Birds of the Water

[Pato and Canard]

> If Pato were a more ornery bird, he might have found Canard’s close attendance highly annoying. The young female rarely left his side, always trailing just a little bit so that he could only see her out of the corner of his eye. As it was, he was very social and found her confidence flattering and endearing -- he wouldn’t want to be too far separated from his only companion, anyway. As they paddled slowly through one of the shallower areas of the swamp, bills dipping into the water now and again but mostly focusing on the still strange environment, Pato had his chest puffed slightly and had his head tilted in a bird’s version of a smirk.
> “See, my papa used to tell me stories about the swamps that his great-grandmama used to tell his papa. He said to me, ‘Boy, you just keep your eyes sharp on the water and the sky, and you don’t get near any suspicious logs’ -- he couldn’t ever say why you didn’t get near suspicious logs, but you don’t--”
> Canard was dubious. “But... how can you tell if a log is suspicious?”
> “Feel it in your bones,” Pato immediately replied, and then tsk’d. “Let me finish my story.”
> The drake saw Canard’s apologetic head-dip and though he saw a smile in her posture. He grinned himself and shimmied in the water, enjoying the feeling of it swirling around his toes. “Anyway, then he’d say, ‘and you’ll keep yourself right safe, even in the wildest wilderness. We’re made for it.’”
> Canard did not feel made for it; in fact, she felt like she stuck out badly, with her white feathers and clumsy splashing. When she had arrived at the swamp, she had been unsure of large bodies of water, and she could tell from Pato’s behavior that he had been, too. They had at least managed that nervousness together, but she found herself constantly flinching. Sometimes, Pato laughed at her for it -- like when she had startled and called warning when the light had reflected red off the water at their first sunset. She had tried to explain it looked like blood on the water, but he had none of that.
> Strange water had nothing on the wild animals, either. They had been cursed out by a sparrow, sneered at by a small reptile -- gator, Pato said, and looked grim and immediately moved away from the area. The reptile had promised he would eat them some day, but Canard didn’t think it could do any more damage than maybe taking off a toe. Since she liked her toes, she wanted to avoid him and his kind anyway. Everything was strange and new -- and Pato didn’t understand, not really, that she didn’t have stories to go on. So she followed him closely and mimicked him.
> “Why don’t you tell that one story, Canard?”
> Well, she had the one. “Okay. If -- what was that?” She froze in place, breath coming hard.
> But it was only a small fish surfacing to gulp an insect. She felt it slither past her toes. Pato laughed.
> “J-just a f-f-fish,” she stuttered, stuck in place with the memory of its slimy skin.
> “Hey, now.” Pato circled back to Canard and bumped gently into her. “There’s nothing to worry about. We’re watching each other’s backs, right?”

[Reyk]

Reyk had gone on a very terrifying human-thingy and then had been released here. Somewhere in between, he had lost the adult with the twisted foot that had been caught at the same pond with him. Chirping, he wandered around on the shore, keeping close to bushes he could hide under in case of danger. "Hello! Hello? Anyone there..?" The gosling's peeps rang out until he was thoroughly exhausted. Seeing a nice comfortable log floating on the water, he made his way over to the shoreline and gently fell into the cool lake with a loud splash. Paddling clumsily but quickly with his small feet, Reyk made his way over to the log, which was actually just a piece of bark that fell off a log. With a hop, he thrust himself onto it and lay exhausted until he drifted off into nothingness a few minutes later, slowly tossed along.

[Pato and Canard]

– Canard’s head came up sharp, the sound of distant calls and a splash in her ears, a warning call already booming from her lungs as she lunged into the air. Pato floundered but did not follow her, foolishly swiveling his neck around as he searched for the threat. More unwilling to leave her companion than to risk her neck in the water, she looped and splashed back into the water beside him, beak open on a chivvying hiss. “Come on,” she told him. “I heard something.”
– He didn’t move, and she could’ve bit him for it, but she dared not tempt him to leave her. He gave her a quelling look from one orange disk of an eye. “You’ve done more harm with your noise than whatever made that splash could possibly do -- I heard it too. Follow me. Can’t be anything too bad.”
– “Snake,” she called at his green back, lagging behind. “Baby alligator. Big fish. Otter. None of those make much noise, you told me.”
– He glanced over his shoulder with a smile in his eye. “I taught you too well, I think.”
– From then, they slid across the water in silence, Canard in uncharacteristic brooding anger, Pato too interested in the source of the splash to attend to his companion’s mood. He’d thought the voice a bird’s, when he’d heard it calling, and the noise could well have been a small feathered body striking the water. Easy enough to find out, and easier still to escape if a clever predator awaited them -- were they not clever? Pato laughed as he caught sight of the gosling, turned a circle in the water better to smirk at Canard.
– “Oh no,” he deadpanned. “Little baby goose is gonna eat us.”
– She bumped into him, unimpressed, and swam alongside the chip of bark. She nudged the gosling, very gently, with her bill. “Are you alright?” She glanced up and around -- mother geese were not pleasant creatures. “Where’s your mother?” Baby geese, on the other hand, with their down and their too-big paddle feet, looked quite similar to ducklings. Canard could almost feel the maternal instincts dance.

