"There was a fight, and he was hurt," Yoshi explained quickly as she moved around to Teige's other side, where he was trying to hold the bloody cloth over the wound. The half-formed shapes of clawed fingers were poking out of it now. "And this--he says he doesn't know how to stop changing--ah!"

She grabbed part of the bloody cloth and tried to press it over the wound, which was now a livid long crevasse open in the feathers from roughly where Hawk's shoulder ought to be, and up his neck. Something white glowed within it.

Hawk heaved his head up on Teige's other shoulder. His face had split strangely into many mouths and eyes, but he got out, in a distant and garbled way, "My shoulder's really startin' to hurt."

At this, Teige sighed, and pressed his horned head forward into Hawk's feathers. "Natch, you're trying to change shape with a great hole in ya."

He gestured at Yoshi, who was being jostled around by Hawk's ever-moving wings and arms, and they both began to gently push Hawk down onto his uninjured side. As they did, Teige told him firmly, "Here now: we're going to talk you back into yer normal shape, all right? Liya's on her way, but she ent going to be able to fix you up if you keep on all over the place like this. Lay back, there's a good lad," he added. Yoshi kept trying to keep the cloth over the wound to pinch it shut, but it in turn seemed to keep splitting and spreading, now into one of Hawk's many wings. The pressure didn't seem to bother Hawk at all, though. "We want to make this as easy on Liya as we can, yea? So you need to listen hard and do what I say. Yea?"

Hawk had allowed his head, which continued to split and reform its blunt jaws and empty eyes, to rest on the marbled floor. A paleness was flowing from the jaws, noiselessly. When his voice came out, it was more fractured than ever. "...I'm listenin'."