[center]> art appreciation[/center]
It's a shame how much she misses by turning her face. She can hear it all just fine: the shouting, the fighting, the beast above and the friends below. With eyes shut and breath pushed in tight, shallow pulls, it's almost something to meditate to. Not calming in the [i]least[/i], of course, but there's a little trance in everything. [i]Just lean in.[/i] She's got her face pressed to the figurative glass of the thing she needs to make sense (and maybe even a bit of use) of herself, but there's no reaching over to the other side like this. Not even this wretch can trick herself into a nap under these circumstances. 

Especially when the circumstances begin to writhe around her.

She watches what she had been almost sure was a dead body pry itself up, rancid meat splitting open over yet more lovely plumage. The...[i]thing[/i], rises, and it maybe looks at her before shambling off to become somebody else's problem. And there's this ugly stab of [i]something[/i] (jealousy?) in her gut, because as pretty as this thing is—[u]these things are,[/u] whatever-it-is/whatever-they-are have achieved what she had wanted only for herself. Something has seeped into those bodies and made them beautiful and then taken them. 

[i]Thief.[/i] 

Such a bitter reaction should be beneath her but right now she just can't help it. She'd marvel at that novelty were there not bigger matters at hand. The bald woman kicks and twists dramatically, awkwardly working to offload her rotten meatshield before it, too, sprouts feathers and becomes an issue. It's the nearby voice of one of her newest, bestest, interestingest [i]friends[/i], the tall woman with all the hair, that has her redoubling the effort to properly uproot herself. With a roll as graceless as the whole process before it had been (and a shocked retch when she finally, mistakenly, huffs in through her nose; that combined hit of cadaver funk and more bird fumes is no joke), she's out of the pile and onto the ground. 

The witch gets a wide, excited grin after this bald woman's done with her dry-heaving. It's just so nice to know that nothing nefarious has oozed into her, no part of her has been ripped wide by feathers as the bodies had been. [i]That means there's still room inside of her.[/i] That appears to go for all the rest of her newest, bestest, interestingest friends—many of whom are being so heartwrenchingly [i]brave[/i] that she wishes she had some sort of reward for them. Treats of some kind...oh, she'll figure it out, but right now she's too taken by the witch's flesh-shaping to plan anything. She'd been unluckily incapacitated before; this is her first proper eyeful of this, erm. This—

"[b][i]Wooow.[/i][/b]" She'd pity it if she hadn't still been so upset about the theft. Strange-eyes had given the things a name (or maybe he'd just been cussing about them). [i]Malachim.[/i] It's not a word that means anything to her besides being what these stolen bodies are called. In no mood to wobble back up to her feet, she slinks across the ground to paw at what the witch has made of the body. Dead, changed, taken, changed again. How exciting. "[b]Did you wring it out? Is it still in there? [i]Can[/i] you get it out?[/b]" What are the left-and-right limits of what she's done to the thing? Pale eyes flit to the Battle of Big Bird ([i]Is! That! A! Kitty![/i] Oh she will [i]have[/i] to investigate this once it's not so busy ripping and tearing) and then back. Questions pile upon questions, but the answers might not be so satisfying when there's imminent danger that lurks. The bird, the bodies. "[b]If I put my ear to it, could I hear the ocean?[/b]" A silly one to start, then. She rocks her weight back, kneeling, cupping her hands around her mouth to stage-whisper: "[b]Are you any good in a fight? Because I'm certainly not. But if you shape them all into something sweet then we won't [i]need[/i] to be. It could...be...a puppydog, if you close one eye. And squint the other.[/b]" 

She does just that and...well, admittedy it still just looks like so much brutalized meat, but that's no fun. Since when is what one sees with their own eyes any truer than what they decide to [i]believe[/i], anyhow? It's a puppydog if she thinks it to be so. 

"[b]They must be gentle things, really. Whatever they are. I bet they're cozier in a shape that can't be anything but. It's such a kind thing you've done! Maybe, instead of the ocean, [i]you[/i] would hear a [i]thank you.[/i] Do you want to check?[/b]"