The next three days passed without major incident, but not without a significant learning curve. Ink-Talon’s acrophobia did not immediately improve, but knowing what was coming at least allowed him to brace for it when coming and going from the treehouse. He always needed to take a minute or two to catch his breath and calm down afterwards, but it was doable. Moving about the village likewise proved rather easy, provided he flew close to the ground. This allowed him to explore a bit and learn about where exactly they had found themselves.

“Deep’s End,” like most any name in this culture, was rather literal. The village was situated at the end of what at first glance looked like a large river with unusually rocky banks. However, the waters were still. It was less a river and more a rocky crag filled with water, cutting across the landscape and off into the horizon. As the name “deep” would suggest, there was no visible bottom, even with the remarkable clarity of the water itself. Even stranger, the only thing remarkable about it to the locals was that it ended here at all. A multitude of deeps apparently cut across the entire continent, from ocean to ocean, making for fantastic transportation routes, but not drinking water. They were brackish at best, consisting primarily of seawater and occasionally diluted by more normal freshwater sources.

Strange as they were, the deeps’ existence answered one major question Ink-Talon had: This could not be the Earth he knew. He’d already suspected it, despite the superficial similarity to a North American deciduous forest of the place they’d awoken in, the grasslands beyond were more like Savannah than prairie. The species of animal present were of a far wider variety than would have been possible naturally, too. Mindful-Sight was probably an African chameleon species of some sort, and he’d spotted such disparate creatures as an armadillo, a meerkat, and a snowshoe hare among the village’s residents. The climate seemed to be temperate enough for them all to manage fine, at least. Nobody in town had a map detailing an area larger than the local terrain, but he knew he’d want to study one if he could get his talons on it. He wanted to learn more about this world, and thankfully he would finally get a chance.

“So, how is all the travel prep going?” Ink-Talon asked, making small talk as he stood outside the entrance to their shelter.

“Way better after you brought back that carrier,” the squirrel chitters from inside. It was feeding time for the kits, and despite it having become routine enough by this point to hold a conversation during, he insisted on just enough privacy to not be seen doing it. It made perfect sense to Ink-Talon, though it had struck other animals who had come to check up on them as rather odd and unnecessary. “I can carry these two around one at a time easily enough, but not having to worry about making two trips simplifies it a lot.”

“You can thank the Crafters for that. They made it yesterday when I asked if they had anything to help. Turns out spinning, weaving, and cutting twine to make baskets and belts is extremely doable with a perfect Understanding of the material and the passable manual dexterity provided by multiple sets of rat paws working together.”

“I should really- ow,” the squirrel winced, one of the kits likely having gotten a little greedy. “I should really… learn to do something worthwhile with mine, then.”

“Don’t push yourself, okay? You’ve got plenty to deal with.”

“Sure.” The squirrel’s reply was ambiguous. Not because of his intentions, those could be inferred as sarcastic or dismissive the old fashioned way, but because the subtlety was lost on Ink-Talon. It was one of the “drawbacks” of his Attunement. He would often miss the “tone” something was expressed with, with the likelihood increasing with the complexity of the expression or the more obstacles between them, such as the lack of visual contact in this case. In a way, it wasn’t that different than when he was fully human. Only, now his thinking was actually self-absorbed rather than people just thinking it was when he talked to them.

“Greetings!” A loud screech preceded the flutter of wings as a smaller, dark brown bird landed on the platform a short distance away from Ink-Talon. “I’m glad to see you up and about, Scholar!”

“You were… there when we were rescued, right?” Ink-Talon asked, tilting his head. “Sorry, I wasn’t exactly in the state of mind to remember names.”

“Messenger Darting-Flight, yes,” the swift peeped, its disappointment coming across so strongly that even the crow’s muted perception picked up on it. “I’ve been running messages between here, Darksoil, and nearby settlements regarding your… condition since we found you.”

