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[ota] let this be a warning, says the magpie to the morning

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: Throughout the 6I village; one starter in the treehouse village to the southwest
WHEN: August 19-26
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Drug use mention in the second section; Kira as a character is likely to mention it in narration or dialogue. Existential angst and physical peril in the final section.

DROPS A MARBLE FROM THE SKY

OPEN TO THREE; 6I VILLAGE

Today, Kira's going to be a little hard to find.

It starts closer to noon--he's late for a shift in the kitchen, rounding up lunch for an increasing number of people. Would that the Observer caterers would share some of their fucking secrets. He's on his way back with a fresh bucket of peaches, getting what he can while the late summer stretches on, when his comeuppance from the last month arrives. A dozen little deer growling out of the brush, fangs showing. Two legs can't kick twelve deer, even with a bucket to swing--

But the flight response is a lot more literal than usual.

For the first hour, he isn't quite sure what's happened--a few sweeps of the lakeside village lets him know he hasn't been fucking swapped into a passing bird. There's no Kira dead on the path, covered in vengeful ungulates. Or worse--no bird-brained Kira eating ants off a log. Thank fucking Christ.

Which just leaves absurdity, beyond the pale of any he's known before. Beyond what he wheels and deals when trapped in conversation, the kettle trying not to boil over. Clones, magic, he thinks what he thinks, but he doesn't know anything anymore, except that he's either flatlining on a table and he hopes they're getting a good show out of whatever these final neurons are firing--or he's a bird. He's flying.

In the space where Kira should have been--the missed shift at the kitchen, the empty house with lonely dog and crow--there's a magpie flitting black and blue and white, diving between houses, coming in windows. When sighted, it tends to grab what it can from dressers and tables, blustering back out the way it came and leading any takers in a chase back to the porch he shares with Mark.

He'll figure out how to get back at some point; in the meantime, why not have some fun, trying to get someone to let him into his fucking house?

DON'T LET THIS FADING SUMMER PASS YOU BY

OPEN TO THREE; 6I INN ENTRANCE

The next day, he has a handle on it: he just has to want to be one or the other, and he is. Whether or not it makes any sense, he can't deny it's a change from the routine of making substances to abuse and abusing them. From cooking for an evolving group of faces, wondering how many times he'll see them. Wondering if everything that happened in New York was just weird training for this.

It definitely had nothing to do with being a fucking bird.

Today there's a magpie sitting on the rails of the inn's porch, sticking out its thin leg as people pass in and out of the door. Resolute, the bird delivers several messages to those given pause to read them.

YOU THOUGHT THAT YOU COULD OUTRUN SORROW

OPEN TO FRANK + TWO; SOUTHWEST TREEHOUSES

There are only so many days Kira can devote to bird-related pranks before the practical use of flight begs to be applied. With no clear sign of the abilty wearing off, the possible deadline weighs against concerns: could he lose it mid-air and fall to his death, is he wasting an opportunity that won't come again? He cares about one far more than the other, and it isn't dying.

Been there, done that, got several shitty black t-shirts with matching pants.

The rain and ensuing discovery of the terrible deer had driven him off from the treehouses, back to the village and its own disasters. Short of being teleported back on a whim, he wasn't going to get a better way to explore them: light weight, capable of flight. He doesn't even change back, for the first few houses--while his eyes might not be suited to reading, he could recognize objects well enough. There was always only one reason to come back.

Some sign of life. Some sign of identity to that life.

Kira glides from house to house, between the laden treetops. He pokes and prods through their contents, returning to form only to careful pull at drawers, open doors and shutters. He looks for books, journals, pieces of clothing. Old watches, jewelry, that stupid flame insignia on a cap or a pack.

It's in the fifth house that he finds it, hours later. Back to the one he'd been in at the start, one of the planks still split from his foot. If he had spent more time here, if he had been in a mind to look--

As a magpie, he lights on the dusty table, the shining item dulled by time and half-hidden by scattered leaves. Uncovering it with his beak, he leaps up, wings flapping, scattering more leaves from the desk. He has to move back, has to sit on the floor and think. He knows how this works, now, and it takes a moment, to want to turn back. To stand up and confirm what he's seen.

The lighter is familiar in its engraving, its signs of wear. As Kira stands there in the old parka, black feathers dropping from the hood, he traces the pattern with his finger, just like he had as a child. His father's lighter, sitting in an abandoned house.

Had it been his father's, or just--another Kira, struggling to survive this far above the ground?

