Blustering Winds

– Peabody and Chipper

“There’s nothing like a spot o’ nectar after a hard day’s screeching,” Peabody screeched as they shouldered their way into the already crowded treespace. “So how about you get us one each while I find us a perch, love.”

“I’ ‘ot a ‘e’er i’ea,” Chipper said, dragging herself to the top of a well-chewed stump by her beak. She perched with much fluffing and preening of feathers. “I’ll mind this prime pozzy with an equally prime view of our new friends,” she indicated with a nod of her head towards Rashidi, who was footing change for a beetle to Manfred, “while you get us one each.”

Peabody didn’t take long. “Up ya beak!” She said, swigging half her drink in one go and plonking the other one down in front of Chipper.

“Shut ya cracker-hole, love,” Chipper replied. “I’m trying to see what they’re saying.”

“Oooh! Look!” Peabody suddenly sat up straight on her half of the stump, raising her head feathers in salute to someone behind Chipper. Chipper turned to look.

“Sexy Rexy,” Chipper breathed, raising her own head feathers. “Basilissa. Not to mention Daughter of the empresses regnant herself: flugeldama extraordinaire!” The feathers on the newcomer glistened. Fresh from the birdbath, tiny droplets intensified her rainbow colours, navy blue becoming Palatinate blue, purple becoming electric indigo, orange: anaranjado, green: velvety emerald and chartreuse—

Peabody slapped her.

“Ow!” Chipper cried, rubbing the side of her face. “What was that for?”

“You were drooling over Sexy Rexy.”

“I—I wasn’t. I was just…admiring her colours.”

“Meh,” Peabody shrugged. “She looks just like any other rainbow lorikeet to me.”

“You know what this means,” Chipper leaned in conspiratorially. “If she’s here, and a Magenta’s here, well…” she shrugged her shoulders as though that completed her thought.

Sexy Rexy and her birdal entourage wove their way on foot through the flocks of drinkers, her trail marked by a sudden lowering of conversation, hushed whispering, and head feathers raised in rustling salute as she passed. Eventually, she perched with her equally elitist friends, and chatter around the room rose to its normal level of raucousness once more.

“Did you see the way Manfred acknowledged her?” Peabody asked her partner-in-words.

“Yep,” Chipper agreed with Peabody’s apparent sentiment. “His feathers went up in the absolute minimum of respect.”

“No,” Peabody clarified. “It was familiarity. He knows her.”

“Is not! It’s a conspiracy is what it is.”

Peabody sighed. “Why do you think everything’s a bloody conspiracy? Isn’t it just possible they know each other? Both being so…you know…known?”

But Chipper grabbed her friend and pointed. “Look at Felix! What’s he doing?” They both watched as Felix wound his way through the flocks towards Sexy Rexy’s perch, approaching the heir-apparent-of-the-whole-longitudinal-quarter without so much as a curtsey.

“He isn’t!”

“He can’t!”

“Surely Manfred told him who she is?”

“Surely he already knows?! Wait!” Chipper was beak-reading again. “Sexy Rexy just said to him ‘what do you want to know?’…Felix must be talking again…now she’s saying ‘we don’t get Hadley round here all that much’—”

“Who’s Hadley?”

“—now she’s saying ‘I doubt there’s…’ Hawk! I missed that bit. ‘around here…not unless…’ Oh my Hawk! Peabody!”

“What?”

“She just said ‘unless the curlews can help you’.”

“So?”

“Don’t you see? You’re right!”

“I’m right?!”

“It’s that code again. Curlews’re migratory birds like the rest of them! This goes all the way to the top! We can’t write about this yet—there’s so much more going on. We have to get to the bottom of it.”
They watched as Felix’s shoulders slumped and he walked back to his friends.

“I’m not so sure,” Peabody said, her face scrunched up with uncertainty. “It looks more personal than business.”

But Chipper shushed her again. “Let’s see what he says to Manfred.”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Peabody finished her drink and flexed her legs. “You get us a drink and join me.” She hopped down and waddled over to Manfred and Felix’s perch.

