Seeker Sunny-Plume never once lost sight of Pearl as it stumbled through the various side-paths between buildings. A lone, grounded bird running with a gait more akin to a lopsided gallop than anything more natural for its body was pretty hard to miss. Unfortunately, the kestrel didn’t have the faintest idea what to do to help it once it calmed down. Everything it had expressed in its sudden rant was true enough, but the myna had convinced itself that these circumstances beyond its control were a personal failing. Sunny-Plume knew that it couldn’t just refute these kinds of beliefs and expect the problem to stop. This called for a less obvious approach. Something that would require defying orders and leaving Pearl, even if only for a moment.
The Guardians are going to want to tear my wings off if they learn that I did this. Hopefully they never do.
The Crafters’ Quarter was only a few streets over from where Pearl was running, so it was an easy task to fly over and acquire five short lengths of stiff-but-bendable wire. There was a large surplus of building materials after recent construction adopted more efficient designs, so all of the extras were left for the general populace to take from freely. With the wire clutched in its beak, the Seeker returned and tracked Pearl from where it was last spotted. Thankfully, that part was quite easy. There was only one place it could have ended up unless it decided to sprint back the way it came.
Sunny-Plume found Pearl huddled in a corner at a dead end where the entrances to a few residences were situated. It was performing the breathing exercises they had practiced earlier, and was managing to remain conscious, but little more.
“Have you come to learn from the teacher of causing disasters?” The myna’s squawked hoarsely. It seemed to have strained its voice in its distress earlier, leaving it unable to vocalize as it had been. It gave its expressions a decidedly different, far less vibrant tone.
“I was actually hoping to teach you something instead.” The Seeker set the wires down on the packed-dirt floor of the alley and began to bend them into even curves, holding down one end with its talons and pulling on the other with its beak.
“Is the solution supposed to be learning a trade? That is what my father always insisted. That if I just dedicated my life to work that I hated then everything would be better. It did not work then, and that was before ending up… like this.”
“Nothing so serious,” Sunny-Plume finished bending the last wire and then drew a line in the dirt between the two of them with a talon. “Obviously attending a crowded gaming hall is not a good idea right now, so I’d like to teach you one of my favorite games in a calmer setting.”
“Okay.” Pearl nodded its head, almost certainly restraining some manner of snide remark about the appropriateness of all of this.
“This is a contest of strategy and resources, invented here in Darksoil. We will each take turns placing and making adjustments to the positions of these arcs, the winner being decided by whoever has more material on their side of the line when no more adjustments are possible.” The kestrel made the first move of the demonstration, placing one of the wire arcs straddling the line with the open end pointing towards its opponent. “It is your turn. Place an arc in whatever orientation you wish, the only limitation being that it must be in physical contact with another arc that has already been placed.”
Pearl nodded again halfheartedly. It took one of the arcs and haphazardly placed it on its own side at an odd angle, clearly not giving it much thought, if any.
“Now that two arcs are in contact, there are two other types of actions one can take. Sliding and Inverting…”
The rules were simple enough for anyone to quickly Understand, once the goals and structures of the turns were explained, but knowing the rules didn’t make one skilled at developing strategies, and Sunny-Plume handily won the first two real matches they played, as was to be expected. However, Pearl winning or losing was not the purpose of any of this. The hope was that a good enough distraction and a different enough mode of thinking could put Pearl in a better state of mind to discuss things, and so far, it seemed to be working.
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In the third round, when it looked like the kestrel was about to win again, Pearl made a strange move. It only had one arc positioned on its own side of the field, and was in a position to Slide one more over and at least make the defeat less crushing. Instead they slid its only arc over to Sunny-Plume’s side, leaving itself with nothing.
“We can stop, if you are done,” the Seeker whistled. It had essentially won by this point, and couldn’t make any proper moves that wouldn’t give an arc back to Pearl, so they just made a neutral move and slightly nudged an arc without moving it anywhere.
“I am not giving up, if that is what concerns you.” Pearl stepped forward and reached all the way across the play space, grabbing and moving the arc farthest back, one that had been completely isolated and inaccessible to either of them just a few moments ago. Pearl’s sacrificial move had reconnected it to the rest of the field, letting it be taken.
What followed was a flurry of similarly aggressive play, with Pearl constantly willing to give arcs to Sunny-Plume if it gave it access to isolated, “safe” arcs and prevented the game from definitively ending. And then, in one simple move, Pearl flipped an arc completely onto Sunny-Plume’s field, but in the process completely isolating the others and ending the game. The final score, evaluated with an agreed upon Understanding, was a narrow victory for Pearl, who had claimed just over half of the material.
“Are you feeling any better?” Sunny-Plume asked. “You were extremely focused.”
“Only somewhat,” Pearl sat down and adjusted its wings, finally relaxing. “I am still miserable, but this has let me ground myself and get some perspective. Thank you.”
“Could you tell me about what happened? The anger was understandable, but not what happened afterward.”
“I-” The myna’s injured voice croaked. It was still rough and scratchy, not to mention limited to a much lower pitch than usual, but it seemed that it was determined to use it for this. “You’re probably going to think less of me once I explain, but I deserve it.” It took a deep breath. “We traveled all this way, and never once did it occur to me that we were in public. I knew we were surrounded by animals, but I didn’t consider that we were surrounded by people.”
“You… do not think of us as people?” Sunny-Plume didn’t know how to respond to that. What else would they be, if not people?
“I know that you’re people. But…” Pearl shut its eyes, intensely focusing on whatever it was trying to explain. “There is a key part of all of this that I need to make clear. Me and the others, the world we come from is fundamentally different than this one. We weren’t just other species than we are now, we were all the same species. There was no Gift, no Understanding. Every living creature in our world was what you call ‘feral.’ Our species just happened to have developed our intelligence and society independently of that.”
“And so you have spent your entire life trained not to pay any mind to other types of creatures.” Sunny-Plume could not imagine what such a world might be like, but it could certainly imagine how living in it would shape someone’s perspective. “It would be foolish to expect you to unlearn that quickly or easily.”
“...It would be, wouldn’t it?” The myna tilted its head and looked back down the alley, its tone becoming somewhat mischievous. “Foolish sounds good right about now.”
“And how do you intend to make a fool of yourself?”
“By doing what we originally set out to do, Sunny. You’re gonna take me to that crowded game hall you mentioned, and I am going to socialize.” Pearl placed one wing on Sunny-Plume’s back and gestured at the buildings around them with its other wing. “There’s a whole city full of people out there, and I am going to get to know it.”
“If that is what you want to do, then I can certainly lead the way.” The seeker briefly took off and landed on the opposite side of the alley, at the exit that led back to the tangle of criss-crossing back streets that had led them here. “But I am prepared to force you to withdraw if you are in distress.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Pearl stood up, shook off some of the dust clinging to its feathers from sitting in the dirt, and trotted over to join its guide. “Oh, and Sunny?”
“Yes?”
“You’ve been a good friend. Thanks.”
"It has been my pleasure."
Seeker Sunny-Plume hadn’t set out with the intention of making a friend that day. Curiosity had driven it to take on this task in the first place. But something about Pearl’s demeanor put the kestrel at ease. It was friendly and insightful, and it made Sunny-Plume want to help it in return. Not out of pity, or charity, or duty, but because it genuinely enjoyed the myna’s company. And if that didn’t make for a worthwhile creature to be friends with, then it didn’t know what would.