As his hand tightens around it to the point of discomfort, patterned edges biting--the floor creaks, and Kira whirls to track the sound--

[ If your character has means and reason to have made the climb into the decaying tree houses, feel free to put them in the room; if they would be on the ground, feel free to have them wander below. Kira will be falling through the floor in either a few or in the immediate tag after, depending on where your character is! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Frank has been a little distant since the party. Nothing extreme, just enough that he hasn't noticed Kira's absence or his apparent bird... issue. He's ventured out here a few times, to the treehouses, though he hasn't yet worked himself up to going inside. There's something eerie about it, reminding him of his one sanctuary in Reims, and it had been the first place Jessica and he had meant something to each other beyond their fight. There are a lot of weird emotions warring for the surface every time he sees this abandoned little suburb, but today curiosity is stronger than the pain and he makes his way through with the intention of snooping around.

He hears a noise overhead before he can take to the deteriorated ladder, the hairs raising on his arms in a familiar arrangement. Someone - or something - has beaten him to it today. All he hears is the beating of bird wings, but then there's a creek in the floor and he ducks under the house's floor to peer up and see if he can catch the "intruder" before he's spotted. It's likely just someone from the village, but what if it isn't? It could be an Observer if they really exist or it could be another monster. Either way, he's clutching at the knife he always carries before he can fully think it through.

He's wearing that stupid teal hoodie he was gifted, but not the whole outfit thankfully. The ill-fitting jeans and boots from the Inn instead make up the rest of his dress, but he knows he's hardly inconspicuous. That doesn't actually matter, it turns out, as someone comes crashing through the floor. Frank gasps, abandoning the knife in its usual grip around his ankle and holding out his arms automatically before he can process he knows the man about to fall to his death. Wood and detritus bounce off his mountainous frame seemingly without his notice as he catches Kira in a dutiful fireman's carry, darting out from the treehouse's undercarriage before they can get trapped under falling lumber. The whole structure more-or-less stays in tact somehow, but Frank has to wait for his hammering heart to calm before he can think up something witty. Give him, like, at least 12 seconds.

He hardly knows where he is, why he's moving--just that the lighter is still a shape in his palm, clutched tight. Kira knows, or thinks he knows, how the bird shit works by now, and he'd rather not examine all the reasons that he didn't change back as the ground rushed up to meet him.

Doesn't matter: he still feels like one, hollowed out and with his heart hammering in his chest. Maybe it's just hard not to feel kind of delicate, picked up and carted around like he weighs nothing.

Frank. He knows it's Frank, before he even gets the bearing to realize he's hanging over the man's shoulder. "Fucking--"

His voice sounds strange to him, after almost a week of hardly using it. Trying to shift burns a very specific line of skin on his side--and why should he fall through an entire floor unscathed? Why did any idiot version of him ever fucking live up there? Was he the bird first, are those stupid deer really so difficult to deal with?

"Put me down," is all he knows. "Put me the fuck down now."

"Yeah, yeah- workin' on it." Once it's safe and they're clear of the structure and his fucking stupid superpowers allow it, he sets Kira down gently, breast still heaving from the excitement. There's a cut on his cheek he doesn't notice, blood caught in his too-long beard anyway. Frank throws a look over his shoulder before trying to focus on Kira's face, a concerned frown morphing quickly into confusion for all that just happened in such a short space of time. "Jesus Christ. You OK, asshole?"

Okay is kind of an evolving state; he's not dead, and he's at least pumping enough adrenaline in the moment, he's forgotten whatever impulse maybe wanted him to be. His side burns enough that, seeing the blood on Frank's face, he reaches under the parka to touch it--and despite the obvious wince, puts his now-pink fingertips down in the dirt and says, "I'm fine," automatic as ever.

He is fine. They're all fine. And when they aren't, someone up there can just spit out a new one. Fresh coat of paint, no memory of specimen rooms and loss to fuck them up.

"What the fuck are you doing out here, Frank?"

"Saving your ass, apparently." That may as well be his job description here, he thinks, casting an equally curious glance to the coat Kira's got in the middle of summer. That's really not the most pressing thing here so he files it away. His eye follows Kira's touch to his side, seeing the blood though it seems inconsequential. Another thing to worry about Not Now. "What were you doing up there?" His inquiry is gentle, nonaccusatory. If the floor couldn't support Kira's wispy frame, it's a good thing he hadn't climbed up with him.

Edited 2018-08-16 18:04 (UTC)

"Save your own ass," he fires back, as automatic as dismissing the injury. Dismiss, deflect. If he just keeps dodging, if he just autopilots a little further, it'll be fine. Fake it 'til you make it: Kira's kept calm for months, now, minus a few slips.

