Qrow shoved his hands into his pockets, hunched his back, and squinted at the sky.

“It’s gonna rain.”

Raven Branwen, standing a few feet to her brother’s left, cocked her head to the side, an eyebrow raised skeptically. “Doesn’t look that bad,” she replied, wearily eyeing the cumulonimbus clouds overhead.

Qrow toed a clump of dirt underfoot, watching granular ants scurry frantically about. “Bet you twenty lien it does,” he replied, his eyes still on the soil.

His sister crossed her arms. “And what makes you a better forecaster than the VNN Weather Squad?” Raven bit back, her tone sardonic.

“Because…” Qrow straightened up, cracking his back as he arched it, “neither of us brought umbrellas.” He shot Raven a smug smile. “And it’d be so, ahh, unlucky, for us to get caught in the rain.”

Raven exhaled loudly and shook her head, redirecting her attention to the darkening landscape. Before them stood the Emerald Forest, its resplendent greens somewhat dulled by the cloud cover. It was the same view they’d had at the beginning of their Initiation, back when they’d arrived at Beacon Academy with nothing more than their rags and their weapons. It was only a few short years ago, Raven knew intellectually, but it might as well have been another incarnation.

Professor Ozpin came strolling out of the foliage behind them.

“Ah, Mister and Miss Branwen,” he began, his tone light and amicable. “I see that you’ve found the spot without trouble.”

“It hasn’t gone anywhere, Oz,” Qrow noted, drawing back into his usual slouch. A few feet away stood the launchpads that had once catapulted them into that forest, back when STRQ was just an unpronounceable collection of consonants. “Planning on sending us flying again?”

Ozpin let out a polite chuckle, planting his cane in the grass. “I doubt that that would pose much of a challenge to you, Mr. Branwen,” he mused, fingers strumming the handle of his cane. “Though I dare say it hardly bothered you much the first time.”

Raven stood silent throughout the exchange, her eyes drifting between Ozpin and the expanse of forest he had emerged from. It took her a second to realize what the she was looking for - the shadow that she expected to follow the body.

“Where’s Goodwitch?” she asked, curtly and without prelude.

Ozpin eyed her over the rims of his spectacles. “Professor Goodwitch is currently attending to matters back at the Academy,” he answered, his tone perfectly even.

Raven’s fingers strummed the plate of her gauntlet. Qrow rubbed the back of his neck.

“Regarding the matter at hand…” Ozpin began, breaking a silence that had stretched for a second too long. “I apologize for taking you away from your teammates on a Friday night. Hopefully we can finish this quickly, it looks like it’s about to rain any minute.”

Qrow shot Raven a triumphal smirk.

“Are you familiar with the fairy tale-” Qrow rolled his eyes, but Ozpin ignored him “-of the king and his two birds?”

The Branwens exchanged glances, communicating a thousand words with a look. “Not really,” Qrow answered, returning his attention to the Headmaster.

Ozpin tsked. “Ah, perhaps just as well. As the story goes...”

He began strolling back and forth, pacing the short stretch of dirt between him and his students. Qrow and Raven remained rooted to their spots, closely tracking his perambulation.

“...Once upon a time, there lived a king. The king had once been a great warrior, as brave as he was clever, and the years of his reign were peaceful and prosperous. But the king had grown old.”

Ozpin suddenly stopped, the tip of his cane sinking a half-inch into the soil. “He found he could no longer travel as he once had. Great journeys exhausted him, his court depended on him, and his presence drew unwanted attention. This was unfortunate, for his kingdom was a very large one, and there were enemies on all its borders.”

“Humans or Grimm?” Qrow asked, interrupting Ozpin’s leisurely narration.

The Headmaster shot him a scowl. “It is a fairy tale, Mr. Branwen. Though in point of fact - as the version I heard goes - it was both. And while the king had many soldiers,” his tone slipped back to its storytelling cadence, “they could not be everywhere at once. The king had to know where to send them, and how many men were needed.”

“So what did the king do?” Raven asked, cooly, giving Ozpin the prompt he’d been fishing for.

“Well, Miss Branwen, the old king had acquired many skills in his time. One of them was that he could teach birds to speak...” In any other context Qrow would’ve scoffed at the juvenility of the plot, but something in Ozpin’s tone kept him from laughing.

“...Two birds, in fact, which he called Huginn and Muninn.” His eyes played over Qrow and Raven as he named them. “We don’t actually know what kind of birds Huginn and Muninn were. In some stories they’re ravens, in others: magpies or crows. Corvids of some sort; the runic script doesn’t make the distinction.”

Yeah, Qrow really wasn’t finding the story silly anymore.

“And for the rest of his reign, every day, the old king would send the birds out of his castle. To spot danger, to carry messages, to spy on his enemies. ‘Huginn and Muninn fly each day … o’er the spacious earth’,” Ozpin concluded, clearly quoting some poem unknown to either twin.

It was Raven who spoke next. “I take it this is some sort of analogy to what you want us to do?” she wagered, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “You’re the king, and we’re like the birds in this metaphor?”

Ozpin tilted his head. “Technically, that would be more a simile than a metaphor,” he quibbled, with a schoolteacher’s pedanticness. “More importantly… it’s not precisely an analogy.”

Qrow blinked. “Uh, say again, Oz?”

But Ozpin ignored him, resuming his pacing, his eyes not quite meeting theirs. “The strange thing is, well, every time I’ve done this before, I invented a little ritual. A potion to drink, an amulet to wear, an incantation to chant...”

The last rays of sunlight were finally concealed by the clouds.

“...but in this age of Scrolls and robots and cross-continental towers, it started to seem a little childish. As if the magic of the gods needed to be gaudied up.” Ozpin’s tone quickened slightly, as did his pace. “So I decided to skip the showmanship this time. No mystical nonsense, nothing hidden behind a curtain. Just the magic.”

It was starting to rain. Raven felt a thick droplet of water splash against her, clouding her vision. She moved to wipe it, raising her hand to her eye. And then she stopped.

Because she wasn’t looking at her hand anymore.

“Ozpin,” Raven called out, a pang of primal fear shooting through her spine. Except it wasn’t his name she spoke, wasn’t her own voice she heard. “Ozpin!” She shrieked, but not with human sounds.

“The first transformation is always a little unsettling,” she heard someone say. It was coming from where Ozpin had stood, of that she was sure, but his voice suddenly sounded too deep, reverberating like thunder. “But Branwens learn to swim by being dropped in a lake, don’t they?”

Raven’s head was swimming. She tried to steady herself, forcing deep breaths through her nose. Breathing felt wrong. She was too close to the ground. Had she tripped? She reached for her katana, longing for the reassuring heft of its hilt, but it wasn’t there. And she couldn’t see her arm. It was coated with something black. It looked like her hair.

Was it her hair? It was, but it looked wrong. It was transitioning into the threads of a feather. Raven shouted, but only bird call filled her head. She cried for help, but she no longer knew language, she could not think with words. She could feel her consciousness slipping away, no matter how she clawed at it. A human mind simply could not fit into a raven’s brain, and what could not fit was forgotten.

Ozpin stood back, peering out across the Emerald Forest, as two birds flew off into it. Their thoughts and their memories would return to them soon enough. And then they would return to him. He was almost certain of it.

Ozpin turned his back on the forest, and began the trek back to Beacon.