What gets me is that initial pause. The bird knows this song. He knows when the drum comes in. Being able to anticipate musical rhythm is a form of intelligence very few species have, and this is the most remarkable example of it I’ve ever seen in a bird. The cockatoo knew to wait for the drums.
i’m half asleep and idk how much sense this will make but: relationship birds. you don’t choose them. they just show up. the size and rarity has no apparent relation to the depth or quality of the relationship. getting a phonecall like “so i guess it’s official” and you’re like “oh so you got one too” because you were both at work when a house finch showed up on your desks. different birds at different milestones, only some of them official. bird prenups. bird vows. at the end of every wedding you wait for your bird and hope to god it’s something manageable. getting married and almost immediately getting a divorce because you agreed to richer or poorer but you didn’t anticipate a silkie nesting on your head. it refuses to stay in the marital cage. “i’m sorry jimothy i just can’t live like this, i can’t” “i didn’t ask for this to be our bird susan!!! if we can get through this maybe our newly strengthened love will attract a new bird” “you don’t know that for sure and i can’t take that chance”
at the time this idea seemed worth waking up to write it down
in my dream this was really fake-deep with a lot of romantic imagery, and you can sort of tell where i woke up a bit because this post gets derailed about halfway through. and in retrospect this was probably a weird subconscious interpretation of a carpenters song. but anyway now that i’m awake all i can think about is The Worlds Worst Dating Sim
Dori peered suspiciously around her bedroom door before ushering Lilian inside.
“Okay, what happened?” Lilian asked.
“You need to be sworn to secrecy,” Dori hissed, wild-eyed. Short blonde hair went in every direction. Since it always did that, this meant nothing.
“Should I have brought my shovel?”
There was a peeping sound from near Dori’s bed. Or what might have been Dori’s bed, but was definitely a pile of blankets. It was hard to distinguish between furniture and indiscriminate piles of stuff.
Lilian’s eyes widened. “No.”
“Secrecy! Sworn to!”
“Dori. Is there a bird in here?”
There was further peeping.
“You can’t tell anyone about this, Lilian.”
“Oh my god.” Lilian’s hands went to her face, gleeful. “Oh my god! Who is it!”
“I don’t know.” Dori moved her blankets with a sigh to reveal a black-capped chickadee sitting on a pillow.
“… you don’t know?” Lilian asked, lowering her hands.
“I have no idea!” The chickadee peeped agreement. “I tried leaving the window open in case it was just lost and I tried throwing it out the window but it just came back and then I felt like a jerk for throwing it out the window and I had to give it its own pillow.”
Lilian scratched her head. “So do you think it’s like… a crush bird?”
“It must be, right?” Dori sniffled and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her hoodie.
“That’s good, though!” Lilian said. “That means they like you back!”
“I guess.”
“Who do you have a crush on?”
Dori turned red. “A couple people,” she muttered.
“That’s okay,” Lilian said, trying to find a safe place to sit. “We’ll just… we’ll figure out who of them might like you back! Right?”
“It’s embarrassing,” Dori complained.
“I tell you all about my crushes.”
“That’s different.”
“Just name them and we can figure out who the bird is with. And I’ll only make fun of you a little.”
Dori sighed. The bird peeped. “Okay, uh. I guess it could be Ricki, or Julian. Or Laura.”
“Okay, well–”
“Or Terry.”
“That’s–”
“Or Shawn.”
“Oh, god.”
“Or Olivia.”
“The library girl?”
“She’s mysterious!”
“Shawn?”
“He could have hidden depths beneath his muscly exterior! You don’t know!”
“There’s no room for depths! There’s no room for anything but more muscles!”
The chickadee flapped indignantly.
“Is there anyone in the entire school who the bird couldn’t be for?” Lilian asked.
“I don’t know!” Dori snapped defensively. “You? You don’t have a bird!”
Lilian was briefly taken aback. “I don’t – well. Yeah. I mean. Obviously. But, like. Is that the only reason, or–”
“I never should have told you about this stupid bird,” Dori said with another sniffle. “I’m just going to keep it in my room until it changes its mind and leaves and no one will ever know.”
“No, no, don’t be like that!” Lilian said. “Here, we can narrow this down. We know it can’t be Terry–”
“Why can’t it be Terry?”
“He was on that field trip last year,” Lilian reminded her, “he saw you eat that bug.”
“We were supposed to eat the bug!” Dori protested. “They were edible crickets! That was the whole point! It was for science, Lilian.”
“I don’t know what you ate, but it definitely wasn’t a cricket and I don’t think it was supposed to be in that bowl.”
Dori rubbed at her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “That doesn’t rule him out,” she mumbled. “It’s a classy little bird.”
“You know that has nothing to do with it,” Lilian said. “My Aunt Katy is like a little fairy princess, but she’s had a pelican three times now. Three different guys. Pelicans.”
“I guess.”
“Look, it’s obvious what we have to do.” Lilian crossed her arms. “We need to investigate every person you have a crush on until we find out who’s got a chickadee in their room.”
Dori pulled a comforter over the bird and her own head. Her voice was muffled and accompanied by chirps. “Maybe I can just lie here and wait to die, instead.”
“Tomorrow is Taco Tuesday.”
“Maybe I can just lie here and wait to die after tomorrow, instead.”
“maybe i can just lie here and wait to die after tomorrow instead
sparksoffandommagic 