Frank doesn't make it easy to do, but he's motivation to try. Fucking Karen in his head, fucking right. Knowing doesn't help. Nobody needs to know.

Kira squeezes the lighter in his other hand. Knowing doesn't help, so why does he want to? Why does he want to get this back to her right now, tell her where he found it, what it could mean? Like pressing on his side, like that flare of pain that says he's alive. He knows it's going to be something terrible, and he wants to put his hands on it anyway.

"Been here before," he says, none of it actually a lie. "Village was getting weird, seemed like a good time to get away for a bit. Look it over again. Earthquake probably shook it looser than it was, last time."

He tips his head to concede the point, it doesn't matter. He'd saved Kira more-or-less in the nick of time yet again. It's starting to feel unnatural, especially given his luck is usually super shit re: saving people. He gets there in time for revenge, on a good day.

"Did you build that?" The treehouse. He's chewing on his lip, thinking perhaps harder than the moment merits. Every time he's made it up here he's thought about where the houses came from. Kira probably doesn't remember even if he did, right? "It is weird." Which might explain why he's here too? In a way.

Good luck avenging him on gravity, Frank; Kira narrows his eyes, head drawing slightly back at the question. It's a little too fucking astute, until he realizes Frank can't have that kind of context. Karen wouldn't tell him, after everything, and Frank--how the fuck would he be so calm, if he knew? If he believed it?

Kira digs his bloodied nails into the dirt. "Someone had to tell you," he hedges, scraping the lighter inward to stow in a pocket. Even with nothing more than a thin black tank underneath, it's a bit much for the weather--it just didn't matter as much when he was a fucking bird.

"We came through that fountain months ago; half this shit didn't exist for us before. When they shot Mark and I across the map, it was already here. Already built and already falling apart." Which is a lot of things to say, to not settle on a yes or a no. "I just--we never find anybody here. Thought I'd poke around, see if they left anything."

Tell me what? he almost asks, but it's been obvious from the start he doesn't follow the same wavelength Kira is on. Almost never, anyway. He knocks down his hood and scrubs a hand over his overgrown hair anxiously, processing slowly. They. Right.

"About the way things were? Yeah. You're not the only one I talk to." A gentle dig, not without irony. The first month or so, Kira had been the only one he would talk to, almost exclusively. At least with actual spoken words.

Any other day, he'd still shoot back "Dogs don't count," but it wouldn't be quite as ragged. Kira's words usually come with an edge, they don't skate one. Kira also usually isn't on his ass in the woods, staring up at the broken floor of a house he or his father might have built. A version of him or a version of his father.

Which is worse? For a man to never exist, or for him to pointedly not exist now? The lighter sits in his pocket--Ty's coat, his mother's cards, a photo of his sister. Can they print memories, or is his family waiting in vials, for another go at this maze?

"Can we just," he starts, sounding defeated before he even tries his own feet, "get out of here? You're bleeding."

He tips his head, noting something off about Kira. Then again, he hadn't been normal or whatever passed for it since the night of the earthquakes. At least, not around Frank. He still wonders if he did something to set the other man off or if he's self-centered for even thinking it.

"Yeah, yeah. If you want," he says softly, his own voice gruff and gentle as always. His hand goes to his face, finding blood there as promised and frowning. It's only after that the scratch begins to hurt. It's probably the most minor injury he's ever sustained doing, you know, anything, but he's still looking from the red on calloused fingertips and back to Kira like he should answer for it somehow. "I'm fine."

If Kira's at all abashed to have fallen out a floor and into Frank's arms, he doesn't show it through apology. Kira levers himself up in a series of shoves, against the ground, against the root and trunk of a tree. It isn't comfortable to stand, but he's had his own version of worse.

There's also nothing either of them can do about it, here.

He can walk, at least, though he's sure some of his discomfort will prove bruising Easier to fly back, if he still can, but that leaves Frank--fully capable of taking care of himself, Kira is sure, but it doesn't sit quite right. Even if Kira's fucking useless, he doesn't want to leave him alone. "Never did say," he points out, "why you were here."

He knows, this time, Frank wouldn't have been able to follow him out here. "Did something happen?"

It's a strange question, and he frowns, looking Kira over. He doesn't try to reach for the man, letting him find his own way up, but he's still rolling over the inquiry in his mind, wondering if there's a right answer.

