– Huma
“Where is everyone?” Manfred asked as he flicked a plastic straw on the rune line and pulled himself up to a perch by his beak.
“Are you kidding?” Huma said, wiping the smooth, grey log at the front of her stack of driftwood. Its stains and salt and well-worn claw marks hinted at a dozen lifetimes of ownership before her. “It’s Surfest. My nth best buying day of the year. Everyone’s out trying to pick up what the apes throw away. What’ll it be?”
Manfred smacked his mandibles together. “I’ll have a Friday, if you’ve got any left.” He winged a marble out of his cockpurse.
“Do you have anything smaller?” Huma asked.
“Thought you said it was your nth best day of the year?”
“Buying, not selling. And I’m not planning on buying anything that dear. Supply and demand, Manfred. You of all cocks should know that.”
A raucous screaming and squawking overhead made her look up. An entire syndicate of seagulls was approaching the runes, feathers and guano raining down until, the cloud finally reaching the runic line, the birds dissipated, dissolving like a spring shower in sunshine and leaving a single mudlark to cross alone.
“Orville?” Huma said as the defeated seagulls fought amongst themselves on the other side of the line. Orville dropped a sauce-soaked piece of bread on the log-top.
“How’s that for seafood?” He grinned at her while she sniffed it.
“Barbecue sauce,” she said, footing over a bright green beetle shell. “It’s worth a gossamer or two.” Orville put the shell in his dried-mouse cockpurse and hid it back under his wing before fetching himself a plastic for the runeline and settling on the perch next to Manfred.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Magenta,” Manfred offered his wing. “Manfred Magenta.”
“Great, great…” Orville seemed uneasy shaking his wing. “I’m Orville Ochre. I’ll have a weekday,” he added to Huma’s questioning look.
She dug out a pair of chips from behind the log, slugging the fat, sand-encrusted chip to Manfred and footing the trim, clean, pristine chip to Orville. The smell of chip, the oil only just rancid and the rot still sweet, was almost overpowering. Both their bellies rumblied. “How do you want to pay for it?”
With a sigh, Orville pulled a different cockpurse out from under his wing, this one a dried frog, and checked inside its mouth for anything of value. There must have been something inside because his eyes lit up.
“Figs?!” Huma retorted, her crest quivering, as he upended the frog. “They practically grow on trees. Come on, you know the drill. Glass, gossamer, or grains. What about the shell I just gave you?”
“Please, Huma?” Orville wheedled. “I’m saving up for a debut present for whichever henling chooses me.”
Huma softened. “Awwww. How can I argue in the face of such romance?” She turned to face a complicated set-up of used plastic cups and string. “You can have credit today.” She made a scratch on one of the cups before settling on the log-top to listen to their chatter.
Orville glanced around before turning to Manfred again. “I gotta say, I feel like nature’s screaming at me to defend my territory right now.” He raised his wings a half-hearted halfway. “‘I’ve got worms’. You know, you being a strange cockling and all.”
“True,” Manfred agreed. “But I’m no threat. I’ve been invited.”
Huma watched Orville count her customers. “We’re the only ones here,” he said.
“By one of our kind, actually,” Manfred said. “Perhaps you know a Felix?”
Orville narrowed his eyes to slits. “You know Felix?” he asked.
“We met at the feather-dresser’s.”
Orville raised an eyestripe.
“He was upset,” Manfred continued.
Orville rolled his head. “Don’t tell me—was it anything to do with curlews?”
“In a way,” Manfred said. “He’s pretty tight-beaked about it but I’m guessing he had a hot date and couldn’t get anyone to fix up his feathers—”
“Date?” Orville interrupted. “Are you sure?”
“Weeeell…” Manfred tapered off.
“Tell me—were there any curlews there?”
“Of course. And whimbrels, and greenshanks, and godwits—”
“What’s a godwit?”
“Long legs? Spots? Beak that goes like this?” Manfred made a long curved shape in front of his own beak.
“I was being figurative,” Orville said. “I don’t really care what a godwit is. My point is it wouldn’t have been a date. He would have been there asking the curlews if he could migrate with them and—”
Manfred spat his chip out. “Migrate?!” He blurted with a shower of soggy chip fragments. “You mean fly 10,000k to the other end of the world? We’re not talking about the same Felix, then.”
“That is him. Couldn’t fly to safety if his tree was on fire.”
“Huh.” Manfred shook his head and licked up his scraps. “Huh,” he snorted again. The pair sat in silence as they munched. Huma got up to inspect the fallout from another pigeon cloud—this one a willie wagtail with a piece of sausage. As the wagtail stuffed two green shells under a wing, Huma glanced towards the rune line. She flicked her head to indicate the back entrance. A feral pigeon, having sidled across the runes unaccosted by the gulls, made its surreptitious way over. She was glad nobody noticed. Some of her purchases were of the exclusive type and if prey knew what was good for them, even friendly prey, they were better off being distracted.
“Where is he anyway?” Orville was asking Manfred next time she nestled down. “I mean…if he invited you here, why isn’t he here?”
“Errr…on his way, I guess.”
“You guess?” Orville frowned and studied the skies for his friend.
“Maybe we should help him?” Manfred asked.
“To get here?! Why? What’d you do?”
“Hey! Don’t get your feathers in a ruffle. I just meant about this migrating idea of his.”
“Hmph. To migrate, or to not migrate?”
“He doesn’t even know the first thing about wind. I tried to help him on the way here.”
“Well don’t look at me,” Orville said. “I’ve been trying to help him all our lives.”
“May I make a suggestion?” Huma offered. The pair looked at her. “Why don’t you get him down to the Tick tonight? The place is full of experts. If you can’t find someone there wants to tell him everything they know about flying, then flight itself is just a conspiracy theory.”
“Great idea,” Manfred agreed. “We can have a couple of nectars while we’re at it.”
“What do you mean ‘tonight’?” Orville asked. “We’re not nocturnal. Are we?”
“Everyone goes to the Tick on Fridays.” Manfred waved a wing as if to dismiss the naysayer. “Don’t we, Huma?”
“We do,” Huma agreed.
“Why?” Orville asked.
“Because that’s when the apes are too rowdy to hear us being rowdy.”
“But what about the magpies?”
“What about them?” Manfred asked back.
“Magpie law? The choirs? Call to quarters?”
“Nah.” Manfred shrugged. “They don’t mean that literally.”
“It’s more like a warning,” Huma said. “And anyway, they’re not nocturnal either, so how would they know?”
“A warning?” Orville asked.
“Keep up, Orville,” Huma said.
“But—”
“Look. The magpies know no bird in their right mind will go out after dark. It’s a scientific fact that we diurnal types can’t see at night, and there’s all those nocturnal predators out there, just waiting for us. So they call their warning, but it’s still up to us.”
“Don’t oversell it,” Orville frowned.
“And there’s young Felix P Brown to consider,” Manfred added.
“Speaking of whom,” she said with a pointed look behind them. They were just in time to see Felix stand up from a fresh furrow of sand. They watched him brush off his legs and straighten out his feathers, fish a blue plastic water bottle lid out of the storm drain, lug it to the line of styrofoam cups, plastic bottles, straws, lids, and shopping bags that marked her treasured runic line, throw it down, and waddle over their way.
“Hi Bumpy,” Huma greeted him as he beaked up to the perch.
“What took you so long?” Manfred asked.
Evolution: it's for the birds 