ψ I knew you were trouble when you walked in | OPEN

[fishermansweater]

WHO: Finnick Odair + his peacock
WHERE: The 6I park
WHEN: August 3
OPEN TO: EVERYONE
WARNINGS: Baby peacock being ridiculous. Probably mentions of mental health and anxiety later on.

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he's a peacock, a total preener --> fountain park


There's been an escape.

There'd been another aftershock, and after he'd calmed Annie down, Finnick had gone outside to check on the birds, only to find another hole in the fence. He'd thought he'd patched it up before he'd gone back to Annie, but he's come out again to find that Star, the oldest of the peacocks, is on the other side of the fence, and making his determined way down the path towards the village.

Finnick curses and turns, rapidly, to pull open the door of the house and shout in to Annie.

"Star's gotten out, can you check the fence?"

He doesn't wait for an answer, only hopes she's heard him before he's off down the road after the blue and brown bird. Hearing Finnick behind him prompts the bird to take off, skimming low over the bushes at the side of the road and leaving Finnick to chase after him.

They're halfway to the village by the time Star lands again, and the bird doesn't seem inclined to let Finnick catch up. Every time he gets close enough to reach out to catch the bird, Star flutters away out of reach and continues on down the path. They've made it all the way to the park before Star finally stops trying to actually run away and starts contentedly pecking at the grass, looking for something to eat. Finnick gives up the pursuit, too, and sits down on the edge of the fountain.

Perhaps he should consider trying to make some sort of leash or harness for the bird so he can't get away. He always carries some of the nylon cable he'd acquired around with him, so he'd be able to, but he's not sure about whether it's even possible to leash a bird. The propaganda films at home about agriculture in District 10 had never said much about poultry.

While Finnick watches, Star stares at the fountain, then turns around, slowly, holding out its wings, tail held straight up in the air. His tail is quivering, displaying the stubs of feathers that haven't yet grown in.

"You've got a while before you'll make it in the Capitol," Finnick says, eyeing the bird.

Comments

[thenewways]

Nerys can't help but laugh herself, because the bird is just small enough to be ludicrous, like a child puffing themself up to feign adulthood. She notices that Star responds to her straightening up, so she tries to sit a little taller. Unfortunately the process causes her to overcompensate, and she just barely catches herself from falling backwards into the fountain like a diver.

She's tickled, though, and keeps laughing, shaking her head.

"I don't know if I'm the kind of female he's looking for," she points out. "I bet they think we're pretty strange-looking, in all honesty. From what I know of sentients who're avian-descended, they tend to be unimpressed by our lack of wingspan."

[fishermansweater]

"Careful," Finnick warns, but she catches herself before he needs to do anything to save her from the fountain. Not that she's ever done much to give the impression she'd need rescuing even if she fell in. He'd had to make himself into a judge of people, their strengths and vulnerabilities, to be able to survive what he'd done in the Capitol, and Nerys seems capable.

"He thinks Annie and I are his parents, not sure what he thinks people are."

But there's something else in what she says that it takes Finnick a few moments to process: avian-descended. His expression had been amused, and it freezes for a moment, then there's a faint frown that speeds across his face before it disappears.

"Avian-descended?" he asks.

[thenewways]

Managing to stay upright, Nerys' grip tightens on the edge of the fountain, which is oddly cool despite the heat of the day. Maybe it's the proximity of the water, or maybe it's just something damn weird about the already-creepy place to begin with. She wobbles slightly for a moment, anyway, but then relaxes. Relaxing actually helps the balance problem.

"Probably other birds," she says, "strange, flightless, and decidedly lacking in plumage."

Because of her issues in getting a steady perch, Nerys doesn't quite notice the expression change on Finnick's face, save out of the corner of her eye. She doesn't consciously process it, anyway. "There are plenty of different sentient species in the galaxy," she explains somewhat blithely. "Human ancestry is from primate type animals, but dominant intelligences on other worlds often stem from a variety of different taxonomic orders, and sometimes not even animal life, though we don't run into them much."

This is all elementary science for Nerys, after all.

[fishermansweater]

"Worse, we change our plumage," he replies, once she seems to have gotten her balance on the fountain sorted out a little better. "That must be strange." He's aware, as he says it, that he knows very little about birds that he hasn't learned by experience raising the geese and peafowl. He'd never learned how their flocks and other types of social structures work. He'd learned about fish, about which ones school and which are solitary, about their behaviors and breeding, but he'd never needed to learn more, as a boy who was destined for a fishing boat, like his parents and grandparents before him. Birds didn't feature except as possible fish thieves.

His frown deepens a little, and he rubs the fingers of one hand across the ledge next to him, feeling the coolness of the surface, the roughness of exposed stone.

"You mean there are people out there who come from birds?"

There'd been some biology in his school studies, but again, only a rudimentary glance at what was necessary as background for the study of marine ecosystems, fish farming, and maximizing fishing yields. Maybe there'd been more, after he'd left, but he'd gone to the Academy, and then he'd won the Games, and from fourteen, he'd never had to go to school again. They hadn't studied where people came from, and he only has a very vague idea of what a primate is -- something a bit like a monkey, he thinks.

[thenewways]

Nerys' grip on the edge of the fountain eases a little as she finds some equilibrium, and she lifts an eyebrow at Finnick's first statement. It strikes her as odd, until she remembers human avian evolution didn't go down the same paths as that on Bajor. Lizards and birds didn't deviate quite as quickly, and their traits are pretty closely linked. "There are some birds back home that do change color," she says, "but definitely not like people change clothes. More just camouflage, I think you have amphibians that do that?"

She watches her new bird friend do a bit of a strut across the grass in front of the fountain. His gait is not entirely smooth yet, a little gawky, like he doesn't know where exactly his limbs are at any given time; basically, a bird teenager.

"There are people out there," she echoes, "who come from pretty much everything organic you can picture, and some inorganic structures, too. Our frames of reference are usually pretty different though, it can be kind of hard to bridge the cultural gaps the further you get away from beings with four limbs and a spine." There's probably some scientific term for that, but Nerys can't think of it off the top of her head. "You end up looking at the universe pretty differently."