Parrothead in Paradise

by PastCat

Chapter 7

I woke the next morning feeling refreshed and awake. Something about those flying dreams always made me feel more energetic upon waking. I also had not gotten tangled in my own hammock last night, which helps one’s sleep tremendously. Before I headed to the campfire to join the others for whatever breakfast they had managed to scrounge, I headed for the electronics stash to check the radios. All four of them were back in their places. So, Adam decided not to spend the whole night by his lonesome in the wilderness after all.

Sure enough, when I arrived at the cookfire, I saw Adam. His wing feathers were askew and sticking out on all directions. His mane also stuck out strangely and gave him a cowlick over one ear. One night away from Base had not treated him kindly. He didn’t say anything as I approached, but there was a platter’s worth of fruit on our makeshift table so I helped myself.

“There’s coconuts if you want one.” Adam said, waving a wing lazily at a pyramid of round brown shapes. “Lots of palms down there.”

“Is that why you wandered off? You wanted coconuts?” I asked.

Adam shrugged. “No, well not really. I needed time to think. I will tell you all when everybody is awake. I don’t really want to have to tell the story more than once. Oh, the coconuts I just kind of found when I was off on my own. They were just there for the taking. I thought I would bring them back as, well, a peace offering of sorts.”

“Well, thanks I guess. But you are not getting off the hook that easily. Not when you had all of us running around looking for you and worrying ourselves sick. Not to mention some strange stuff that we spotted from up there.” I said with a vague gesture towards the mountains.

That distracted him from his papaya. “What? Some strange stuff? What do you mean?”

“Oh no; you have to wait until the others are up and about. Tit for tat, you don’t get to hear our story until we have heard yours.” I watched him squirm a little at that. I changed the subject. “So have you figured out your wings yet?”

Adam groaned. His wings flared out a little, feathers sticking out like the seeds on a pinecone. “I can’t get them to lay flat half the time and these things won’t stay straight.” He poked at one of the wayward primary feathers.

I hesitated for a moment before answering tentatively. “You know… the Guidebook said something about preening and caring for feathers. It said, uh, that sometimes it helps to have someone else help, especially with the ones you can’t reach.”

Adam’s ears pinned back, but he waved for me to go on. “I still don’t really trust the Guidebook, seeing as we know nothing about the author and their motives for writing it, but I guess some of what it said seems like good advice. What else did it say that is making you blush like that?”

How could he tell? I did my best to return to a normal color. “Well, apparently among griffons and pegasi it is a way to express affection, kind of like when couples give each other a massage. Not that I am thinking about that of course, but…”

“You’re still turning funny colors.” Adam pointed out. “But yeah, I get your meaning. Maybe for this time it would just be as, you know, one freaky bird thing helping out one of her winged brethren. A favor now for a favor later?” He was not blushing, but judging by the way he seemed to shrink down he was definitely embarrassed.

“Well, if it’s ok with you?” He nodded and waved again. I took a seat behind him and started sorting through and straightening his feathers. He did his best to hold them out straight so I could see what his overall wings looked like. They were smaller than mine and the feathers were softer. They seemed more delicate, so I was cautious at first. I combed through his feathers with my talons, trying not to pull any out while he returned to eating. It was calming, just sitting there doing something mindless but at the same time exacting. We both let ourselves lose track of time.

“Awwww.” The drawn out word woke both of us from our reveries. There stood Trish, a mocking grin on her face. “You two make such an adorable couple!” She made kissy motions with her lips. Adam let out a horsey whinny and fell over backwards into me. A squawk of surprise came out of my beak and we both landed ass-over-teakettle with our wings spread wide. As quickly as we could, we both got to our feet and backed away from each other. Trish snickered and I felt myself flush again. I could see the others emerging from our shelter behind her. Doc looked amused, the other two confused. “Don’t worry you two. You’ll both get another chance to do your wing thing later.” Trish said, still smirking.

I was too embarrassed to say anything, but Adam rolled his eyes. “You are too much of a romantic for your own good, Missy Kissy.” His wings were now covered in dust from the fall, but at least most of his feathers were straight now. The ones that weren’t, he could probably reach himself. I turned away and started putting my own wings back in order. It reminded me of what my cat used to do if I caught her up to something. Just acting natural and grooming. That’s all that I was doing, really.

“Well now that we are all here,” Doc said, with a pointed look at Adam, “we might as well discuss our findings.” Nic did the reporting for our exploring group yesterday, ending with the puzzle of the difference in foliage between the lowlands and where we were and the large amounts of sand at Bellows. Doc and Trish talked about their discovery of more fruit trees, including the papaya Adam had been enjoying, and of the possibility of building a more permanent structure to augment the remnants of the university buildings we had been using.Doc had set up some snares around the culvert, having seen tracks of various smaller critters down there. All in all it was all pretty usual stuff for us, but we all wanted to hear from Adam about what he’d found.

