MAKE YOU FALL IN LOVE ☆ o, preening

[wormwood.]

One thing most didn't think of when they first looked at Aurum was maintenance. To most that would see the angel on his day to day activities, he looked mostly carefully kept. His mane was a big too big and fluffy to have it combed down to the very hair, but it was very rarely unruly, and his feathers were often light and shiny, colorful in the best way. One might even thing that the lion just came prepackaged perfect, and he never really had to worry about that stuff. However, this wasn't entirely true. While, for the most part, Aurum wasn't constantly frantically fussing over every part of his appearance, it wasn't as if he neglected it either. He bathed often and flattened out his mane carefully, he checked himself to make sure he didn't have any ticks or fleas or any other undesirables, and he made sure that his eye was doing alright. After all, even though he had lost his right eye many months ago and had since gotten used to the one sided view of the world, it was still dangerous just having an empty hole in your face, even if it was mostly healed over. It still required semi-regularly checks, and he had even had Moth teach him how to deal with it on his own, before her untimely death. Now, he only wished he could have her still around to do it for him.

All of this aside, there was one piece of appearance maintenance that most wouldn't even begin to think of, and that was preening. Aurum, like any feathered animal, routinely had periods of molting, where his feathers would need to be shed and replaced with new ones. Often it happened all at once, but the stress of recent events had thrown everything out of whack for the poor angel, who had only noticed recently he practically had a line of feathers trailing after him. He had just wanted to go for a calling walk out in the gardens, but it seemed as though he would not be destined for such things today, as he was forced to stop where he was and inspect his wings. He winced at the state they were in, with most of his feathers bent or barely hanging on to make way for new ones. Sighing heavily, the lion sat down where he was, bringing his wing up and his head down to begin plucking some of the feathers away carefully. He ended up plopping them all down in a neat little pile that he could hopefully easily dispose of, although he knew he would already need to clean up the unusual feathered trail he had left behind. As he preened his wings, he found himself muttering bitterly, "Damn molting... could've given me more of a warning this time..." He hoped that nobody would be too perturbed by the trail of feathers until he could pick them all up – hopefully nobody would think that a bird had simply exploded on their pathways, either.