okokok. with all the beloved bird!fitz asks coming in i feel that it is high time for me to ask something that's been on my mind for a while. hopefully i haven't asked you this before - ik i've written it out in the ask box and deleted it multiple times, so my memory's a bit fuzzy. anyway.

so. wings au!fitz is part bird. the beginning of his brain starting to rewire to be more like a bird was probably when he first got his wings. for the context of this ask, i've imagined the first moment of him having fully formed wings - not just little bones poking out his back or anything - being the moment where he "hatched". (correct me if i'm wrong there.) when a lot of types of birds hatch - including golden eagles, and owls - they imprint. they take a look at the very first thing they see, from what i understand, and go "THAT'S MY MOM THAT'S WHAT I AM THAT'S MY MOM MOM MOM MOMMMM SPEND TIME WITH ME" even when that very first thing they see isn't their mom. for example, one study found that ducks will imprint on inanimate objects if that's the very first thing they see. now all of that is just me skim-searching google months ago, so i could be wrong about how imprinting works. and that's fine!

but what i really wanna know is: have the bird elves (belves?) imprinted on anything or anyone? how would that work, with the way that their elf brains like to fight their bird brains? (ex: are we gonna see fitz repeatedly trying and failing to call, like, a dandelion or something, his mom because he knows that's not della but his bird brain keeps going "THAT'S MY MOM I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE HER GO GIVE HER LOVES GO GO GO"?)

Bird Fitz truly is beloved you're so right. Also you have not asked this before! You probably would've had an answer too your question if you'd asked it before, one I am now going to give you!!! ...under a cut because many words :)

Okay so if we go with when his wings were first fully formed, that'd put it right in-between that scene where they all glide off the big monster thing they accidentally hitched a ride on and the scene where he and Sophie have that heart to heart at the beginning. That's not 100% how I was thinking of it, but it also a fair assessment and reasonable! In my head their minds were rewiring themselves as the wings were growing, so it was a process occurring simultaneously. In which case that would put it probably about when Sophie first saw her forming wings and woke everyone up, because after that was when they all noticed how being in cramped quarters underground was really affecting them.

To answer your question, I didn't have bird imprinting in mind when writing the wings au, so you'll find no current hints towards it. I was focusing more on the wings than anything, for obvious reasons, but! I am also skim searching google rn to look more at imprinting, at Google is telling me that part of imprinting for eagles is learning to recognize what species they are and what they identify as eagles, which would work really well with how I've been writing Fitz honestly. You may have noticed in a recent chapter (idk which one there's so many dude. like. there's a lot of words) Fitz very plainly refers to them all as still elves, so I could and also probably will now work some imprinting brain mechanics into that.

Also, in both instances we identified for Fitz, the thing/person he imprinted on would probably be Sophie. First waking up, she's central to the room so he'd probably look at her first, and after that glide if it was something that happened in the first few hours, Sophie was the person he was talking to most in that time frame. I don't know if duration of time spent with the thing being imprinted on is important, but this is my au so my rules.

For how it works, I'd think that to mesh with the elf brain mechanics of already knowing what things are that their brains would need more time and seek out things it previously recognized as similar to it. They're not new to the world, they're just perceiving things slightly to the left now. They know that an inanimate object isn't what they are and that it's not like them. They already have a sense of things. So I think imprinting would take more repeated or prolonged exposure to the thing during the designated time period, and that the thing would have to be something they already kinda recognize as similar to themselves. Hence: Sophie.

But that's just Fitz; there are other bird boys! Here's the thing. If we go with the imprinting first starting when they wake up before running away that would have like almost all of them imprinting on Sophie. Because she was central and then started talking so she would've caught their attention! Currently imagining a gaggle of bird boys just trailing after her...

As for the others...I think Dex and Keefe (as an honorary bird boy he can have some imprinting, as a treat) would've imprinted on each other. Keefe is right there to support Dex through his issues with his wings when they start falling apart and growing wrong, so I think that would be enough for the two to be attached, which would be an interesting dynamic.

Maruca I'm less certain of because we don't really see as much of what she first does during that period. She's mentioned talking with Wylie and then with the whole group, so anyone could be her person in this case. My guess is either Wylie or Marella, they're the two people she would've interacted with the most during that time.

To summarize: I haven't written anything about imprinting into the au so far, but I think that if the bird boys did imprint it would all be on each other, ending up as a confusing more intense attachment to the person that they don't quite understand. But even though I haven't currently written it, it does work well with some things, so I may add it! Hopefully that answers your question but also I love talking about the wings au so feel free to ask more!