“Nearby settlements?” the squirrel asked, finally emerging from the shelter. “Are we that important that the news needs to spread around?”

“Forager Keen-Ear! Good! That makes this easier.” The squirrel visibly cringed at the mention of the name. “You are both departing for Darksoil with the supply caravan today, correct?”

“Yeah,” the squirrel nodded. “We were just finishing getting ready.”

“We have been asked to delay for a day-phase,” the Messenger explained. “An additional person will be accompanying you. It was just escorted from Fertile Ridge to the east and will need to eat and rest before continuing.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Ink-Talon said. A day-phase was about three hours by his rough estimation: the time it took for the sun to move a quarter of the way across the sky. The length would likely change depending on the season, but that was obviously less of a practical concern for these creatures. “Why come here to join a caravan and not travel with its own, though? They seem frequent enough.”

“It was decided that traveling with you two in particular would be in all of your best interests,” Darting-Flight said.

Ink-Talon tilted his head in confusion, but the squirrel was quick to put two and two together.

“They’re… like us?” he squeaked hopefully.

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“We believe so,” Darting-Flight nodded. “Behaving even more bizarrely than you two, though. The hope is that you might have more familiarity with it.”

“Well then,” Ink-Talon croaked. “Perhaps we could share a meal?”

----------------------------------------

The potential ex-human was also a black-feathered bird, though not of a species immediately familiar to the squirrel. They were about half the size of Ink-Talon, with a sort of iridescent sheen to their feathers, and bits of yellow skin around the face and neck that didn’t seem to be feathered at all. As the group approached, they were currently busying themselves with a small collection of dried berries and a basin of water.

“I have to warn you,” Darting-Flight said, stopping outside of earshot. “Its expressions are going to be exceeding strange. Most of us have had to duck out of conversations early because just Understanding it is exhausting. It does not help that it has been extremely chatty.”

“Well, let’s see what we can do, then.” The squirrel nodded and motioned for Ink-Talon to follow his lead, which he was more than happy to do. “Hello!” the squirrel chittered once they were closer. “Mind if we join you?” Given the description of the bird’s oddities, he was expecting something really idiosyncratic or bizarre in response, but nothing could have prepared him for what actually came next. The bird opened their beak, and words came out.

“Oh! Hello! Come and sit down!” the bird said in perfect English while waving them in with a wing, their voice a near-perfect recreation of an excited feminine human, just with a slight tinny tone, like it was being played over old speakers. “The more, the merrier!”

“Well, that settles that question,” Ink-Talon clicked after a moment of awkward silence, clearly as stunned by this as the squirrel was.

“Settles what?” the human-voiced bird asked. “You didn’t just come to gawk, did you? Shame, I’d hoped that I’d have more interesting characters to chat with by now.”

“That you’re human,” the squirrel squeaked, and the bird froze. “We-“

“Holy shit!” The bird began hopping around excitedly. “Sorry! I just assumed you were both like these other critters. I’d been wondering if I was alone here! Figured it’d be weird if I were the only one, y’know? But nobody else ever showed up.”

Ink-Talon opened his beak to say something, but the other bird never gave him the chance.

“Introductions! We need to do introductions! Those actually matter now that people can get it right!” The bird performed an approximation of an excessively formal bow, extending one wing out from the body and awkwardly sweeping the other in front. “Pearl the Myna Bird, at your service.” She paused, looking up at the crow and squirrel with more than a hint of desperation in her eyes. “Not ‘pearl,’ but Pearl! Please tell me that came across for you.”

To the squirrel, it was obvious what was going on. She was saying her name, her actual, given human name, out loud. It was just translated in the head of the listener rather than her own, much to her frustration.