[Reyk]

Something was prodding his side. There was a noise in his ear. It sounded like his mother, sort of, but not quite. Opening his eyes just barely, Reyk glanced out and saw two muscovy ducks. Chirping shrilly, he sat up completely in shock and surprise, which in turn tipped over his bark-boat. Paddling with his little back feet, he struggled to keep his head above water as he managed to chirp out, "Who---are-you---two?" Taking a deep breath, he ceased flailing and expected to sink, but instead the air inside brought him floating to the surface. Flapping his stubby wings happily, he turned to Pato and Canard, slightly embarrased and flushed.

[Canard and Pato]

Canard flinched back as the gosling tipped from his platform, and she watched him with considerable distress as he flailed in the water; hadn’t Pato warned that making too much noise might attract predators? Not to mention that this sort of clumsiness in the water could indicate disease. That she knew from her time at the farm, where a duck didn’t matter anymore than his flesh was worth and the conditions reflected such. These thoughts in mind, Canard let herself drift a bit further from the other bird, and did not respond to his question; what did it matter if he knew their names if he had some illness? That would explain why his mother had abandoned him as well, when mother geese were so protective of their broods.

Pato had no such reservations; he watched the gosling’s flailing with a smile, recognizing it for the clumsiness of youth. “I’m Pato, and this is Canard,” he answered before the gosling had even righted himself. “And you?”

Canard skimmed up alongside her companion and hissed “ill” into his ear. The male duck shook his head in response, and tilted it towards the goose. Canard gave them both critical looks, but mostly to cover her embarrassment. Now that he was properly adrift, it was clear that the gosling wasn’t sickly in the least. To cover up her unfriendliness, she hustled over to the chick and placed herself protectively beside him. Her tone held implicit condemnation of the gosling's mother as she asked, “How does someone so young come to be alone?”

Sudden and unexpected came a burst of rain; more drizzle than else, it still caused Canard to hunch low in the water. She knew rain, of course. But it was different, somehow, with all the space and water around her, and more threatening. The droplets pattered onto the scraggily branches of half-dead trees and disturbed a bullfrog on the beach; the amphibian croaked and leaped into the water, and sent Canard careening away from the gosling with a harsh quack of protest. She collided with Pato and huddled at his side, peering suspiciously towards the bank. The male chuckled and slid a wink to the gosling; he didn’t want the little bird to think they were both neurotic messes.

[Reyk]

Reyk was surprised that these two ducks didn't chase him or swim away from him...every time he had encountered a bird, they had always been hostile or wary. So what made these two different?

"Um, hi, my name is Reyk, nice to meet you two..."

When Canard skimmed over to Pato and whispered something into his ear, Reyk lowered his head nervously. It was no doubt that the duck was whispering about him. I mean...what's more unusual than finding a baby gosling all alone in the wild? If he were an adult, then he would probably feel the same way.

Then they hit him with the question he didn't really feel like answering...How did he get separated from his mother. He didn't really feel like telling them around how we was so sick that his mother abandoned him when he was little, so he decided to bend the truth a little.

"Umm...there was a sudden storm...and I got separated from my family..."

That was sort of the truth, because after his foster mother adopted him, then he considered her family to be "his" family too...Not his chick-abandoning parents. And the storm was the truth, too. So he "technically" wasn't lying to the two ducks...

Suddenly rain started pouring out of nowhere. A splash behind him startled him, and he quickly turned around to see a bullfrog jump into the water. Laughing at how spooked he was at the harmless creature, he turned around and saw Canard huddling into Pato. Pato winked at him.

Reyk laughed a little gosling-honk-laugh. Maybe he would be able to warm up to these two ducks, even though they were no geese themselves. He swam a little closer, but, not knowing if they would want a little baby bird following them everywhere, kept a slight distance.