[open] caught in a bad romance
So have an Iris, Chicago, who's been figuring she needs to get out of the house some.
Not that she's been spending all her time indoors, recently. But, well, it's been between the Kashtta and Molly's sorority house, for the most part, and that's nice and all, but she's starting to worry that she's becoming one of those people who disappear into ( Read more... )
Not that she's been spending all her time indoors, recently. But, well, it's been between the Kashtta and Molly's sorority house, for the most part, and that's nice and all, but she's starting to worry that she's becoming one of those people who disappear into ( Read more... )
Comments 11
Even if it does involve taking the Roads through a minor local Rift and stealing things too heavy for him to properly carry in his mundane form and too flammable to properly carry in his Roads form. And getting beat with foodstuffs for his trouble.
"You-!" he squawks, flapping away for a moment only to make another attempt at the books. "What's this? Bird can't read in peace! Ah! Not that I'm - you could just offer the food - bloody two-leggers, can't let a body do a job in peace!"
He makes a frantic grab for the cover of the nearest book and scrambles in the direction of the sidewalk.
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Iris stares at the bird for a moment, aghast. Well, that was a faux pas, she thinks. She wasn't expecting it to talk. But she could have at least tried to negotiate before treating it like a mindless monster, and-- well, now she just feels bad.
She stops waving the baguette, and raises her voice to the bird instead. "...I'm, like, really sorry! But, um, you kind of can't keep those, okay? They're not even mine! If you really want some books, I'll go buy you some or something!"
She glances down at her sandwich. It's kind of ruined anyway, from her attacks on the corvid. Tentatively, she scrambles down from the fountain and lays it down next to the bird. "Um, like, here. You can have this, just, um, make a deal with me, okay?"
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Well. That was significantly more civil from a two-legger than he was expecting.
He pauses, putting a few of his breastfeathers back in place, and then takes a few conciliatory pecks of the sandwich. Ah, there is one thing he's missed about this place; his particular greenrift is low on human food.
Then he looks up, tilting his head at Iris. "I," he proclaims, "am on a mission to fetch certain volumes for the Corvidae Thegn of Chicago Next, which volumes happen to match these descriptions," he says. "Being as I am only a humble magpie-" and most who know him would dispute that particular descriptor, "-I've no idea what his lordship wants with them, nor am I empowered to negotiate on his behalf."
He wasn't really expecting to negotiate at all. But then, this is Chicago. Even a fetch-and-carry can't be simple.
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She sits back down on the lip of the fountain, fiddling with the hem of her skirt. "But I can get you ones just like them, I'm really sure."
Although now she's reconsidering this whole series of events. After all, if this creature is on some kind of exalted mission, isn't that a little more important than her duty to the government? Maybe she should just give up the books, if it's in the service of the greater good. She can always pay the fine, and maybe the library won't think too badly of her if she explains that a talking magpie took them. But then, it's hard to really tell if it really is on a holy mission or just a mundane one-- as mundane as any mission that would send out a magpie would be, anyway-- when she doesn't even know who his lord and master is ( ... )
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