“Journaling, huh?” Maggie said, peering at the unrolled sheet of papyrus Ink-Talon had spread out beneath him on the floor of the cart, carefully sketching out letters with a claw. “That’s a good way to keep your head on straight, I’ve heard. I’ve always been garbage at actually writing things down, though.”
“How can you be unskilled at something that is not a skill?” A confused snort sounded from in front of the wagon as the horse pulling it joined the conversation. “If you have the intent to mark your thoughts, then would that not be all you need?”
“I meant that I was bad at making a habit of it, obviously!” Maggie shot back, rolling her eyes for nobody to see.
“That was meant to be obvious? Perhaps your intent would be clearer if you stopped insisting on using these bizarre vocal expressions and abstractions!” The horse’s ears flicked back in frustration. “Do you have any idea how exhausting they are to Understand?”
“You’re not the first to say so, no!”
“Maggie, please.” A soft chirp from the squirrel kept the myna from continuing the argument, as much as she really wanted to. “Transporter Steady-Step is already working extremely hard for us, breaking off from the rest of the caravan to make this emergency trip. I don’t want to sour things less than a day in.”
“Cutting back on the English might help,” Ink-Talon added, still intently focused on his writing. “Or at least simplifying what you’re saying. It’s easier for us to listen to because we’re already familiar with it, but even we are being forced to sift through layers of translation and inference to get it, between the linguistics, slang, and metaphor. If you have any clear memories of people speaking foreign languages back on Earth, you can see for yourself. It legitimately takes a lot of mental effort.”
“…Fine,” Maggie huffed, mimicking a soft nicker from Stead-Step itself instead of her own voice. It was both really cool that she could do that, and really annoying that she was forced to. She had a lot more she wanted to say, but the squirrel was right. Bothering the thing responsible for making sure they got wherever they were going alive was a bad call. So she went back to squatting in the makeshift nest she made of her share of the blankets in the corner of the unfurnished supply cart, watching the other two going about their business.
Ink-Talon continued writing. The glimpse of it she’d gotten earlier indicated that he was documenting the weird not-maps these animals used. Complaining about it, too, for all the good it would do him. The squirrel, who really needed to settle on a name sooner rather than later, was tending to his kits, who were clambering around their own set of blankets. The black-furred one had opened its eyes for the first time a few hours ago, and was liable to wander too close to the one of a few critter-sized openings in the sides of the cart if he wasn’t careful and get knocked outside by a bump in the trail. Watching him wrangle it was more sad than amusing, as every interaction he had with the kits was tinged with an uncomfortable tension. She was very quickly getting bored.
That had honestly been the worst part of ending up here. Everything was so boring. The experience of being a bird would actually be an exciting prospect under normal circumstances, and she certainly didn’t have much of a desire to go back to the drudgery of her day job, but she had no idea how to actually go about flying. Speaking, impersonations, those were within the wheelhouse of human experience. Wings were not. And thus she was stuck ground-bound, unable to be self-sufficient and subject to the whims of whatever these animal-things were.
The other humans seemed to genuinely believe that these creatures were real animals, uplifted to personhood somehow. Maggie wasn’t so sure. This whole scenario reeked of simulation. Some kind of sci-fi nonsense just beamed into their brains while they lay sedated in some lab somewhere. Otherwise, why would the exact flora and fauna of Earth evolve in a world that almost certainly wasn’t? And was she supposed to believe that these tiny brains could hold full human minds? Even the “Understanding’s” literalism had a sort of machine translation vibe to it. But she could tell the others had developed some manner of complex about the morality of their situation. Trying to convince them of any of this would just lead to unnecessary friction in the group.
So then the goals here are simple. Survive. Stay sane. Escape the Matrix. And Step One on the plan is… Sitting here. In this cart. For three days….
Fuck.
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A break from the doldrums finally came sometime in the afternoon when the wagon stopped at what seemed to be a spring-fed pond of some sort, a little oasis out in the middle of this vacant, golden-grassed scrub-land.
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“This is the last source of fresh water for a while along this route,” Steady-Step said, ducking its head out of the wagon’s yoke. “We will end the travel day early, to avoid having to spend the night relying on our supplies. We have enough food and water to last us for the whole journey, and a little extra to be safe. However, delays are common in the last leg of this route, so we need to save what we can in case something goes wrong.”
“Finally!” Maggie leaps off of the cart and lands awkwardly, uselessly fluttering her wings a bit as she stumbles across the dirt. “I’ve been dying to stretch my legs.”
“Please do not stray far,” the horse added, eyeing the myna warily. “I will doubtless be held responsible for any injury you sustain, and you are all far more vulnerable than the average passenger.”