"I'm here because I had to be. Apparently." He really hates this place, how nothing happens by accident. How he's always in the goddamn right place at the goddamn right time. It's his turn to walk away from Kira, though he fully expects (and wants) the man to follow, boots cutting a swath through uncleared brush until he can step back onto the narrow path.

"You really didn't," he says, instead of pointing out what a fucking non-answer that is. "And you wouldn't have known to be, so maybe let's cut some percentage of the shit, Frank. I've got a long walk back to needle you through."

And less self-preservation by the day, if Frank wants to shut him up.

Shifting his weight to his uninjured side, he follows, parka shrugging slightly from his shoulders, but staying on. He's dirtier than he usually lets himself get--not just from the work of getting out here, not just from the dust of the houses, but like it's time to be himself for long enough to get in a bath.

Maybe he didn't, maybe Kira would have been fine, albeit with a few more scrapes than he got. Whatever. Frank shoves his hands in his pockets and lets his pace even out so the other man can easily catch up, his gaze focused on the forest floor.

"Next time I'll let you fall, OK?" It's another gentle admittance like he really would. They both know he physically wouldn't be able to, but he can tell himself he's not responsible for Kira or anyone else as many times as he wants. It won't make it suddenly true, but he's doing his goddamn best okay?? He really is.

"Whatever feeds your fucking ego, Frank."

Whatever makes him feel like himself; Kira's practicing what he preaches, in talking shit and getting high day to day. In taking none of this seriously because when he does--

Well, hands stuffed in pockets, he turns the lighter over, rubs a finger on the engraving. He can't shake that question: had Daichi been here, or had this just been given to another Kira, something to fuck with him? Had the parka's old bloodstain been Ty's blood, or his own?

Grinding in his own thoughts, he idles up next to Frank. The burn of a slow bleed crawls up his side, a deeper discomfort crawls within. Frank is half a dozen feet of solid jarhead vigilante, and it doesn't matter if combat readiness was taught to him in a tube or an actual lived experience--it would be fucking stupid to pick a fight with him.

"Fuck you," Kira mutters anyway, reaching without turning his head to shove Frank hard on his hip.

"My ego?" The fucking hell was that shit?

Frank suppresses the eye roll and when Kira shoves at him - barely budges. He hadn't been expecting it, no danger senses flaring before during or after, his usual or manufactured by this place. He's merely an immovable boulder of a man and Kira has twig arms. He does stumble almost an inch, but doesn't even fall off the path. The urge to shove Kira back is a strong one, but he would actually hurt him so he curls his fists and tries to tamp down the anger rising in bile format up his throat.

"Fuck me, yeah okay. Fuck me. What is your goddamn fucking problem, Kira? All I've ever done is try to help you out."

Maybe he does have an ego, it probably doesn't have anything to do with him, does it? Kira is just angry in general, it's not like Frank can't sympathize. Then again, maybe he does that too much as it is.

"Aurora won't let you get rid of me and you know it, so you may as well tell me what the fuck is going on."

It's funny: he's figured out by now, all he has to do is want to be a magpie to become one, and want to be himself to turn back. So why isn't he up and flying away, finding a hole to sit in and stew? Must not want to. Must not want to walk away, this time.

He's so fucking tired of sparing people. Frank's deserving it is debatable, it's not about him, but god, he's a better target than some stupid kid with some hope about getting home.

Kira squares his hands at his sides and turns toward Frank, instead of away. Looks him in the eye like he either knows or doesn't care, that Frank wouldn't put a hand on him. He used to know, he used to poke and prod and test a man's limits, to know him. To know if he was safe. Now it just doesn't fucking matter. "Shut the fuck up about my dog, she's a dog, Frank. There are so many things here that rank over the fucking dog."

Like a lighter? Like a coat? When he says it, he means people, but he's not losing his shit over anyone who's actually here.

Through a closing throat, he asks, "Why do you get so many fucking people, Frank? Why does this get to make sense to you all, you're a fucking nightmare. You're a fucking nightmare, and you get Karen, and you get Kamala, and I just get stuff."

His hand has gone back to his pocket, now punctuating with a bitter thrust: the lighter and old photograph in his grasp.

Of course she's a dog, an amazing dog. He doesn't get the point until Kira breaks off and then he's stopping in his tracks to turn and face the other man too. There's nothing in his frame that would suggest anger or violence, expression wide open as he susses Kira out. He's holding random items, but Frank doesn't think that's what he means. And sure enough he gets his answer a moment later.

