Image prompt!
The story of two birds, Numidids optional.
[AN: Image shows two long-necked birds(possibly egrets) facing each other on opposite sides of what looks to be a canal. One bird is white, the other is grey. I also have no idea why the image won’t get quoted any more. Another stuff-up from staff?]
This is Earth. It now prides itself on the strange, the bizarre, and the unusual. Its citizens, for a modest fee, will gleefully exhibit some of the more baffling and alarming passtimes that humans have invented over their many centuries on the planet.
This is a small township called Cunabarabran. It’s one of the few places that’s safe for havenworlders, owing to the fact that everything potentially hazardous on a macroscopic scale has been carefully removed from the environment.
And this is S'sid'nii, a curious havenworlder seeking to reenforce his DNA by osmosis - that is, making his species stronger by careful and regulated exposure to deathworlders. As part of his daily constitutional, he takes care to chat with the human natives and learn interesting things.
And one of those interesting things is a human, also taking a walk, with a large bundle of leashes. At the end of each, a long-necked water bird. They were a chaotic squabble and seemed determined to tangle their leashes at the slightest provocation.
As the human continued her walk, she barked orders at the birds by name. “Snowy, cool it! Edgar, get on the other side. Clarence… Clarence… OI! To the back. Bernadette, stop picking on Chloe.”
As a fellow bird, this raised his interest. S'sid'nii followed in curiosity, and cautiously caught up with the beleaguered human.
“Yeah nah I’m not takin’ you in, mate,” said the human. “I already got enough feathers in me cap.”
“I am an independant entity,” soothe S'sid'nee. “I am meaning to ask… of what kind are these pets.”
“Egrets,” said the human. “I wish I had a few.”
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