“All right, so here goes. I went down there to see what was left of the city. It’s surprisingly intact, but something feels seriously off about the place. It smelled weird to start with. Really salty and gross, but it looks like somebody did something to shore up some places. I didn’t run into anyone there, though. Just weirdly shaped writing that glowed when I got close. Anyways, I just picked a direction and started walking. I figured I would hit the beach eventually, right? A lot of those fancy hotels aren’t there anymore. Lots of them have collapsed or look like they are about to. I spent most of the night in what was left of the Hilton. Ground floor was pretty grody. There was sand and dried mud everywhere. Not a window to be found and basically everything is at least partially buried. I did a little climbing where things seemed sturdy. The second and third floors are fairly intact, but I was nervous about going too high. The tallest stuff has mostly fallen down, but I didn’t want to find out by experiment that that place was ready to go.”

“Like I said, I did not find any recent evidence of people. Not a soul; it was really creepy. Even the writing looked like it had been done a long time ago. Not even animals wanted to be down there. It’s hard to explain.” Adam shivered. “I felt like a total intruder by the time I made it to downtown. You can still see a few remnants of stores and restaurants and such down there. We might want to see if anything useful is left. I bet there are some places with cooking stuff that we could use. Maybe more too.” He shrugged. “Yeah, I know I was a doofus for going out there alone; I definitely won’t be doing that again.”

“That’s all?” I asked. “All that fuss and annoyance for nothing but an empty shell with maybe some cooking equipment?”

“Hey, I was only down there for a day. Jeez, you would think I just came back from the dead or something.” Adam shot back.

“We nearly thought you had.” Doc said gravely. “I know you often feel like we spend too much time together as a group, Adam, but wandering off alone is not the answer. For any of us.” He looked at all of us individually. We nodded. “As far as we have been able to find, the six of us are the only sentient creatures on this island. We need to stick together and help each other. If we don’t, who will?” He crossed his arms.

“You’re right.” Adam said, his ears flopping over in shame. “And I am sorry I didn’t wait for any of you to come with me and for making you worry. I’m not used to being away from an easy way of contacting other people. I think I killed the battery on my walkie talkie too. Sorry.” He hung his head.

“Good. Keep that in mind for the next time then.” Doc said to Adam before turning to the rest of us. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, what should our next course of action be? Should we go down into Honolulu and see if there is more worth finding?”

“We might as well. I mean, if there is anything worth salvaging, we need all the help we can get. I for one would love to figure out a better way of keeping food up here. I know we won’t be able to use anything that takes electricity, but something like a Dutch oven for boiling things and cooking them in the coals would be useful. Heck, I would take a frying pan or something too. Also anything that could make our cooking area more permanent would be great.” Emmy said. She had started experimenting with her magic recently with a few simple ideas about how to cook. It hadn’t gotten much further than “fruit on a stick” and “toasted fruit on a stick”, but if we could find or make more utensils she thought she could make more of a variety. I wouldn’t have minded something better for cooking meat myself. I missed bacon.

“I wouldn’t mind getting more coconuts. They are really useful for things other than eating. If we are unable to find some kind of flatware and bowls we can use coconuts. The husks make great tinder for the fire too. No offense intended, but I really don’t think we should be burning our remaining books. It just feels wrong.” Nic commented. “Count me in for going down there and seeing what we can find.”

“I dunno. I guess I would be willing to look around in daylight, but count me out if you guys want to stay the night down there.” Trish said with a shudder. “There’s something about this whole situation that is giving me the heebie-jeebies.” She held up a hoof to forestall any comments from the peanut gallery. “Don’t ask me why. It’s not something I can really explain. The ground underhoof just felt wrong when we walked along the coast yesterday when we were exploring and it feels even worse by that culvert that leads into Honolulu.”

“Fine by me,” I said. “I couldn’t feel it like you did, but I believe you. I don’t trust an area that animals avoid completely. If there is something down there, it might be something that hunts by night, and I really don’t want to find out the hard way that something escaped from the Honolulu Zoo before we got here and has established a territory. I vote daylight only, coming back here by nightfall with whatever we find. If we find anything useful, that’s fine, but nothing’s worth dying or getting lost over. The city is not going anywhere fast.”

Adam nodded. “I do not want to be down there at night again, that’s for sure. Once was plenty, thanks.”

“All right then.” Doc said. “We’ll go exploring. Stick together everydoggy. A pack is safer than a loner any day.” He ambled towards the path leading down towards the culvert.

Trish glanced at me. “Everydoggy? Pack?” She mouthed at me. “Underhoof?” I mouthed back. She shrugged and looked a little embarrassed. Maybe Wonder Mutt was coping by thinking of us that way (or maybe it was just a dog thing). I stood up and followed Doc. The others trailed after us. WeI caught up with Doc at the culvert. He was looking down into it with some apprehension due to the fact that there was a stream of water running through it, but hearing us behind him seemed to strengthen his resolve. One by one, we splashed through the culvert to find what lay in the ruins ahead.

Comments

[Dances With Unicorns]

I’m surprised that nobody in that group started humming the Indiana Jones theme music.

[JDunk1971]

With all the sand and younger vegetation, it almost sounds like a tsunami hit the area at some point.