Work Text:
"How are things going, Leo?"
Miss Penny had taken him part of the way up into the mountain (stopping a few times to kick rocks out of her shoes) until they had run into Aderyn, who was away from her farm and picking spice berries. From there, he had said his goodbyes to Miss Penny and continued on his way with Aderyn.
"They're going okay..." Leo answered. "The nights are bit colder and there aren't any golden walnuts for breakfast, but it's okay."
"Yeah?" Aderyn shifted her basket to her waist. "Are you still glad that you came here?"
"I think so...I think it's just different."
"How so?"
"I don't know. Just...everything."
Aderyn nodded. They walked for a couple of minutes without saying anything. It felt like she was waiting for him to say the next thing. But the truth was that he knew exactly what the problem was: he felt bad about telling her. He'd wanted this, he'd wanted to be normal and she'd helped, but it was so much at once. Meeting so many new people, living in the new tree house and hearing different birds during the night, having to eat new foods, going back to school for the first time in years... And then a lot of the adults said something about him going to a place called "Zuzu City" to "have some paperwork done" and-
"Huh," Aderyn said. "Linus said he saw some spice berries come in early, but I don't see any."
"Oh, I've been helping Linus pick things," said Leo, the ground seeming more solid under his feet. He'd wanted to help out and also he'd wanted an excuse to taste a few the new plants around here. So far, the spice berries were his favorites. "He says he can make really good rub for fish with them that helps keep us warm in the winter. But I'll share some with you if you don't have any-"
"Don't worry about that. I've got plenty of food at home, and I have summer seeds for that kind of plant, so I'm fine for spice berries. But you know..." She looked straight at him. "A lot of people in this village had trouble adjusting when they first came here. I did too, even though I'm glad I did end up doing it."
"Where did you come from?"
"I lived in Zuzu City."
"Oh. It's...bigger than here, isn't it?"
Aderyn grimaced. "Yeah, it is. But we're not going to make you go yet. Not until you're ready. Miss Penny and Linus and I have been talking with Mayor Lewis and there are some things we can take care of through the mail."
"Thank you..."
"I mean it, though. We all want to make sure you're comfortable here."
Leo nodded. "I'm okay... I have Linus. And my friends still visit me here sometimes."
Aderyn smiled. "They come a long way, don't they? But they really love you." Suddenly she noticed a bush with a few spice berries still on it and bent down to pick them. "You know, my friend Emily has a parrot too-"
"She has a parrot?"
Aderyn stood up and turned around to look at him, her face blank. "What's the matter?"
"She keeps it in her house? All the time?" He hadn't seen any parrot other than the ones that visited him flying around this late in the season, so they had to be living indoors.
Aderyn blinked. "Yeah, mostly. What's wrong?"
"A bird shouldn't...a bird shouldn't be in a house! Not all the time!"
"Well..." she began, slowly, "It's not like she captured it. One day it flew right into her window. It had a broken wing, so she took it in and fixed it, and it just never wanted to leave."
Leo thought for a moment, silent. A while ago an older bird back on Ginger Island had broken his own wing, and he had never flown right again. If it wasn't for Leo and the others making sure he got enough to eat, he wouldn't have lasted. If Aderyn was telling the truth...maybe it was okay that the bird ended up there?
"Would you...maybe like to meet them?" Aderyn asked. With the way she was frowning, Leo thought she didn't seem too sure. "Emily works tonight at the saloon, and I'm probably going to go over there anyway, so I can talk to her about it. She does live with her sister, though, so there'd probably be another person there."
"What's her sister like?"
"She's cool once you get to know her."
"But I don't know her."
"Well... She's cool. Trust me. I think she just had a tough time adjusting here. Kind of like you, but she and her sister were from a much bigger town. Kind of like me, too."
"Why did you come here, Aderyn?"
"Hmmm... Well... Life was really fast-paced there, and - I don't know if you know what an office is?"
Leo shook his head. "Not really." It was a place that grown-ups went to work, but that was about all he remembered.
"It's kind of like a building where you sit down at a desk and do work all day. I used to work in one for this company called Joja, and I spent most of my time there. It was really fast-paced and demanding. Some people can handle that, but I hated it. I needed a way of life that was...more physical, I guess?" She paused. "...I never really thought to put it in those words, but that's actually right. I guess I needed to do more things with my hands, actually make a visible dent in the amount of things I need to do, be outside, talk to more people than just stressed out coworkers and demanding bosses..." She laughed a bit nervously. "Even when I was your age I did better in gym than in other classes where I had to sit down, and I always got in trouble for talking. I should have guessed that I would do better in a place like this. I did sort of entertain coming out here a bit when I was a teenager, but I was told not to and that I didn't have real experience with most things out here and I didn't know what it would take to be successful..." She laughed. "To be fair, that's good advice to most teenagers, just not me."