"Hey," it's gruff and impossibly soft, accompanied by a light shake of his head. Like he's calling out an animal he's afraid to spook, and maybe that isn't so far off. "You have Karen, too." Maybe a lot more than Frank, they always seem to have their own language. He isn't even jealous, he's happy they both have each other, but it's something he thinks about, feeling like a third wheel every time it's all three of them.

"And Mark, and me." The last one is punctuated sharply by Frank taking a few shuffling steps forward until he can get a broad arm around the man's shoulder and drag him against his chest. His hand climbs to palm the back of Kira's head, holding him close until he works out whatever it is he needs to.

Edited (one letter edit is my stREET NAME) 2018-08-24 22:15 (UTC)

It's an animal octave he's finding, the sound that cuts open his voice in protest. "It's not the same," he whines, narrowed to a razor, put between his fingers, not solid enough to do the necessary damage when he punches Frank in the side. "It's not the fucking same." And again, and again, Chiyo crushed to the edge of the lighter as he alternates right and left, squirming in Frank's grasp but not pulled free.

When he does quiet, when he does duck free from the momentary lull, he's not crying. His hair is mussed from the scrape of Frank's arm and parts of him are pinking like he could, but his eyes aren't even wet.

It's just in his voice, just clogging his throat. "None of it's real, Frank. They grow us in fucking a fucking Petri dish and they simulate the rest, same as the canyon. And they told us, but it's like nobody listened and Karen said not to bring it up, and she's right but fuck." Staggering back another step, he tightens his hand on the lighter. "At least you knew her. I've never met anyone I knew here. There is no proof that anything I know about myself is real."

If Karen kills him for saying it, well, they'll grow another one.

"I know," he murmurs, getting it more than Kira knows. His skin yields to the hits, but he refuses to move until the man outright moves away. And when he does, Frank just feels bereft. Kira tells him he isn't responsible but he feels it heavily now, wanting to fix this and everything else for the other man. For them both.

Kira's tear-soaked tone has Frank's eyes immediately filling with water and he goes unnaturally still as he explains. The fear and the paralysis he'd seen in Kira and even Karen so many times before, but they always stopped just short of bringing him into their circle of trust. His hair raises on his arms and the back of his neck, his heart pounds, but he's already accepting Kira's words for the truth they are. Or at the very least, the truth Kira believes them to be.

"It isn't like Karen to conceal the truth from others. If she believes- if what you just said is true the real Karen Page would get on top of the Inn and proclaim it from a goddamn bullhorn." And what's more than that she'd tell Frank. She'd trust him with this. It's hard not to feel hurt on top of trying to process this. He knows he has to be the together one for a change and he draws up straighter, pointing to the items Kira is carrying close, an almost protective hold on them. "Then what's all that?"

"No," he says, cognizant enough, loyal enough, to pull up from a nose-dive and fly straight into Frank. It's not the same, but he does have these people. They're probably all he's ever going to get. "No, you don't get to fucking do that right now." This is why Karen is going to kill him, but fuck it, their wrists are about the same size and he'll go out fighting. "We didn't conceal anything, it's right fucking there in the notes. There's a goddamn drawing of it in my house."

He just--hadn't hung it up on the wall, talked about it outside of Mark and Karen. It's known, on some level, just not widely understood.

They hadn't pushed anyone to understand. "There's nothing anyone can do about it, Frank. And the proof was in the fucking simulation, but god, it makes the most sense. It makes all the sense. And you don't get to act like we're shit people for not telling you, by the way, your dead fucking family and that place with the monsters was all in your fucking head."

"I didn't say-" Any of that. Frank worries his lip, shaking his head. He pulls out the photo burning a hole in his own pocket. The Liebermans, Max. His family left behind in a world Kira is trying to tell him doesn't exist. Maybe he's right, maybe it doesn't make one goddamn lick of difference. "When I talked to Ravi, he thinks we're being experimented on. Watched. This is the first I'm hearin' about clones."

But it's clear he isn't disagreeing. He's putting up a disturbingly negligible amount of resistance really. He died once. How could he do that? People came back wrong, weird. Kira's right about one thing, indisputably: "Those things didn't happen to me. But that doesn't mean they didn't happen. And that doesn't mean we're powerless, Kira." He refuses to believe that, most of all.

That's what he means: the records talk about that room, the implication is there, and people just don't look at it. Because they don't want to, because it doesn't help anything. Because they find it so much easier to try to think around it, to believe there's a home to go back to and a way to get there. It makes him fucking angry, but what can he do? Yell at actual teenagers who think they just have to beat a purple alien to see their families again? Tell them their families don't exist anymore?