“Chloe!” she greeted the currawong-esque. “How lovely to see you again!”

Chloe, apparently mid-story, wobbled and swayed on her perch. “I wuz just—” she gesticulated, the drink clutched in her flight feathers spilling as she did so. “—Telll…telllll, —tellllllllling annyonnewhowantstoknow that it wasn’t llike that when I was a chick did you no…no…notice the lllook on your face? Lllike the snake that got-the-sparrow but not…not…not the sparrow. Not lllike the sparrow lllook would llllook. At alllll. Lllook. Annyway where was I oh that’s whereIwasthesnake I was, it was, no, youngsters. That’s what. You see? Chicks had respect then, when I was one. Chick I mean. Didyouwantanotherdrink? Whoseshoutisit? Respected their elders, they did.”

Peabody translated this to mean ‘pull up a perch’ while the others stared blankly at Chloe.

“That was sudden,” Manfred muttered before segueing politely. “That reminds me, Felix. What does the ‘P’ stand for?”

“Errr…nothing,” Felix said.

“Nnnno point… poinnnnnt denying. Respect llll… llll… within. FromwithinImean. You,” Chloe pointed a wavering grimy claw at Felix’s breast, and head, and the bar behind him, “have gottafly no, onnnn, onnnnnnnn yourown twowings.”

“All the way to Siberia?” Manfred asked with a grin. “That’ll be the day.”

“Siberia?” Chipper said, joining them with a round of nectars for everyone. “Why do you say that?”
Manfred frowned. “You’re that pair wrote that story on our family, aren’t you? Chipper and Peabody, isn’t it?”

Peabody rose her plastic in salute. “That’s us.”

Manfred grinned. “Well, as I recall, it was a good story and my mother loved it.”

“Wind,” Chloe said somehow managing to spray saliva even without any ess sounds, “llllots of wind.”

“Yes!” Felix said excitedly. He turned to the pair of cockatoos. “Do you know anything about wind?”

Peabody burped.

“Prrr-rrr-RRP,” Chipper said—presumably.

“He wants to migrate,” Manfred elaborated.

“Migrate?” Peabody tilted her head to one side quizzically. “Oh,” she slapped her thigh with sudden realization. “Really? That’s all it is?” There was no story—no conspiracy, no new line of work for the Magentas. Although…maybe this would make a great birdal interest piece. Half a dozen headlines jumped to mind:

“Mudlark’s Adorable Dream Captures Hearts”

“Poor Flying Almost Causes International Incident”

“Meet The Mudlark Flying To His Death”

“Surprising Find Inside Shark’s Stomach”

“Goodbye Felix: Tiny Mudlark Who Captured Our Hearts Has Gone”.

Of course, it needed more research yet, which meant they still had to come up with a story for tomorrow’s leaf.

“That’s all what is?” Manfred interrupted Peabody’s reverie. “Hey you weren’t going to sink to the level of a “birdal interest” story were you?”

“Errr…” Peabody coughed. “It’s just that it’s not every day a landlubber says they want to migrate.”

“Well I think it deserves more than that. A profile piece at the very least. It’s inspiring, flying all the way to Siberia, and him only a small bird. I bet you don’t know what he did today.”
Peabody coughed again. Inspiring didn’t make it any more achievable.

“Don’t leave me guessing.” But she guessed anyway. “He asked the curlews if he could go with them?”

“They made it sound so complicated,” Felix complained.

“And Sexy Sexy?” Chipper went on guessing.

“Rexy,” Peabody said out of the side of her beak.

“That’s what I said,” Chipper said.

“Yes,” Felix answered. “But she seems to think I don’t need to know. And Chloe here says all those winds they harped on about are too foreign to bother with. But I mean—isn’t that the point? Foreign?”
Peabody turned her thoughts to the story. Drinks appeared and got drunk. Conversation was had and for the most part not understood. Manfred disappeared, apparently in search of a bird about a tick. The tin under their perches gradually filled to overflowing.

