“Have you calmed down?”
“Y-yes.” Illy nodded. Her crest feathers were flat, conveying her melancholy.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Sapphee asked. “Your feathers wouldn’t become so disheveled from your daily activities, would they?”
The health of many monsters could be assessed by their body hair, or in this case, feathers. The cause wasn’t always the same, but just as humans’ faces grew pale when they were feeling unwell, abnormalities in monsters’ hair indicated illness.
“Well…I don’t really know. How did this happen?”
“Have you been eating and sleeping properly?”
“Of course! Perfectly! I’ve been sleeping better than I could ever imagine, and I’m eating, too! Sometimes there are even feasts at the Lady’s mansion.”
Illy seemed so happy in her life now, which made Glenn even more concerned about her ruffled feathers. He began the examination.
“We heard you’ve been visiting a spring in the mountains.”
“Huh?! How did you know that? I was being so careful… Ah, did you hear it from Dione?”
“Don’t worry about where we heard it from.”
“Err…but that probably isn’t related, is it?”
“Can you tell us about it anyway?”
“I-I was just bathing!” Illy’s face turned beet red, and she averted her eyes.
Glenn explained that the bathing might be what had caused her ruffled feathers. “Can’t you bathe in Lindworm?”
“W-well…”
“If you don’t tell us what’s really going on, then we can’t provide you with the best treatment.”
Illy turned pale at Sapphee’s warning. She must have been quite upset that the feathers she was so proud of were now a mess. That’s why she’d brought her disheveled self to the clinic.
“I wanted…to make my wings beautiful.”
“Beautiful?”
“Yeah, she—Plum—said not to show off just because I had wings. It made me so upset! I thought if I bathed and made them sparkle, then she’d have to shut her big mouth, so I went to the spring.” Illy sounded as though she were on the verge of tears.
“Why did you go all the way to the mountains for that?”
“All the harpies say that if you bathe there, your feathers will become beautiful. I thought it would be worth the trip if there was even half a chance that was true.”
“Hmm.”
Glenn was growing more and more curious. A rumor like that must have started with some kernel of truth. For example, maybe springs in the mountains had nutrients that were good for feathers. He began musing about the difference in water quality between mountain spring water and the Vivre River…but no. Now wasn’t the time for that.
“But…the more I washed, the worse my feathers got! I thought maybe I hadn’t washed them enough, so I kept going back.”
“How often did you go?”
“About three times a day, between my deliveries.”
“That’s the cause,” Glenn said with a sigh.
Illy stared at him blankly. Even if the spring didn’t make feathers prettier, she couldn’t understand why more washing was a bad thing.
“When you bathe too much, you strip away the preen oil from the surface of your feathers.”
“Preen oil?”
“It’s a sebum excreted by birds and harpies. You rub the sebum excreted from the base of your tail feathers all over your body, right?”
“Oh! You mean the stuff that makes my feathers shiny during grooming?” Illy said. “That’s called sebum?!”
Neither humans nor monsters had perfect knowledge of their own bodies. Furthermore, Illy hadn’t ever received a proper education. Normally, harpies learned at least some things from their parents, but Illy didn’t even have that. Glenn’s chest tightened as he remembered what she’d been through as a child.
“Didn’t you hear about this from other harpies?”
“Mmm…not really. I don’t have any friends who I could talk about grooming with. I’ve always been so proud of my wings…I couldn’t ask anyone.”
Glenn chuckled. Wings were a sign of status among harpies. They admired unique coloring like Illy’s. Asking how to care for such magnificent wings would be admitting weakness.
“The bodies of both humans and monsters are protected by a certain amount of sebum. In the case of harpies, you apply the preen oil secreted from the base of your tail feathers to the feathers over your entire body.”
“Like this!”
Illy folded her wings and skillfully rubbed them together with her tail feathers. She hid her head inside her wings, so it wouldn’t get in the way. Her neck was more flexible than a human’s. “Kush, kush, choob…” She chanted as she rubbed. The protection preen oil granted was necessary for flying and maintaining body temperature.
“But my feathers have never turned out like this after bathing in water or sand!”
“Preen oil has water-repellent effects. But in warm water, it starts to melt. The spring was especially warm this year, wasn’t it?”
“Now that you mention it, it was. Like midsummer. I thought since it wasn’t cold, I could bathe all the time.”
“That’s the answer, then. If you’d only bathed once a day, it would have been fine. But you went multiple times a day, and you were washing with warm water. It’s almost like you were trying to remove the preen oil from your wings.”
“So, the oil… If I rub it on again, then I’ll go back to normal?”
“Yes. But you need to cut back on baths. Washing more doesn’t necessarily make your wings more beautiful. Do you understand that now?”
“Yeah…I understand.” Illy’s normal cheerfulness was gone. She was completely despondent.
She’d probably never imagined that trying to make her wings more beautiful would have had the opposite result.
“Plum said I wasn’t trying enough.”
“Was that when you fought?” Sapphee asked.
Illy nodded. “I’m not interested in covering myself in jewelry like her…but she was right. I just want everyone to think my feathers are beautiful! That’s why I thought I needed to do more.”
“Illy…”
“But that wasn’t the way. I thought if I took good care of myself, then…maybe she wouldn’t look down on me.”
Glenn finally understood fully. Illy had been trying to make up with Plum in her own way, by taking her advice. It was the only way she knew how.
“Well, let’s start by fixing your wings. After that, I can try to help you make up with her, if you like.”
“N-no, it’s fine. Doctor, do you have friends? Have you ever made up with someone before?”
“Er,” Glenn groaned. It was a sensitive topic for him.
As a student, he’d always been studying. Now he was preoccupied with work. Glenn didn’t actually have any friends his own age, so the question stung. He couldn’t remember making up with anyone because he couldn’t even remember having a friend to fight with. Illy’s innocent question pierced his very soul.
“Hey, Illy! That’s a rude thing to ask!”
“Huh?! You really don’t have friends? O-oh, I’m sorry!” Illy frantically flapped her wings.
“B-but even if you don’t have friends, you have lots of fiancées!”
“Th-thank you?” He couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be comforting.
Glenn hated that, when he tried to think of friends, he could only come up with his brother. And even Souen was ten years older than him.
“Let’s forget about my relationships for now. Right now, we need to do something about your preen oil.”
“I can do it myself.”
“No, it’s come off your entire body. We need to reapply it.”
It was actually similar to the treatment for Lulala’s weakened mucous membrane. The difference was that one was for flying and the other for swimming. Only…preen oil couldn’t be replicated so easily. It was an extremely high-quality substance that both cleaned and protected.
“Show me the base of your tail feathers, Illy,” Glenn said casually.
“Wh-what?” Illy turned bright red, but she complied.
“Now, then…I will begin.”
“Ooooh, this is embarrassing!”
Glenn moved his face close to Illy’s behind. Not the actual buttocks, but just above. He was observing the tail feathers growing from her lower back. From the base, they separated into three locks in seven different colors, depending on the angle. The tips of the tail feathers were decorative, like peacocks.
“I’m going to lift your feathers a little.”
“O-okay…”
Hidden at the base of the tail feathers, where a human’s tailbone would be, was a hole covered in down. The organ wasn’t obvious unless you were looking for it, but the uropygial gland was what allowed birds to secrete preen oil. A bit of liquid was seeping out of Illy’s.