“Fine by me, I was actually about to start browsing the Scholar’s writings,” Ink-Talon croaked. “So I’ll probably stay up here for a bit longer.”
“Actually, I’d prefer it if you… did your wandering now, rather than later,” the squirrel squeaked uncomfortably. “If you don’t mind.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” Ink-Talon picked up a small basket of scrolls in his beak and fluttered off the wagon, displaying a clear competence with his wings that caught Maggie off-guard. “How about an avian outing, then? I’m going to try and find a nice cool spot by the pond to sit, if you want to join me.”
“…Sure.” Maggie followed the crow’s lead, wandering around the pond until they were both out of sight and earshot of the wagon. Hi found a nice spot at the water’s edge, shaded by reeds, and sat down, setting aside the scrolls for the moment and dipping his beak in the pond to try it out before tilting his head back to swallow.
“It’s strange how much better water tastes as a bird, right? It actually has a flavor.”
“Okay, what was up with that?” Maggie asks, ignoring the small talk. “You’re awfully cool with the squirrel asking you to leave. Is this normal? Because he’s been on-edge from the moment we met and this is raising a bunch of red flags.”
“It’s nothing as dire as you’re thinking,” Ink-Talon said, pulling at one of the scrolls in the basket to undo the twine holding it shut. “He just needs privacy. The kits are still too young to wean.”
“…Oh.” The realization caused an uncomfortable pit to form in her inhuman gut. “Shit, that explains the tension.” It was one thing to be uncomfortable in these bodies, she sure as hell wasn’t all that thrilled about it, but needing to use his in that way, constantly confronted with his altered biology, must have been on another level. And of course he was too much of a bleeding heart to pass the little things off to someone else, that was obvious from the jump.
“He’s really been doing that badly?”
“Are you serious?” Maggie tilted her head. “He’s so stressed that you can feel it radiating off him. I’ve known him all of half a day and I can already tell he’s taking this far worse than you or I. Did I just get more of the ’Understanding’ power than you?”
“More like I lost a bunch of it,” Ink-Talon sighed and buried his head under a wing, letting out a very frustrated, muffled caw. “Damn it! I should have known he was in rough shape. I just took him at his word that he was fine.”
“I…” Maggie was at a loss. The kind of emotional support these two clearly needed was not something she was good at. She was a loner, she liked it that way, and part of her was still screaming to bail. To distance herself from these two before they self destructed and took her with them. But she couldn’t afford to, not in her current state. She wouldn’t stand a chance on her own. “Listen. He’s the one who didn’t tell you about his struggles. Being angry at yourself helps no one.”
“You’re right, but…”
“Here, we were going to do some reading, so let’s read. Let’s get back to the ‘avian outing’ and take your mind off of all this.” Maggie pulled the loose end of the knot on the scroll Ink-Talon had left on the ground, unfurling it to read.
“We? When did you take an interest in the other animals?” The crow tilted his head, thankfully pulled out of rumination for the moment. “You clearly don’t think highly of them.”
“Well, ‘we,’ figuratively. I’m gonna take a bath, but you’re welcome to chat about what you’re reading.” Maggie took a few tentative steps into the shallows of the pond, making sure it wasn’t a mud trap. Cold water splashed across her scaled legs, both a foreign and somehow nostalgic sensation, a combination of new skin and her last bath as a human feeling like a lifetime ago by this point. It was nice. She stepped a little further out, letting the water come up to her feathers, and splashed around a bit, trying to mimic how she’d seen birds bathing back home. “God, this is refreshing. You should try it sometime before we leave.”
“Probably. I’ve been doing okay figuring out preening, but I could also use…“ Ink-Talon trailed off, staring at the paper in front of him.
“Find something juicy already?”
Rather than answer, the crow immediately pulled out two more scrolls and opened them, pouring over them in confusion.
“It’s… all poetry?” He clicked his beak several times, repeating the words to himself as if he was trying to figure out the right term. “Not prose, they don’t think in words. But still… artsy?”
“Weird.” Maggie mimed a shrug with her wings. “Mind if I join you? That sounds way more interesting than whatever boring science stuff the rest of that pile on the wagon has.”
“Of course, I’m glad to have the company.”
The myna settled in next to the crow and took one of the other scrolls lying about, doing a great job appearing as casual and carefree as usual despite that anxious pit in her stomach gnawing at her even more now. She had to see this, to know if these creatures really were making real art, and not some generative slop. Because if they were, that would mean they were as real as she was. And then…
Well, she’d owe more than a few sincere apologies, to say the least.