The proof is few and far between, lost to the change of scenery. It was like being shown the Observers' hand, briefly, and now nobody acts like those cards are in play. Like they aren't laying down a losing hand.

"We are," he argues, both of them stood there with their pictures, their trinkets. "We are in the ways that fucking count, Frank. You can't un-clone me. You can't fix whatever necessitated all of this in the first place. We're here, and we are what we are, and even if we busted into some lab and grew my fucking father in a tube, I'd know."

He looks from the photo up to Kira and frowns. Maybe the other man is right, but it's not in his DNA to quit and that carries over to each and every version of him, so here he is.

"Your father?" he asks quietly, brow creasing in concern. That's new information and it might even help them. If Kira would stop withholding things from him maybe they could work together instead of this constant and frustrating push, then pull. "Just tell me what you know. We'll work it out." It doesn't get more reasonable than that, right??

It isn't in Kira's either, especially when he's taken the plunge with an actual feeling. Frank's reasonable; Kira's Icarus, but this time he's trying to fling himself right into the sun.

"Yes," he says, a snapping furl of his hands that sounds the canvas of his sleeves. "My father, my father, who I thought I had before the evidence stacked the fuck up, that I'm not just a clone, I'm one of a series of fucking clones. I'm take three or five or fucking six for all we know, and everything I remember, everything about me that has ever mattered, was another simulation."

It's the sound of his own voice, the mounting frustration and sharp hysteria, that keeps him in this moment. He could actually fly for the sun, he could see how high his little bird frame would go until it plummeted back down. Reboot, try again, maybe he'll be a little happier until the realization sinks in. Maybe Karen won't tell him either.

"The rest of you get to pretend, and it isn't fair and it's still fucking awful that I'm telling you. Do you get that, Frank? Do you get how I want to be awful, to each and every one of you?"

Holding his hands and their contents to his forehead, he takes a deep breath, sighs it out. "I want to fucking scream."

Kira thinks he was created in this place, then? Frank has no alternative proof for him, he doesn't even have a convincing argument to the contrary. He's not sure of anything himself, anymore. All he truly knows is that Kira is confiding this in him and he has to give the other man an outlet; somewhere to put his fear and anger. He had always been a good receptacle for those emotions from others, honestly.

"It's not your gate to keep, Kira. What did you say to me? These people aren't my fucking responsibility? Well, they're not yours either and you can't hold yourself accountable for this shit. If you're right..." That doesn't actually matter now, he can worry about who he tells later. Right now this is about Kira not completely falling apart. "So scream, no one can hear you all the way out here. You can't hurt me. Get it out, it's just us." An open invite to hit or kick or scrape or scream or fight because he's not sure he's good for much else, at least not in present company.

It builds, or rather, it's been building for a long time--but Frank says you can't hurt me like he's giving Kira permission to try, and the fight starts to bleed out. His side and his throat hurt, and he doesn't want to hit Frank again.

The next step he takes has a sway, he's out, he's in, he's where he started. He wipes at his eyes because they hurt, not because they're actually leaking.

He's Kira Akiyama, whatever that means anymore. He doesn't scream, and he doesn't cry. He gets drunk and high, chases distractions, and eventually he accepts. He's a copy of a copy, and once he gets over that, there's the why. Ask that, with the beat of his heart, and maybe he can get past who am I. Another deep breath, and he's something like reasonable when he tells Frank: "It's just hard, when people act like we're going home someday. But I guess it's like letting people believe in heaven, or whatever."

Frank just watches him, patient, waiting to see what he'll do. Whether it's emotional or violent or neither he wants to react the right way. He wants to be there for him, even if Kira says he doesn't want or need him. And hell, maybe he doesn't; maybe it's just for his own peace of mind in the end.

"Maybe it is. Maybe we'll go somewhere else like this, like I did. Or whatever version of me did." He shrugs one shoulder, worrying his lip between his teeth. "People having false hope isn't always a bad thing either. It can be a good motivator."

Recently, Bela had been gifted with a box from the Observers, containing items which would vastly improve her mood. She knows that she has to use some of them sparingly to make them last longer. It was difficult not to think that there was a catch though. Did she owe them something in return? A favour they would come to collect down the line?

Bela pushed those thoughts out of her mind, concentrating on moving in with Margaery. There were still a few belongings of hers in the house Bela chose for herself, but it had to be a slow and steady process - her ankle was still healing up.

Bloody earthquake.