She’s still able to say it, and I can still hear it, right? the squirrel wondered. Surely it must be a name I remember hearing as a human. If she can connect that context, make those sounds mean “her” rather than “pearl,” then I should be able to as well. He focused, willfully ignoring that first Understanding of her name, connecting the raw sound he just heard to the one in his memory. There was a clear resistance, as if the Understanding itself refused to be overridden. But he was hearing it right now, and he had heard this name before. He should be able to say her name. His heart began to race, and his breathing picked up. Something about this was genuinely stressful, requiring a bizarre amount of effort, but he couldn’t reason out what it was. I know this! I can do it! What is it? And then, as if a switch had been flipped, all that stress and strain vanished. He had it. Her name was…

“…Maggie?” the squirrel chirped, catching his breath. “You’re Maggie, right?”

“YES!” The myna leapt for joy, excitedly flapping her wings in such a way that she immediately toppled herself over before getting up and continuing to jump around. “I’m not crazy! Everyone keeps hearing ‘pearl’ when I talk! Even I was hearing ‘pearl’ at first! But I fixed it! And so did you!”

“Pearl…” Ink-Talon muttered to himself, clearly working through the same mental process the squirrel just had, but having a much rougher time of it. Maggie didn’t seem to notice.

“What about you?” Maggie asked, finally settling down a bit. “What’re your names? If we can fix mine, we can fix yours, right?”

“I’m…” the squirrel tried to do the same for his own name. Focus on the name he remembered hearing in his past life, to connect the sound to himself. But it wasn’t clicking in the same way. There wasn’t even that strange resistance, just a lack of spark altogether. Do I need more concrete context? To hear it with these ears, in this body? But even then, something more was wrong. The name he remembered didn’t even feel like his anymore. “That man,” rather than “himself.” He shook his head, refusing to get lost in those thoughts right now. “I’m just this squirrel, sorry. I don’t think our names can be ‘fixed’ without being able to hear them spoken aloud like yours.”

“You said you were a myna bird, right?” Ink-Talon croaked, having finished his mental workout. “I’d heard they were remarkable mimics, but I didn’t realize they were that uncannily capable.”

“You wanna hear me make other noises? I can do a mean ringtone.”

“…I’ll pass, thanks.”

“You sure you can’t do it at least little?” Maggie asked. “I’m sure I’ve seen video of birds like you saying a few scratchy words.”

“I think I’m the wrong kind of corvid to be mimicking sounds from memory,” Ink-Talon croaked. “Maybe if I focus…” He closed his eyes and made a few strained, choking sounds trying to shape words before giving up, causing Maggie to burst out laughing. It was a lovely sound to hear after all this time. “Yeah. That’s more a raven thing, I think. My vocal cords don’t stretch that way.”

“Sorry,” Maggie said. “Didn’t mean to get your hopes up.”

“Don’t be, this is hitting all of us differently,” the squirrel said. “I’m honestly just thrilled to have another human around. Ink-Talon here is great company, but only having him to talk to all this time gets kinda same-y.”

“You can just spend time with the other animals, you know,” Ink-Talon chided. “Instead of just holing up with the kits all day.”

“Kits? You mean your body came with children?” the myna asked. “My condolences. Or congratulations! Whichever better fits your feelings on that.”

The final hours before departure were spent eating, refreshingly casual chit-chat, and introducing Maggie to the kits, who were sleeping in the small carrier harness the crafters had rigged up. There was no immediate crisis, Maggie’s voice was strangely comforting to hear, and her sheer optimistic energy was contagious. Things almost felt normal, for a change. It was even able to take his mind off of his body for a while. The squirrel savored it while he could, though as a new question was bubbling up in the back of his mind.

He wished he could just stop thinking about it. These weren’t questions that mattered. The grand, existential mysteries of this universe weren’t something to be dealt with when day to day survival and stability were far more important, and perhaps not even then. But it wouldn’t leave him alone. Was there a will behind all of this? Some reason for bringing him, and these two, and possibly others into these forms? It was silly to think about. Almost pointless to consider.

Except he’d pushed against something in Understanding Maggie’s name, and if only for a moment, that something pushed back.