In which Cuthbert is nearly brained by a bird.

[saikamai]

Even on the island, where the fair weather made the days and weeks run together and blend, marked only, it seemed to Bert, by the disappearance of friends or one of the island's magical anomalies, he found that this time of year made him thoughtful

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Some days, she hated this place. Others, Violet Baudelaire was thankful for sanctuary, for a place that her sister could grow up and learn how to ride a bike, what Christmas was, have a family. The problem was, Sunny had already had a family. Being without Klaus was very much like having her arm cut off, and just the same as it might be if Violet had only one arm, she found doing some things very difficult.

Add to that Violet's trip 'home' and resulting nightmares, and... well. These were the days that the barometer was definitely close to the 'hate' side of things. Still, she walked and tried to think through her troubles, which is what brought her to this stretch of path.

The island, apparently, is what brought him to this stretch of path. She'd not seen him since Midsummer - Cuthbert Allgood, Rosalind had told her, and she'd been placing every bit of her frustration for having been in this place before on his gawp-mouthed face before it had been hit with a tomato.

And there he was, running towards her and there was a hawk, and

[saikamai]

"David!" he called again, sharply. But the bird veered left and sought a high branch on the edge of the jungle. "Dav--augh." Bert turned to the girl-- oh gods, it was the new Violet-- and gave her a tight-lipped smile.

"Sorry if he frightened you, he's my bird, but he actually just arrived so maybe you can forgive both of us for being a bit startled..." Bert tore open the rough muslin package that had clocked him a minute prior and found two elbow-length leather falconry gloves, jesses and a leash. He crammed the fabric into the back pocket of his jeans, handed the leash to Violet and slipped on the gloves.

Bert whistled and made a funny clicking sound to call the bird down, but David gave no visible reaction beyond continually surveying the horizon with his alert, queerly absent gaze. "Davey!" Another whistle, this time higher-pitched and trilling. The hawk took off, looking as if it were going to leave the area altogether, but coasted down on a roundabout breeze to land with a flutter and thump on Bert's raised forearm. "Pretty,"

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She'd just stood there - Like a log, she remembered her dad saying... god, it must have been when she was ten. She still had the leash, and blinked a couple of times as Cuthbert's words sort of tumbled around her.

"I'm fine," she said finally, guarded, eyes flicking from him to the hawk. "He's beautiful," she ventures, and honestly she doesn't know what to say, past how did you know me and a completely absurd where have you been.

"He's just arrived?" There's color in her cheeks now, a weird sort of blush that's spreading, even as she stares up at him.

[saikamai]

"He has," Bert said, as proudly as if he'd had something to do with it. For the moment, all of his feeling was concentrated on the fierce, lovely critter on his arm, who was regarding Violet with flashing eyes. "I know you, um, haven't been here long, but the island occasionally gives us, um, things from home." His heart clenched as he debated sharing the fact that Davey had actually been dearly departed when Bert had last seen him, but he decided against it. That wasn't important, really. There was only one person back home who Cuthbert felt deserved Tabula Rasa's second chance more than David did (the fact that he was a bird notwithstanding), and he wouldn't have wanted it.

"I haven't seen him since I was thirteen," Bert said, and gave a kidlike grin.

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"I've been here since June," she said, and it came out more stilted then she meant it too. "I knew things appeared, just- I didn't know that they could be alive." She licked her lips before she smiled, one that was a little off, but still mostly true. "That's wonderful. I'm glad you have him back." She rubbed her hand over the back of her neck, the satin ribbon she had there slipping off into her hand.

She ran the length of black satin through her fingers without thinking, still watching him. "I haven't seen you since Midsummer," she said, her brows knit. "... Which you know. I- Sorry, I just-" Her eyes flicked back to the hawk. "You knew me."

The fact that Violet brought this up without real hellos, standing in the middle of the road, awkward as can be wasn't lost on her.

[saikamai]

Cuthbert jerked his head a bit to the left to pull his hair out of David's beak-- this was as affectionate as the hawk tended to get, which, while touching, was also sort of terrible in a way-- and looked at Violet with a vaguely guilty feeling rising in his stomach. He wasn't sure why-- he just felt sneaky somehow, as if knowing her before, a former her, was like reading her diary or something. Not that he'd known the other Violet very well, but still, this was the sort of thing a fellow just didn't ever get used to.

"I did," he said, with a little sigh. "I know that must be strange for you. If you've got any, er, questions? If there's anything you'd like to know that I can tell you, I'd be happy to. Or if you'd prefer we ignore it altogether, I'll certainly do my best." He eyed the ribbon wending its way through her fingers and smiled, but didn't comment.

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Her brows knit at that - no one else had been so forthcoming, or had even offered- They'd just said that she'd had a best friend, and that her brother had been dating some girl named Samara and that she'd been here. That she'd taken French.

It really seemed like the people that she'd been talking to didn't really know her at all, but just that they knew of her.

"Tell me everything?" She paused, and then looked down. "I mean- everybody else just tells me about Klaus or that I had a best friend who's gone or what classes I took. Did you actually know... me?"

