Becoming Geese

You become geese.

For nine glorious seconds it absolutely works. Growler tucks in at the back of the vast honking flock; Nimbus does a truly committed goose impression; the patrol's shadows pass overhead without slowing.

The problem is the actual geese. Sky-geese, Sera will explain later, are the most territorial creatures in the entire Shimmerlands, and what they see is: an extremely fake goose, a boy shouting honk with a visible cape, and a unicorn.

The flock turns on you like one enormous feathery opinion. There is pecking. There is chasing. There is a formal escort, honking with rage, all the way back to the Cloud Court's front lawn, where the dawn patrol is waiting with its arms folded, and the fussy old-man-shaped cloud has already begun composing the story he will tell at every court gathering for the next forty years.