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[mdidiusfalco]

I ended up naming the parrot Cicero. At the time it had seemed a good idea and now the both of us were stuck. The parrot with an inappropriate name, and me with the parrot. It wasn't really that bad though. If nothing else the bird seemed to be one of the few people in the area with a fine appreciation of the great Roman poets. And if I just

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[phoinikothrix]

For the most part, Francis had become used to the sounds of the island--the chittering of the insects at night, the strange rustlings in the jungle foliage--but this was different.

This was Latin.

He made his way towards the source of the sound, stopping abruptly when he came upon the short, dark-haired man throwing fruit at a bird. "Is that bird reciting Ovid?" he asked, staring at both parrot and man in disbelief. "Badly?"

[mdidiusfalco]

I nodded, eating some of the fruit myself this time instead of wasting it on the bird. "Ars amatoria to be precise. Reciting it very badly too," I said, purposefully blase. As though hanging around parrots reciting poetry was something that happened to yours truly every day, even before the arriving on the island. Not true, though I would be the first to admit that Cicero was a large step up from following Juno's sacred geese all day.

"You should hear it do Catullus."

[phoinikothrix]

"Nobody needs to hear it do Catullus. Nobody needs to hear anybody do Catullus," Francis said flatly, recalling several evenings with Bunny drunk out of his mind and braying filthy poems out the window to passers-by. "Who on earth taught it Ovid and Catullus, anyway?"

[mdidiusfalco]

"Don't look at me. Cicero came that way. Its last owner clearly had taste." I had to wonder for a moment what the man had against Catullus. True, Cicero's favorite poem wouldn't precisely go down well with the Island's citizenry, but others weren't bad. I was rather partial to one with Lesbia and the thousand kisses, myself.

[luke_castellan]

[mdidiusfalco]

The fact that the kid kept calling me Marcus was beginning to put me on edge. I knew by now that most of the people here did things differently, but in Rome you just didn't go around referring to people by their praenomen. It was for close family and friends only, not any old person who happened to wander by to comment on your parrot. I was trying to control it, but every time I heard someone call me Marcus here my first reaction was still to wince. This time was no different. With my luck the kid was doing it on purpose.

"Please, it's Falco. And yes, I did name it Cicero." The bird in question ruffled its feathers at the mention of its name, but whether it was a good or bad sign is still up for debate.

[luke_castellan]

[mdidiusfalco]

"Well, at least that way there's less of a chance that anyone's going to be nailing bits of him to doors anytime soon. No hands for one thing." That and I was fairly sure that for all of his faults this Cicero wasn't a die-hard Republican. No, radical politics was definitely more my thing than his, not that I blamed the bird. "If the bird starts going on about the Republic or Scipio's dream then I'll begin to get a bit worried."

[itellthetaleof]

"Is your parrot teaching seduction techniques now?" Gabrielle asked as she tried to hide a laugh. Talking with Falco was always a joy for her but the parrot...it was something else. She leaned on her ever present staff once she stood beside him, looking down at them in amusement.

[mdidiusfalco]

"Venus help us if it is," I said, giving the bird a significant look which it ignored in favour of squawking up at Gabrielle. At least this time it wasn't poetry related, just a general sort of 'I'm hungry, what kind of food have you got for me' squawk instead. Ungrateful thing. After all of the time I spent slaving away for its benefit, it still had to go begging fruit off other people. You'd think all of those grapes I threw at it were going to waste. "I wouldn't trust Cicero or Ovid with love advice, and neither should anyone else."

[itellthetaleof]

The parrot may have been pathetic, but Gabrielle couldn't resist. She pulled some slices of apple from her pouch and offered them towards the bird as she moved to kneel beside them in the sand. "I can't help but agree there. Does Cicero, or is he Ovid, here know anything but crude things?" She asked with amusement.

[mdidiusfalco]

"Cicero. And it does know some non-lewd things. I've heard some bits of the Aeneid every now and then." But pretty much all Roman poetry boils down to sex in the end so I couldn't really blame the bird for sticking with what was easiest and most prevalent. "I was in the process of trying to teach some of my own stuff as well, but I don't think that one is going to go as planned."