Chapter Text
Jane hummed to herself as she washed up. It wasn’t a song she recognised, just something she was making up on the spot, and as she rinsed plates and cups (including five mugs with various literary quotes on them, all half filled with now-cold coffee- she made a mental note to talk to Aragon about talking to Cathy about her caffeine consumption- and a glass bearing the remains of what looked like one of Anna’s ‘protein shakes’), she smiled to herself, at the intricacies of the human brain.
Honestly, it was something she’d never thought of during her first life- it wasn’t something she’d have even thought to contemplate at court- but now… now, she felt incredibly grateful she had the freedom and the mental energy to just wonder at the complexities of something that could fit inside a skull and yet also create new music out of absolutely nothing, without trying-
‘Are you humming the Love Island theme?’ Cathy appeared in the doorway.
‘.....um….no….’ Jane jumped a little at the sudden interruption and busied herself wiping around the sides of the sink.
‘Ok.’ Cathy shrugged, obviously not really caring either way, and helped herself to a biscuit. ‘I just came to get you-’
‘Get me? Why? Oh god, is something wrong? What’s happened? I TOLD Anne to be careful-’
‘Jane, relax. Everything’s fine! Anne….has not been careful, admittedly, but that’s not why I came to get you.’
‘Then what?’ Jane tried to imagine what it could be if not a heely-induced catastrophe and came up blank.
‘Just- come and see-’
Mystified, Jane allowed Cathy to tug her towards the door.
*
‘We don’t even know how they got into the garden-’
Jane stepped out of the backdoor and joined the other queens, who were currently squashed together on the tiny bit of patio that had been described as a ‘spacious terrace’ by the landlord when they’d first begun renting.
‘What are we looking at?’
‘There- come and sit-’
Catalina prodded Anne until she made space on the low stone wall and then pulled Jane to sit down next to her.
‘Look, there, by the bush-’
‘I can’t- Oh!’
Jane found herself laughing.
‘Sweet, isn’t it?’
‘How did they- why?’
‘God knows-’ Anna, leaning against the side of the house, shrugged and Kitty, leaning against Anna, copied her.
‘I saw them when I came out to sunbathe- look how cute they are! It’s like a disney film-’
Jane had to admit- despite not being quite the disney fan that Kitty was (and that Catalina would absolutely deny being, despite the fact that she and Jane shared an extremely thin bedroom wall), there was something fairytale-ish about it.
A mallard was making their way across the lawn. This in itself would have been slightly surprising given that the biggest body of water in the queens garden was a slightly rusted watering can- except for the fact that mallard was not alone.
A flock of assorted birds were trailing behind them- dozens of brown and yellow ducklings, but there were also sparrows hopping across the overgrown grass, moorhens making slow deliberate steps on their splayed feet, blackbirds and starlings, wrens and chaffinches…. A cygnet stood a head (or should that be a neck, Jane wondered?) higher than any of the others, looking perfectly at home; a red-eyed pigeon pecked at a bit of something in the grass.
There wasn’t anything at all hurried about the entourage- they didn’t seem to be fleeing anything that Jane could see, and there was certainly nothing predatory in their attitudes. All seemed content to simply follow the wandering mallard, who in turn didn’t appear to be in the least put out by their hangers-on.
‘So they’re just----following, like-’
‘Like ducklings, yes-’ Catalina surveyed the scene with a happy sigh. ‘I’ve never seen so many wild birds at once-’
‘Oh look-’ Anne nudged Jane and directed her attention. ‘Look there, look what happens when-’
Jane followed Anne’s pointing finger, to where a black and white cat that she recognised as belonging to their neighbour prowled under the rhododendrons. She felt a stab of alarm.
‘Shouldn’t we-’
‘Oh no-’ Anna shook her head. ‘It’s fine, it just keeps repeating-’
As she spoke, the cat slunk forward, in an affectedly nonchalant way, until it had nearly passed the crowd, and then darted towards a stray duckling.
Jane opened her mouth to shriek and started forward- only to see the mallard launch themselves half a foot into the air with surprising dexterity, snapping it’s beak in an unexpectedly angry manner and beating at the cat with furious wings.
Turning tail, the cat took refuge in a bed of pansies and the duck subsided, sweeping the ducking under a wing and resuming their place at the head of the flock.
‘You’d think the cat would have learned by now, it’s tried four times already-’ Kitty giggled and Jane smiled back in relief.
‘I thought it was going to-’
‘I know, so did we- Anne fell over herself rushing to save them when it first went for one-’
‘Stubbed every toe I have AND spilled Cathy’s coffee over myself-’ Anne glowered and then brightened. ‘Did you SEE how quickly it moved though?’
‘Is it usual for a duck to do that?’ Anna asked and Cathy shrugged.
‘No idea…. In any case, I don’t think it really matters does it? I mean, would YOU want to be the one to tell the duck they can’t adopt every bird they see?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘No way-’
‘God no.’
On that, the queens all agreed.
‘It’s nice to watch, isn’t it?’ Kitty observed, moving to sit at Jane’s feet and leaning her head against her knees. ‘Like a little adopted family-’
‘It’s lovely.’ Jane put a hand to smooth back Kitty’s hair and then looked around at the others, lounging around them, cooing and chuckling over the scene before them. ‘Really, really lovely.’