Longwinded

– Pumpkin (with Sunny’s help)

“Do you think he saw us?” Sunny whispered. A small black and white bird was slumped in the busy entryway and she eyed it suspiciously. Its eyes were glazed and unblinking, its wings and legs splayed haphazardly. It was a he, she realized, glancing away. How he’d not been trodden on or rudely shoved aside was a mystery. There were even a couple of half-eaten stinkbugs perfectly balanced on his breast. As if to prove her point a magpie exited the bolehole, stepping carefully over the prone mudlark.

It wasn’t every day you saw a bird with its guard so far down. Especially one so plump. And you didn’t need to be carnivorous to know that made him especially delicious. She looked up instinctively at the thought. The huge spreading branches of the old eucalypt were impenetrable to her sweeping stare. There could be dozens of predators, just watching and she’d never know until…well, until she did. She shivered.

“For the last time, Sunny—” Pumpkin may have thought she whispered but a pair of pigeons in the next tree squawked and took fright. Even Sunny flinched. “—I’m not gonna play celebrity ancestors.” The unconscious cockling didn’t move. Pumpkin moved in to investigate, leaning in, positioning her head so when he opened his eyes they’d be filled with nothing but her. She nudged him with her beak. His eyes flickered. With paralyzing slowness, his eyelids opened, his eyes focused. Sunny could see the confusion on his face until, with a flinch, horror dawned in its place. She could almost see the silent screech seizing his throat.

“Pumpkin!” Sunny chastised. “Stop it.”

She’d seen her do this often enough to know how it usually panned out: the mudlark’s entire world—and therefore, according to some of the leaves on physics she’d been reading, the entire universe—was now filled with a huge, bright, unblinking, beady, black eye. His heart was thumping loud enough to drown out the cicadas; the poor thing probably couldn’t even hear Pumpkin. Sure, Pumpkin didn’t mean any harm, and she always unloomed before things got toxic, but fight-or-flight—or freeze, as it turned out, in this cockling’s case—would taint his system with adrenalin and cortisol regardless.

Sunny sighed, and pecked Pumpkin’s foot.

“Ow!” Pumpkin lifted her foot to her beak and gave it a suck. “Whab wu ‘oo wat ‘or?”

Released from the near-fatal glare, the cockling breathed again. But his world had only changed from all-encompassing-shiny-black-orb to hideous-big-ugly-grey-skinned-featherless-furless-head. He let go of his cloaca.

“Oh look at that, Pumpkin. You’ve literally gone and scared the guano out of him.”

“Alright,” Pumpkin squawked. She took a sideways step along the branch to give the mudlark space.

“Don’t worry about her,” Sunny told the mudlark. “She’s actually really nice once you get to know her.” She heard his heartbeat returning to normal—until Pumpkin spoke again.

“What are you doing?” She boomed.

“Pumpkin, you’re not helping! Let him get up!”

Pumpkin took another grumbling sideways step. The mudlark eased himself upright.

“What’s your name?” Sunny asked. He turned a side-eye towards her voice and it widened when he caught sight of her, then narrowed as he tried to process her tiny size.

“Errr…hello,” he said. “I’m…Bumpy. Well, Felix, but everyone calls me Bumpy. You can call me Bumpy, I guess, but I’d prefer Felix. I’m a…errr…mudlark, but I guess you—”

“I’m Sunny,” she cut off his nervous rant. “Really Sunny, everyone calls me Sunny, you can call me Sunny, and I’m—quite obviously, so I don’t see why I need to say it but if that’s what we’re doing then—I’m an Eastern Yellow Robin.”

Felix stood up, wiped his beak clear of stinkbug shells, and burped heavily.

“Whoops!” his wings rose in blush.

“And I’m Pumpkin,” yelled the ugly greyskin. “It’s obvious I’m a cockatoo so I’m not going to say it.”

“But…you don’t have any…” He tapered off. Sunny wondered if he’d just spied the single loyal yellow feather Pumpkin always flattened over her scaly head, but before the cockling could continue he was shoved aside.

“Watch it!” the shover said, disappearing inside the bolehole.

“Looks like you passed out,” Sunny said. A magpie exited, stepping around the trio with a grumble of complaint. Felix brushed pieces of stinkbug from his feathers and kicked a couple of shells off the branch.

