A bad time to invade someone's privacy
The Branwen tribe's new campsite was, without a doubt, one of Summer's favourite places in the entirety of Remnant.
Part of the reason she loved it so much was the place itself. She loved the forest surrounding the campsite, the undergrowth thicker than it had been in the previous place the Branwen tribe had been. (Qrow had promised to teach her how to track animals through even the thickest undergrowth. Summer couldn't wait for that lesson to happen.) And she loved the river that flowed right at the edge of the camp, the water crystal clear and teeming with life. She loved the old willow tree at the edge of the river, and the birds that nested in the trees surrounding the camp.
So, yes. She loved the place itself. But that wasn't her main reason for why it was her new favourite place in the entirety of Remnant.
The main reason she loved it so much, was because she loved the people who were there with her.
Summer loved the tribe, although she'd never expected to. When she'd first set out with Taiyang to find Qrow and Raven, she had thought that the tribe would be a bloodthirsty bunch of criminals, who were cruel and mean and awful in every sense of the word. And they were a bloodthirsty bunch of criminals, that much was true. But they were also fun. They helped each other, and they all ate together for every meal, each person claiming a spot on the ground and laughing and talking with the people around them. They were a community, Summer found. A community that was fiercely loyal to each other, and even more loyal to their chiefs.
And they'd accepted Summer and Taiyang within days of meeting them. The two had been living with the Branwens for a little over a week, and yet already, they felt at home in the tribe, the bandits making an honest effort to welcome and include the Huntsman and Huntress.
(If the bandits only did this because they loved their chiefs and didn't want the twins to be unhappy, then that was their business.)
And, more than that, Summer loved Qrow and Raven and Taiyang, albeit in different ways. (She thought about the new, tentative relationship blossoming between her and Taiyang and Raven, and couldn't help the quiet squeal of delight that escaped her lips.) She loved sitting in the forge with Qrow, helping him out whenever she could, the two of them spending many happy hours just talking about weapons. She loved sitting with Raven in her tent, the two of them drinking tea and talking about whatever came to mind, or not talking at all and simply sitting in silence. She loved wandering along the river banks with Taiyang, laughing at him as he tried and failed to catch fish with his bare hands. She loved the meals that they all ate together, and the cuddle piles and scuffles that happened almost daily.
So, yeah. As much as Summer loved the place itself, it was really the people within in that made the place her favourite spot in Remnant.
The people within the campsite were also the reason she was sitting in her tent, a little after a week since she and Taiyang had found the tribe and reunited with Qrow and Raven, staring at the book held tightly in her hands. (She was not panicking, thank you very much. Nor was she hyperventilating. Definitely not.)
The book was one of those she had stolen from Ozpin.
A book of magic.
Okay ... so maybe she was panicking just a bit. Because Summer had yet to tell Raven and Qrow about her newly-discovered magical talents. (With good reason! It wasn't the kind of thing you could just blurt out in the middle of a conversation!) She knew that the twins wanted to ask questions - questions about how she could fit so much into her bag, questions about how she and Taiyang had found them - but thus far, Summer had managed to stall the inevitable Conversation that the team needed to have.
But she knew that the twins were becoming suspicious. She had seen the side-eyes Raven gave her and Taiyang whenever they mentioned how glad they were to have finally managed to find the other half of their team. She had caught Qrow examining her bag carefully, looking for any signs that would give him clues as to why it seemed to hold an impossible amount of things.
Soon, Summer knew that she would have to come clean about her magic. (She still hadn't gotten used to that. She had magic. What the fuck.)
And she was terrified.
Sure, Taiyang had reacted fairly well to the discovery of her magic. (He had, in fact, reacted better than she had. Hysterical laughter was better than screaming, in Summer's opinion.) But what if the twins hated her because of her magic? What if they forced her and Taiyang to leave the tribe again? What if Qrow refused to be friends with her, and Raven ended their relationship before it had really begun?
Logically, Summer knew that would never happen. She knew that the twins would rather die than force her out of their lives, unless they had no other choice. (She thought of how they had fled Beacon, imagining them alone and scared and mourning the fact that they couldn't say goodbye, and tried not to cry.) But that didn't stop her from panicking at the thought of how they might react.
Summer didn't think she'd survive a life without Qrow and Raven in it.
"Okay." Sitting in her tent, book clutched tightly between her hands, Summer forced herself to take a deep breath and tried not to think about anything other than the fact that she had magic. She had to confront that fact first, before she could feel comfortable telling Qrow and Raven about it. She had to accept her magic before she felt that she could tell someone else. And the first step in accepting her magic ... was doing magic. Which was a terrifying thought all on its own. Summer hadn't used magic once since getting to the tribe. "Okay," she repeated, shaking herself out of the cycle of terror. "A simple spell. Easy. Like the tracking spell. Just something to get you used to the idea of having magic."