She didn't stop the slick satin from sliding through her fingers - it grounded her, in a way. "If you really don't mind me asking."

[saikamai]

Bert jerked his forearm and David took flight, climbing into the air above their heads. Taking the leash from Violet, Bert wrapped it up with the jesses and hood and tucked them into one of gloves. "No, no, I don't mind at all. Wanna take a walk?" He nodded at the path behind him, in the direction she had been walking.

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She sucked in a breath as the hawk flew upward, and she couldn't stop herself from watching him, a sort of rapt wonder on her face before she finally looked back at Bert. "What? I mean- yes. I was just sort of walking and thinking anyway, to tell the truth."

She didn't even think before she wound the ribbon back in her hair, tying it into a tight bow. "Thank you," she said quietly, her mouth quirking.

[saikamai]

"Don't thank me just yet. You asked me a question. I'll go easy on you because you've really only just met me, but that's really something you ought to avoid upon pain of death. You might think your ears are well fastened to your head, but I can talk them off in less than hour. My best time is forty minutes," he informed her. Up ahead, David's shadow coasted down the path, getting smaller and smaller as he gained altitude.

"I actually met... you after putting up a notice in the Compound. It was mayhap a month after I'd arrived myself, and I was looking to build a treehouse. You said you'd give me a few pointers, but really, you did a lot more than that. You designed the whole d--darn thing, and it has weathered two and a half years of capricious island weather. I'd like to show you, actually, if you don't mind. It isn't too far."

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"No, i- you don't understand. Nobody's told me anything. You can talk as much as you want." She looked up at him as they walked, and her eyes widened. "I built another treehouse? I'd love to see it, actually. I found one- it... it's where Klaus, Sunny, and.... I lived, apparently."

She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her shorts.

"Two and a half years ago," she repeated faintly. "Really? That long?" She tried to look like that didn't bother her, even though for some reason it sat all wrong. "How old are you?"

[saikamai]

Cuthbert nodded along, trying to bite back a smile at how earnest she was-- gods, it was cute-- and listen. "Yep, you did. Gods, this has got to be confusing for you," he added, with a concerned look.

"Two and a-- ach, no, no, I've got wrong. Gods! It feels like I've been here much longer than I have. No, it's only been about one and a half." He shook his head, barely able to believe it. "I'm seventeen. Seventeen and a half in November." Alain used to say (his Alain, young Alain) that if you had to qualify your age with a half-mark, you were still a kid. Balls to him, Bert thought with a little smile. I got me a pair of guns say otherwise, cully. "What about you?"

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Somehow, that year made all the difference. Just a year and a half made it alright, when two and a half was alarming. "It's okay," she said with a shrug. "I can live with confusing." Nevermind that she'd not been living well with it, but when she looked at it she had to be glad in some way that she wasn't still at home.

With Klaus. And the sister who knew her.

And Olaf.

"I'll be seventeen in January," she said with a small smile. "So sixteen, now." She shrugged, and exhaled in a rush. "So- were we friends? Or-" She realised that she just said or, and she blushed up to the roots of her hair. "... Uhm."

[saikamai]

Bert's smile stretched, and he made a concerted effort not to notice her blush. "Yep, we were friends," he confirmed. Cuthbert felt a kind of fiendish glee in the awkward silence that followed, though he couldn't be sure why. It was probably nothing more complicated than the rush of walking and talking with a pretty girl, and after the morose train of thought he'd been on before, it was extremely welcome.

"We talked a lot about the blueprints-- well, you talked a lot about the blueprints. I ate mangoes and juggled. And listened, of course. Quite a lot of our talking was done on the platform, which went up just a week after our first conversation. You were very very interested in, um, suspension and things, in rigging the house so that it would remain flexible under high winds, that sort of thing. I had plumbing for a full year before most of the island had it. And I used the blueprints you left behind to build another hut, for my friend, Alain, once he arrived. In short, you've left quite an impression on our little corner of the

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She felt like an idiot then, in those seconds of awkward silence, and she shut her eyes again, just trying to get past the total mortification to the other side, when she could just listen and learn and figure out exactly what happened.

When he started talking about the flexibility, though, she nodded and the embarassment was more than 90% forgotten. She listened intently, nodding now and again, before she spoke. "The blueprints - do you still have them?" She stopped when he pointing out New Gilead, and she just...

"You have got to be joking." She stopped, turned, squinted - and leaned up on tiptoes, for all that it only got her another three inches, but there-

In the Hidden Hamlet.

Virtually next door.

"That's where I live. In that treehouse - you can see it if you squint."

[saikamai]

A slow grin started to spread on his face. "No kidding!" He leaned a little to the right and looked in the direction she pointed in. "That one? Ha! That's funny... AL! HEY, AL!" The formerly gentle demeanor he'd taken on with Violet disappeared momentarily now that the gunslinger was back in his natural habitat.

"Get down here, we've got comp'ny! ...sorry about that. Want you to meet Alain, 'specially seeing as we're neighbors. So, what do you think of the place?"