“What’s going on in here that’s so interesting?” Sunny hopped around him and flitted inside. The hollowed-out trunk was huge! She took a breath in wonderment. It was easily the biggest example of TARDIT physics she’d ever seen, bigger even than the flying school for albatrosses she’d taken Pumpkin to on last week’s excursion that turned out to be bucketloads of fun—well, bucketloads of something anyway. The treespace was filled with birds of all kinds of species: some perched and nibbling treats, others reclining and gossiping with friends. Movement caught her eye as a flock of sparrows flitted through beams of mote-filled light. A pair of tiny bright blue wings flashed and then disappeared. She turned back to face Felix.

“I bet you had no idea this feather-dresser’s was even here. But don’t worry,” she reached up to give him a patronizing pat on the kneecap. “Even I’m a bit blown away by what we hens have managed here. It must be new. And here I’d thought you’d just overeaten and fallen into a food coma.”

Felix’s face was a cross between puzzlement and surprise.

“It’s alright,” Sunny said. She stood graciously to one side so Felix had an unobstructed view. “Go on, have a look—the hens won’t mind.” She could have sworn his face grew even more surprised. He stumbled dumbly to the bolehole while she hopped up onto his shoulder. A brilliant golden yellow bird the size of a finch greeted them hello. She felt Felix flinch as his head feathers rustled in the wake of a passing sparrow, and laughed as he was nearly hit by another.

“Even I can’t see to the other side,” she said, squinting. “Oh look! There’s levels up there!” She pointed to the mezzanine floors. “With spas! And mirrors! I’ve never seen so much glass in one place!”

Felix sounded strangely hesitant as he said, “I think they might have a travelling exhibition here? A glass show?”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing! And look—that tiny dot of blue up there. Is that…is it…?”

“Sky?” Felix offered.

“And is that fish and chips I can smell? By the Circle, this place must be at least a fraction the size of my mother’s whole forest.”

“Errr…I really did just overeat.”

“Feathers?!” Pumpkin chose this moment to continue their conversation. “Are you saying I don’t have any feathers?”

“Well,” Felix turned back to listen. “I guess I was kind of wondering what…errr…what happened to you?”

“She lost all her feathers in a fever.” Sunny waved her wing in dismissal.

“The Great Feather Fever in the Year of the Shipwreck,” Pumpkin screeched. “So many of us got it. It’s usually fatal you know, but I survived.”

Sunny sighed. Felix’s eyes glazed over, his wingtips moving as though brushing over icons only he could see.

“Me and a wingful or two of the other lasses,” the screech continued. “Not that many of us are left now.”

“I’ve errr…isolated…the errr…” Felix frowned. “There’s a lot more than just one shipwreck year…”

“What are they teaching chicks these days?” Pumpkin screeched. “The shipwreck, of course. That old schooner that found coal and brought all the pale apes to these parts. Made this town what it is today, hawk-awful mess that it is. Oh I remember the day he was wrecked—”

“The first one?” Felix gaped. “In 1805?” He focused on Pumpkin again, probably only now noting the long wiry feathers growing out of her ears and nostrils, the sag around her cloaca and the stretch over her bloated gut, before leaning in closer to Sunny to whisper in a non-Pumpkin-way. “There was no feather fever, was there? She’s just lost one for every year she’s been alive.”

Against her better judgement, Sunny laughed.

“Or even every second year,” he added.

Pumpkin was still talking, “…by then, of course, the southerly had turned into a huge gale…” She had her primaries—or at least, the puckered grey skin on her phalanxes where her primaries should have been—tucked under her armpits. She stood tree-trunk straight, her voice taking on a strident lecturing tone, her eyes turning misty with memory: all the hallmarks of an endless story.

Felix must have seen it too. “Oh, look,” he said brightly, glancing at the sun. “Is that really the angle? I must be going!”

“…and then the sea whipped up an alright frenzy. I tell you, they don’t make seas like they used to…” Pumpkin blissfully continued her story.

“You’re welcome,” Sunny said.

“…and wind!” Pumpkin woke the dead in other countries. “Just ask the curlews here, they’ll tell you about wind…”

“What for?” Felix asked Sunny.

“For saving you, of course.”

“Nice chatting to you, young cock!” Pumpkin screeched suddenly, launching herself into flight. “Bring crackers next time!”

Sunny rolled her head and took off after her charge.