With a sigh, Summer opened the book, flipping through the pages until she found a spell that looked pretty easy, and seemed like something that would get her more acclimatized to the idea of having magic. If it went right, it would be a pretty spell, creating birds out of any two objects that she picked. And if it went wrong, there shouldn't be any side effects, from what Summer could see.
The perfect spell to begin with.
"I can do this," Summer told herself, wishing that Taiyang was there with her but also kind of glad to be doing it on her own. Grabbing two rocks off the ground, she lay them on her lap, studying them for a moment before turning to the book and reading out the spell silently for a few times, sounding the words out in her head before saying them aloud. "B-Bydaff adar I go ... no wait, that's an a. Er, bydaff adar I g-gael eu gweneud o..."
And then, as Summer was about to finish the spell, two people strode into the tent, looking at her in curiousity as her head jerked up, their names instinctively falling off her lips as she stared at them incredulously, wondering why they hadn't bothered to knock before barging into her tent. "Raven? Qrow?"
It took Summer two seconds to realize what she had just done. Two seconds too late, as a flash of light burst out of her hands, blinding her and likely the twins as well.
When Summer managed to see again, she became certain of one thing: the twins were going to kill her.
"Oh Brothers," Summer whispered, hands flying to cover her mouth as she leaped to her feet, absently noting that the book and stones that she'd meant to turn into birds had tumbled to the ground at the sudden movement. She couldn't bring herself to care enough to pick them up, not when she was still stuck staring at the place her lover and friend had been standing just moments before ... the place where two black birds were now stumbling around in confusion. "Oh Brothers."
She had just turned two of her favourite people in the world into birds.
"Raven? Qrow?" Summer said tentatively, half-hoping that her fears were unfounded and she'd had just accidentally summoned two random birds, and sent Raven and Qrow somewhere else in the camp. When the two birds looked up at her and cawed loudly, obviously responding to the names, Summer's heart nearly froze. Oh gods. They were birds. They were birds.
Summer opened her mouth, apologies ready to spill out of her lips, hands shaking as she reached out to her lover and friend. Then one of the birds flapped their wings, and obviously there was some instinctual stuff happening because Summer was sure that neither Raven nor Qrow knew how to operate wings, and Summer paused, equally fascinated and horrified by the fact that not only were her friends birds, they were birds with typical bird instincts and (presumably) human minds.
When both of the birds fixed her with identical murderous looks, horror easily won out over fascination.
"I'm sorry!" Summer yelped, sprinting out of the tent whilst the birds flew after her, scratching and pecking at whatever skin they could reach, sharp claws somehow piercing through her aura and leaving bloodied scratches on Summer's skin. Hands protecting her face, Summer raced through the camp, trying to outrun the birds while the rest of the tribe stared in amusement. "I'm sorry!" She shrieked again, swerving into the forest when it seemed everyone would rather laugh at her instead of helping, hoping that she could lose the two furious-and-definitely-contemplating-murder birds amidst the trees. "Please don't kill me!"
If anything, that plea fueled the birds' desire to kill her, as they sped up, elegantly dodging branches and low-hanging boughs as they pecked and clawed at Summer. Huffing, the Huntress scowled, channeling her semblance and blurring away from the birds in a burst of scarlet rose petals, phasing through trees and objects in her path until a flash of gold caught her eye.
"Tai! Help!" Summer shrieked, reforming behind her boyfriend and wrapping her legs around his waist, using him as a flesh shield for when the birds - for when Qrow and Raven - caught up to her. "Killer birds are after me!"
Laughing, Taiyang wrapped his hands around her legs, supporting her as she clung to his back like an oversized backpack. "Killer birds, huh?" Taiyang grinned, snickering when he felt Summer nodding furiously. "You're a trouble magnet, you know that? What did you even do to them, anyway?"
"Er..." Summer grimaced, hesitating, and felt Taiyang shake his head slightly, sighing at the shenanigans his lover got up to when she was left alone. "I may have ... been practicing my magic ..."
"That's great, Sum!" Taiyang cheered, still wondering what the hell his girlfriend had done to anger the 'killer' birds and curious as to how that tied in to her practicing her magic, but also excited that she was finally trying to get used to the idea that she had magic. He was desperate to tell Qrow and Raven the truth about how they'd found the tribe - he hated keeping secrets from the Branwen twins.
"Yeah," Summer grumbled, sounding miserable. "That's great. Except Qrow and Raven interrupted me mid-spell, and now..."
Taiyang went cold, imagining all the ways that could have gone wrong. He and Summer could be thrown out of the tribe. Raven could say that she'd never want to see them again. Qrow could say that it had been better when the twins hadn't known Taiyang and Summer. "Summer, what did you do?"
Before Summer could answer that question, two birds burst out of the trees, squawking angrily as they flew towards the Huntsman and Huntress. Squeaking, Summer buried her face in Taiyang's neck, tightening her grip on him to the point where he swore his ribs had cracked. Hurriedly, the words burst from her lips. "ImayhaveturnedRavenandQrowintobirds."
"...SUMMER WHAT THE FUCK?!"