Chapter 1 - Part 1

No one envies the harpies.

They live at the bottom of society, and that’s an improvement: they were considered nuisance animals until just decades ago, a point of shame for some people and nostalgia for others. The way the other races talk about them has plenty of unfortunate historical parallels: “They steal.” Sure, but it’s not like they have many job opportunities. “They’re rude.” But there’s a difference between rude and mean. “They smell like a zoo.” Only if they don’t bathe, and that’s true of you too.

But all of it - both the centuries of hate and the eventual acceptance - boils down to resources. As legend puts it, they were “cursed by the gods” with an “insatiable hunger.” ...Except the world now generates enough food waste to satiate it a thousand times over. As scavengers who could digest anything organic, they were pests until they were free garbage disposals. It’s an open secret the “biofuel plants” the government “spent millions on” were just dumps in their neighborhoods.

Modern life's been weird for them. Some have tried to move up in the world, with mixed results, but most don't see the point. Pay to live in an isolating society where they’re asked to leave shops and called “fucking pigeons” at every turn? Or stay in the slums where they’re left alone and there’s free food?

So, many have put on so much weight they’ve lost their ability to fly. Not like it matters: it requires expensive permits in urban areas, and in rural ones, might make them target practice. And there’s no need to hunt when you’re getting delivery.

“More productive citizens” are infuriated by their laziness (even vampires, the hypocrites), and they’re tarred with every name you could imagine: Vultures, infesters, freeloaders, gutter birds, pigs on the wing, sky g-psies, and most often, trashy.

Your friend loves that word. She’s thought about getting it on a t-shirt, but it’s too much effort.

Thinking about it makes you smile and takes your mind off the suffocating heat of the station platform. It’s eleven on a summer Saturday night, and you’re heading into the city.

This city could be anywhere. Its story’s been repeated all over the world. Like any modern metropolis, it’s built on a reputation of tolerance, as a place where all species live in harmony, but in reality there’s the same caste system as everywhere else, just not written into law.

You live in the northern suburbs, so your train ride is a progression downward through class levels. Crossing the river into the city puts you right into downtown, the tracks flanked by the skyscrapers that serve as the city’s face. You pass the middle class areas, then the up-and-coming ones, then the modest working class ones, before finally getting off at the southern outskirts, a giant refuse pile for the races no one wants around.

Goblins, oni, tieflings, trolls... First they packed the tenements of what was once a factory town outside city limits, then built shanties around them until it congealed into one mass of jerry-rigged construction.

You decide to walk the ten blocks from the station, as if to burn off what you haven’t eaten yet. The streets are strewn with litter and home to packs of stray dogs. Orcs glare at you from doorways. Drow offer you substances you’ve never heard of. You don’t blame them. Why else would a human come down here alone?

Some spend their lives trying to escape the South End, others embrace it. The ones who embrace it can thrive here, taking advantage of the dirt-cheap cost of living to spend their money on whatever they want. That’s how your friend can afford not to give a fuck.

You met on the internet, on a site for people who are into this kind of thing. There were plenty of guys down for a midnight tryst, but you were one of the few who’d be seen with her the next day.

And it’s going well. Your friendship with benefits is something like wholesome. Sometimes, if you’re both in the same area, you’ll stop into a cafe and get coffee like platonic friends. Other times you go to the movies or a concert. You get funny looks, but who cares? Others, she comes over yours and you watch TV or spend all day in bed like a real couple. Tonight is none of those times.

You turn down what’s either a narrow side street or a wide alley, and knock on the door of a two-story rowhouse that’s had another two illegally added. She bought it back when it was even cheaper, taking only a few rooms for herself and parting the rest out into separate apartments. Thriving is relative here, but at least it’s enough to afford you privacy when you come over. And the real perk is that she only has to work when she wants to, which gives her plenty of time to lie around smoking weed and stuffing herself with past-date snacks.

She opens the door and you fall into each other’s arms. No matter how often you see each other, your hugs last an inordinately long time. You can’t help it. She’s a big girl, and you’re addicted to the feeling of sinking into her.

She has an aesthetic popular with harpies: A shock of teased black hair, winged eyeliner, and lipstick in a gaudy shade of red. Mismatched clothes picked from donation bins and dumpsters, cut up and modified with fasteners to go on around wings, their outdated logos either torn out or spray-painted over. Everything black, initially because it was easy to pair and good for burglary, but it’d come to be a fashion statement. Countless necklaces, bracelets, and trinkets made from nicked shiny things on chains pilfered from jewelry and hardware stores alike. It doesn’t correspond to any human subculture, but “trailer park JRPG goth GF” could describe it.

She usually dresses in some variation of this, but not as revealing. Every time she greets you at the door, she seems to be wearing less. Her shirt is claw-torn halfway down to show off two modestly-sized but perfectly-formed breasts, but more notable is the huge, doughy belly spilling over her skirt. Usually, she just hints at it with a crop top revealing a few inches above the bellybutton; the shirt hasn’t changed, but this time, she’s wearing the skirt at her hips, exposing the full lower half. It wouldn’t fit any other way: it’s already stretched close to the tearing point, and so short you’d be able to see up it if you bent over. And if her thighs weren’t so fat they hide her panties even when she sits down, that is. They’re ringed with feathers just above the knee, like the trim on a pair of boots, before transitioning to lower legs that are purely avian, although their thickness makes them more reminiscent of a dinosaur’s.

She sees you blushing. Already with the bedroom eyes.