gain actual kinfeels as a feathered dragon, like picking up feather-themed merch or searching for bird-specific games or shows. It’s hard to tell if that’s due to being a dragon with bird-like traits, or purely because of this paratype connection to birds.