Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Ruthven calls out for his dad in his sleep!" Loud Barb screamed, her loud, high voice echoing through the aviary where the large birds were having social time and setting off the other birds squawking. Her vocabulary was remarkably large, her articulation was remarkably clear, and as usual, she was saying whatever would get the biggest reaction. Social birds could have an uncanny ability to read the people and animals around them, and Barb was especially good at picking up on sore points.

Ruthven was nowhere to be seen, but Barb ambled to one end of her perch and pointed a claw toward the corner behind the humidifier. "He's hiding behind the humidifier right now plotting vengeance against me because I said he calls for his dad in his sleep. Because he does!" she announced, following up with a mimicry of Polly's laughter, a mimicry of Polly's friend Wendy's laughter, and a mimicry of studio audience laughter from TV.

Loud Barb was a singular creature. Of the known extant parrot species, she most resembled a hyacinth macaw. And indeed, that was how she'd been logged in the veterinary system, but Polly wasn't sure. A hyacinth was a big bird, but Barb was even bigger, with a long neck that gave her a vulture-like appearance when she stretched out to her full length. Her blue feathers didn't, in all lighting, seem to be quite that shade of hyacinth blue. They rippled and changed, running the gamut from periwinkle to teal to deeper violet. Sometimes when Polly was tired, or out of the corner of her eye, she could swear they flashed yellow or red, taking up the whole spectrum. Her beak, while hooked and curved as expected, was longer than typical for a hyacinth.

And while there was variation in individual parrots as in any intelligent species, hyacinths had a reputation for being especially docile and sweet.

"You wanna ring your bell?" Polly asked, handing her a cowbell as a substitution activity. It was no good telling a parrot 'no,' or 'don't.' That was just more reinforcement for whatever they were doing. The best thing you could do was offer something that was more fun than their disruptive behavior, and Loud Barb was exceedingly fond of bells, gongs, and drums. She took the cowbell eagerly in her beak and shook it up and down.

CLANG CLANG CLANG went the bell.

"Amarhotep cries in the shower!" she screamed.

She kept the bell in her grasp, letting it hang from the lower hook of her beak while she squawked excitedly, then grasping it firmly to ring it again.

"I do not!" Amarhotep squawked back at her, "It was just one time! And anyway, I don't, so shut up!" He puffed up his feathers in agitation until he resembled a big red ball.

CLANG CLANG CLANG

"He thinks you can't see the tears when the water's coming down!" She flapped her big wings and flew up to the highest perch in the room, presiding over it like a feathery emcee, and standing out of reach of any flightless creature who might want to take her bell. She knocked her beak against the wall, making a drum out of it, adding a bass backing to the treble of the cowbell.

THUNK CLANG THUNK CLANG THUNK CLANG

Polly opened the door a crack, then turned her back to both the door and the humidifier for a few seconds before closing it again. The best substitution activity to offer Ruthven, she'd learned, was a chance to sneak away, and she wanted to entice him to go into another room before he actually took that vengeance she assumed Barb was correct about him contemplating. You couldn't fight a bird's personality, and whatever trouble the stealthy corvid might get up to unseen in the rest of the house was very little next to the trouble that would come if he felt trapped. He'd return to visibility when he felt safe again, she was confident of it.

Next she approached Amarhotep. Not too closely, careful not to box him in or make him feel cornered. He was a big bird himself, but he was small compared to her or to Loud Barb. She didn't want to make him feel like prey. "Hey," she said to the angry ball of feathers. "It's okay. She's just in a mood right now."

Loud Barb started beatboxing. "Bomp ch-bomp ch-bomp ch-bomp-bomp ch-bomp-tss!" CLANG CLANG "Ch-bomp-bomp ch-bomp-tss!"

"That's a new one," Polly said to herself. The musical exploration wasn't doing anything for Amarhotep's nerves. She stood in front of his perch and held her arm out a little ways in front of him, at about shin height. He was too big to step-up onto a finger. "Do you want to go read a book?" she asked him. That was the highest value distraction she knew how to offer him. "You want to go somewhere quiet—"

CLANG

"—maybe on the other side of the house, and read some books?"

Amarhotep nodded, wiping off his teary eyes with a wing. He stepped onto her arm, and she held it steady as his dainty talons settled in and found their purchase.

"We can see if the new ones came in on interlibrary loan," she suggested as she carried him. He had a taste for esoteric texts, and they sometimes had to go a bit far afield for them. "Scritches?" she asked him, holding out her other hand.

He nodded again, and she stroked his head feathers, smoothing them down from where they stood on end.

"Amarhotep reads so much because he wants to escape reality!" Loud Barb screamed, accompanying herself on cowbell, beatbox, and beak-drum.

Amarhotep puffed up again, and Polly withdrew her hand in case he felt like biting. She slipped out the door with him and closed it behind them.

Through the door, she heard, "Polly questions her life choices!" followed by more studio audience laughter.

"She'll get bored after a while and move onto something else," she assured Amarhotep. "That's just Barb."