She didn't intend to have a long lie-in one morning but even with the sunlight streaming through the windows, Bela had rolled over back to sleep. It was probably close to midday when she actually did stir and got up out of bed, rubbing the sleep away from her eyes.

Stifling a yawn, she turns to look at the small bedside table to reach for the glass of water to take a sip. What Bela did not expect to see was a magpie trying to grab her silver pendant by its chain and yank it away.

She needed a moment.

That moment would let Kira flurry off with his prize: taking off and landing were a learning curve, and he was reaching the apex. Effective, but not pretty. Only the weight of the water in the jar kept it from toppling as he threw himself off the table, Bela's attention now snagged.

He just had to get her back to the house, to let him in; to convince someone of what was happening, so he could solve how to make it stop.

If it was also the most entertainment he'd had in weeks, well, silver linings.

Silver as the chain in his beak. He lands back in the window, head cocked to one side as if to ask, well?

"HEY!”"

Before she could stop the bird, the little bugger was already up in the air and heading towards...well, Bela isn't sure yet. If she was quick enough she may be able to get the pendant back from it without accidentally breaking it in the process.

"What are-" She begins, wondering why the bird hadn't just flown out the window and left the scene of the crime. Throwing off the blanket and getting to her feet, Bela stomps over towards the window sill with an outstretched hand, prepared to grab the pendant from the animal.

"Don't move, yeah?"

Like the bird was going to understand her.

Understand, yes; care, not exactly. Talons digging lightly at the sill, Kira opens his wings and flaps twice before letting go, propelling him back from Bela's grasp.

Her pendant doesn't lift into the sky and away for the long haul, though--Kira simply hops back out of the window and lands on the ground outside, still waiting. As if to illustrate, he gives it a moment, staring up, before turning to walk on very short legs through the grass, pendant dragging along.

The bird was behaving in a strange way. Not like Bela would expect a thief to act. She watches it for a couple of moments before deciding to chase after it, throwing on her nightgown first and sliding her feet into her slippers - Bela was still dressed in her pajamas after all.

Exiting the house, she follows after the bird and catches up with it, careful not to step on the animal by accident.

"...This is so bizarre."

Muttered to herself.

Interactions with wildlife around here are pretty much a given. If you leave your house (and sometimes even if you don't), statistically you're going to run into something, and probably sooner than later. You'll probably get lucky and it's a just a wayward croc-dog or that one impossibly chill moose that follows Logan everywhere. Sometimes it's a raccoon and you need a broom to shoo it away from the compost heap. Sometimes it's worse, but the really bad stuff is rare.

And you can't avoid it, no matter what you do.

Like now, when nature has taken up residence on my porch between the leaves of my tomato plants.

"You've got shit timing, buddy," I say as I knock the mud from my boots and twist the door knob. "I picked the last ones yesterday."

No, he has great timing: Mark coming home means he doesn't have to do any kind of song and dance to get the door open. Maybe there's some necessary duration, maybe he doesn't want to be a human man with human problems, but he hasn't quite managed to come out of it since flying back from the tree houses.

That Mark doesn't already know, after a week of mischief--well, people probably think Kira told him. It's the kind of thing Mark should know, and Kira's a moment slow on entry, letting that sink in.

There were probably better, more helpful places to fly to. There might be some poor asshole running around as a four point buck, dodging resident hunters. He's been stupid, and he's been selfish, and maybe he's hiding under the feathers from that, too. Kicking off from the bucket's edge, he slips in on Mark's heels, fluttering between his ankles and landing just ahead.

A pause, a cock of his head. His heart isn't quite in it when he takes off and flies right for the bowl on the table where the last of said tomatoes are. Landing on the edge, he stares straight back at Mark.

Magpies have a reputation for being smart and a little devious, so it's actually not all that surprising that the thing flaps its way inside and stakes out a place next to the tomatoes like he owns them. I probably should have been a little more on my guard, played at least something resembling defense.

Not that any of that matters now, because there is a magpie in the house and it really can't stay here. Apart from it being a wild animal and the inevitable trail of shit it'll leave on everything, there's already one bird in residence here, and he's been known to have a bad attitude.

I hate to lose a tomato — They're too delicate for the fields here, what I grow at the house is literally all we have for the whole village — but needs must, and my new friends seems very motivated to dig in.

"Alright," I say, stepping over, keeping calm until I can dart a hand out to snatch the bowl. "These are great, you definitely want one. They'll just be right out here." I brandish the bowl, making it clear that I'm walking back toward the open front door.