“Felix.” Peabody eventually turned to him, only swaying slightly—she hoped. One of him flickered an eye-stripe but neither of him looked up. “Tell me why,” she said.

“Why what?” He asked, swigging from his bottle top.

Peabody tried to get her thoughts in order. “Wellllll…” she heard herself slur. “It seems, seems to me, seems to me myheadlineshouldhave, should have been more like “A Passage To Si…Si…Siberereria”. An…anan…and you say you want to migrate like it’s something you could just do as if you weren’t a nonnnmigra, a nonnnnmy, a nommigra, you know what I’m saying? Imag…imagine the headal…headaline:

“My…my…mygaratorily mm mmm… peewee”.”

“What my friend is trying to say,” Chipper interrupted soberly. “Is why?”

“Thassit!” Peabody interjected. “What was my question again?”

“Felix, you talked to the curlews,” Chipper went on. “Hawk, you even swaggered up to the penultimate-most powerful hen on the continent and she answered you.”

Felix sighed. “Why every…every…wosstheword?”

“Everything?”

“That’s it. Why ennn neee thing?” He pronounced carefully. “Whyze the sun rises. Whyze the skyze blue. WhyzwehereIdonfeelgood.”

Chipper spoke a dozen languages, including four ape languages, T-Rex, Machine, and the theoretical Z++. But nothing beat her fluency for nectar-speak. “But we know all that: the sun only appears to rise because the earth revolves around it, the sky is blue because blue waves are short, and we’re here because of Ramanujan’s Hidden Theorem.” Nor her influency in socialspeak if it came to it.

“Disssscovery.” Felix blurted. “That w’s the word I’s lookingfor. Mmmiz only ever…only ever…everyone always says and Ms is always says we says. But…but…how, I asss, I asked her, do we know?”

“But it’s not as if migrators are discovering anything new, either.”

“I know!” Felix tried to strike the bar with his wing but missed. “But,” he said, beaking his way back up from the floor, “ih woo ee ih ey ent ere en ut ey ent elth o ut it ould e and tho I arn I?”

A slow frown grew on Chipper’s face as she started to translate. “‘It would be there if they went there then, but they’” she shook her head. “You mean, ‘because it’s there’, don’t you?” She felt the hollowness that Felix must be feeling. It was deep, and dark, and sad. Manfred was right—this deserved a proper profile piece.

“Well,” she said. “Why don’t you? Why don’t you just go?”

“Because wind, that’s why.”

“So what? Learn on the wing.”

“Because but even curlews fledge but so how can I…” his voice became small and he sounded suddenly sober. “I really don’t feel good.” He threw up in the unfortunately already-full tin. Chipper asked for a drink of water and when Rashidi brought it, she drank it.

When there was nothing left to bring up, Felix wiped his beak and climbed back onto the perch. Rashidi pushed a bottletopful of water in his direction. He was halfway through drinking it when he cried out: “Of course!” and slapped himself in the forehead. His eyes were clear. He no longer slurred.

Chipper raised an eyestripe. “Of course what?”

“You’re right!” Felix gave her a fragrant hug. “I’ll just go! I’ll just fly on my own two wings!” He stepped off his perch and crashed straight to the floor again.

“Wait a minute,” Manfred returned with a wingful of drinks. “You can’t possibly go anywhere.” He put the drinks down and hefted Felix over his shoulder in a single movement. Half-dragging, half-pushing, and entirely carrying him, he spoke to a faded piece of driftwood propped up against the door. “Can you take him home?”

The eyes on the driftwood blinked.

“Teri!” Felix cawed. “It’s you!”

“I’m not a taxi,” Teri objected.

“Please.” Manfred gave the frogmouth an emerald carapace.

“I don’t need a taxi,” Felix complained. “I can fly on my own two wings. Look.” He stumbled, tripped and launched himself over the threshold.