High Fae Queen at your service

✮ The smell arrives before anything visual does. Always before. Decades-old antiseptic that never fully evaporated, black mold, particulate plaster, and something underneath all of that you will not name. Your character detects it from the parking lot. Do not skip this. Writers skip this constantly. Smell is 70% of fear. If your character walks in and immediately describes what they SEE, you have already lost the reader's stomach. Fix it.

✮ Long hospital corridors are acoustic funnels. A door swinging on a corroded hinge forty feet away sounds, physiologically and neurologically, like it is directly behind your character. It is not. But they don't know that yet. And more importantly: they can't immediately tell the difference.

✮ Original floor tiles: white hexagons, many cracked, grout gone grey-black with decades of something. Footsteps echo differently on intact vs. cracked tile. Your character will begin unconsciously stepping around the cracked ones without deciding to. Write it as unconscious. Don't give them the decision.The body knows things the mind hasn't processed.

✮ Nurses' stations have the room call-board still mounted. Metal slots, room numbers, some still containing names on yellowed paper in faded handwriting. Perfectly legible. Your character should read one name specifically. A real first and last name. This is what grounds supernatural dread in human scale. The horror of a ghost is always the horror of the specific person who became one.

✮ Do not have your character open a patient file and find something horrifying written in it. That is lazy and everyone does it. The horror in the file is that it is completely routine: a 54-year-old man admitted for a hip replacement in 1987, three pages of unremarkable medical notes in a nurse's tidy handwriting, then nothing. No discharge date. No transfer. Just nothing. The nothing is the story. Let the reader ask the question. Don't answer it.

✮ Operating theaters are always on upper floors. The surgical table is still there. They never take the table. In real abandoned hospitals, across multiple countries, documented cases: they always leave the table. Your character should wonder why no one took the table. Do not have a character explain why no one took the table. Some questions should stay questions.

✮ The morgue is in the basement. This is always true. The drawer handles are still there. Your character's hand will move toward one of them. Write this as involuntary. The hand goes first. The decision to stop, or not stop, comes second. We don't choose our curiosity; we choose whether to follow it.

1. Do not do age verification.

Oh no I dropped my link, what a horrible thing! Sure hope this doesn't get reblogged until it reaches users from the UK and Brazil!

How to write a character who just got wings

The extent on what happens depends on the span of the wings and if they can retract them. Some general ideas you can build on are:

1. Physical Sensations and Adjustment

Immediate sensations:

Weight or shift in balance, large wings pull the center of gravity backward.

Muscle soreness in the back/shoulders, especially along new muscle groups.

Hyper-awareness of the wings brushing against objects or catching air.

Itchiness or sensitivity if the wings "grew" recently.

Movement challenges:

Misjudging the wingspan and knocking things over.

Falling backwards because of the weight.

Learning how to fold them, awkward, slow, maybe painful at first.

Retraction (if possible) could feel like tensing very deep muscles or like closing a fist behind your back.

2. Clothing and Practical Issues

Clothing must be modified with slits, stretchy backs, or specialized harnesses. Jackets especially are a pain in the ass.

Backpacks don't really work anymore.

Sleeping becomes complicated, lying flat may be impossible.

Washing and grooming: preening feathers, drying membranes, accidental shedding, etc. maybe they need someone else to help them with this.

3. Emotional and Psychological Reactions

Internal:

Awe, excitement, disbelief, fear, claustrophobia (from a suddenly bigger body).

Feeling "larger than life" or feeling like a burden/monster depending on tone.

Social:

Depends on the worldbuilding and if this is a normal occurrence or not.

People stare, doors are narrower than they remembered, chairs become inpractible

Friends may react with fascination, jealousy, fear, or awkwardness.

4. Sensory Changes

Wings have nerves. Touch may be pleasant, ticklish, or painful.

Wind sensitivity, your character can feel air currents like a sixth sense.

Temperature issues: feathers insulate, membrane wings may get cold easily.

5. Learning to Use the Wings

Pre-flight:

Figuring out how to flare, beat, and angle them.

Overworking the muscles, leading to cramps.

Instinct vs. trial-and-error, do they feel intuitive or alien to the character?

First attempts at flight:

Running starts, panic flapping, short glides, messy crash landings.

Realizing flight requires technique (lifting angle, timing, wing power), not just force.

6. Realistic Physical Consequences of Flight

Flight demands big caloric intake, your character may become constantly hungry.

Stronger chest/back muscles develop, posture shifts.

Calluses or pads on feet if landing involves impact.

7. Daily Life & Worldbuilding

Will buildings accommodate large-winged beings?

Are wings common or unique? Does society have norms (wing etiquette)?

How does weather matter? Rain makes feathers heavy, wind can blow them sideways.

Also: If Wings Are Retractable

Retraction might feel like compressing or tucking away something huge, which may cause soreness or a sense of phantom wings when retracted.

Retraction could consume energy or rely on magic/technology.

There may be a risk of malfunction or partial transformation.

Retracting them can mess with the feathers, needing support to care for them when opened up again.

Hope this helps!

and just like the rain

you cast the dust into nothing