Kira sits patiently at the lip of the bowl, uninterested in tomatoes for the moment. He stares up at Mark beadily until the door opens, then steps from bowl to wrist, walking up Mark's arm as he tries to set bowl and bird down on the porch.

At his shoulder, he takes the moment to croak out a Mark, before flying back toward the couch.

He's got the will for one more switch, today, and this is the kind of shit you have to see to believe.

To be honest, I don't know why I maintain any expectations about anything in this place at all, because there are always moments like this, wherein the wildlife is not only in my home trying to steal my fruit, but calling me by name.

What is a person supposed to do to that other than stare? Because I like to think I am pretty reasonable, but I can't think of any better option.

At least my tomatoes are unmolested, I guess.

"I really don't even want to fucking know," I say, and immediately realize I am talking to a bird. A bird that knows my name. I have no idea if that is more or less odd than talking to yourself, but apparently I do both now.

Unfortunately, he's going to. With a squawked hey for his attention, it's less the elated desire for flight guiding him into the form than a very hard press of being done to force him out. It's hard to want to be himself, with all that's attached to it, so he does his best to reject the bird instead. Flying's great, but he wants to be able to open doors again.

Instead of the ta-da of leaping from the couch, landing as a man, the bird tumbles back off the frame and Kira lands on the cushions, face-down in a throw pillow.

"I'm still getting the hang of it," he says, sitting up with his parka flipped over his head, then shaking himself out of it. He pins Mark with a look, over the back of the couch. "So what's the theory for this shit?"

"Jesus—" I blurt, tomatoes tumbling inside the bowl as I take two jerky backward steps. "The fuck, Kira!" I add, wide-eyed, because yeah, this situation absolutely demands that kind of reaction.

I really kinda want to walk right back out the door. With the tomatoes.

"This fucking place," I mutter instead, squeezing my eyes shut. There is not a god damned thing scientific about popping from human to bird and back again, and I do not say that lightly.

Edited 2018-09-06 00:26 (UTC)

"This fucking place," Kira echoes, with greater enthusiasm. Flying had been great--the entire physical escape from certain problems had been almost too tempting to give up, but he thinks Mark's face has been the best part.

It's a shitty thing, to want to unbalance everyone around you when your feet can't find the ground.

He's been resigned to being shitty for awhile.

Pushing himself up from the couch, he straightens his clothes, such as they are. His side still burns from falling through the floor of the tree house, but it's scabbed over by now. "Got cornered by those shitty deer a few days ago, next thing I knew, I was looping the village to make sure I hadn't just swapped out of my stupid body."

"Oh, that's good to know," I reply, my settling into a terse line as I stare ahead, not at Kira. Just a general glare for the entirety of this place. "It's good to know that randomly becoming a bird is something we all need to worry about now."

Huffing out a sigh through my nose, I carry the bowl of tomatoes back into the kitchen and drop them onto the table there. Objectively, what happened to Kira could be seen as a good thing, one more thing in the self-preservationary toolbox. But even I have moments where it gets a little hard to be objective about what goes on around here.

"And to think, I was actually starting to be convinced this isn't another simulation."

"I think worry and bird can sit kind of loose in that estimation," he says, shrugging gingerly out of his jacket and laying it over the back of the couch. Just flew in from an old rundown village, and boy are his arms tired.

Not really, not specifically--but he is, and the couch is as good a place as any to roost. By now, the commotion has brought Aurora downstairs, and he picks her up to sit on his lap and chest, instead of the couch itself.

"Talked to someone who seemed familiar with it. He used to turn into a dog, before this place. Kira sighs, setting his chin on her head to calm and contain her. "The last--me, he had notes about Margaery seeing the future. Yeah, maybe it's not real and that's why we can't use any of our abilities on it, but--maybe they isolated what makes us tick. Maybe that's why I'm here at all, it's not like I offer a ton to the situation otherwise."

"Maybe," I allow, still trying to pull my brain out of the well of annoyance I save just for moments like this one. Thinking about it from a problem-solving angle is helpful, even if it's pointless.

"I don't doubt they can do that, if they can do the rest. I guess I'm just wondering what's the point? Was it something you always had latently and it took danger to activate it?" It honestly seems pretty fucking arbitrary.

I lean back against the table, looking through the doorway out into the living room. "Thanks for not shitting on the furniture."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ota] let this be a warning, says the magpie to the morning

DROPS A MARBLE FROM THE SKY

DON'T LET THIS FADING SUMMER PASS YOU BY

YOU THOUGHT THAT YOU COULD OUTRUN SORROW

you know who i am

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first prompt!

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