"I'm glad you came out here so I could meet you!" Leo said.
She smiled. "Me too."
Leo thought for a moment more. He'd trusted Aderyn so far, and he still did feel responsible to at least look at the bird. "I think...I would like to meet them"
"Well, great. So I'll talk to Emily and get back to you, okay?"
Leo nodded. Aderyn smiled and bent down, picking up where she left off with the spice berries.
"You know," she said, looking over her shoulder with a smile, "I guess there is one thing you could do for me: ask Linus if he'd be willing to share that spice berry rub recipe with me. I could really use that myself during the winter!"
***
"Is this really supposed to be better for you?"
"It is. Uncooked fish can have bacteria and parasites in it. You can get sick."
He was sitting on a log in front of the fire near Linus's tent, while Linus was poking at a couple of fish cooking on a pan over the fire.
"What's bacteria?" Leo knew what parasites were - he'd picked several off his friends and they'd picked several off of him - but he'd never heard of that.
"It's something very small that makes you sick. You can't see it with the naked eye."
"Oh. Well, I've never gotten sick."
"You're also young. When you're young you don't get sick nearly as easily. But when you get to be older you will, so it's better to learn these things now." Linus stood up. "All right, they're done. Take out your plate."
Leo picked up the copper dish next to him and held it up as Linus smiled and put the fish on it with a stick. It looked dry and the wrong color, but Leo did admit that it smelled good. Linus then put the other fish on his plate and sat down next to him.
"And," Linus said as he took a bite, "You'll find it tastes better." He swallowed. "Very juicy."
Leo stared at his plate for a few seconds more, then cautiously used the small bronze fork to bring it to his lips. He guessed the flavor was okay, but to him it tasted dry. He guessed he had to take Linus's word for it.
"Do you still enjoy being tutored?"
Leo nodded. "Sometimes though...it can be a lot."
Linus nodded knowingly. "People can be. But Aderyn's a good person, and she won't let anything happen to you. Neither will I."
"It's not that! It's just...I don't know the people. And we're about to visit even more people at their house..."
"Who?"
"Emily, I think? And she has a sister, too?" Leo leaned toward Linus. "Do you know anything about them?"
Linus scratched his beard. "Emily seems to be different. Not quite like us, but I don't think she fits in exactly with other people. I haven't tried to speak with her much, but I think she understands to some extend. Her sister, though, seems like she'd be much more at home somewhere else, like a larger city. But I don't think until recently she even talked to many people. She still hasn't talked to me yet."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"I'm used to it."
Leo leaned back and picked at his fish for a minute.
"I saw Aderyn today, too. She wants to know if you could share the spice berry rub with her."
Linus frowned. "I didn't even think she liked fish. I never hear about her making the recipes that I've already shared with her. I never see any wild bait in her crab pots. But if she wants, I could."
"You look in her crab pots?"
"I don't take anything! Not from her, when she bothers to use them. Or from Willy. They're usually responsible about checking them. But some people in some places I've lived just leave them unattended for days. It's a shame to let fresh seafood go to waste."
Leo laughed.
***
A couple of days later he and Aderyn met in front of a peach-colored house. She knocked on the door, and a woman with blue hair wearing a long red dress answered. She had a medium-sized bird perched on her shoulder.
"Oh, you're here!" she said with a bright smile.
I guess this is Emily, Leo thought. He realized he had seen Emily before. She'd waved to him a few times as he passed by with Miss Penny, but he never went up to talk to her. Maybe Miss Penny had already told him her name, maybe she hadn't. And the bird on her shoulder...
It took a minute for Leo to recognize her. She was smaller than the ones in his flock, with the coloring of her feathers spread out in different areas. She definitely wasn't from his home island, but her own flock had landed there several times. He was almost a little sad to remember her: she was part of a group of four, but she was the smallest of them and the others were very mean to her. They'd regularly bully her away from big pieces of fruit, and when they left they'd almost left her behind. He and the others wanted her to join their flock instead, but she insisted on going.
The bird was staring him down, too, with her head cocked and her crest standing up. Then, he saw the recognition in her eyes and she squeaked and flew over to perch on his shoulder.
"It's good to see you again!" Leo said. She nuzzled him in response.
"Oh good, you two do know each other!"
"We've only met just a few times...she wasn't part of my flock. But it's nice to see old friends."
"Well, come on in," Emily said.
She led them in to a big room. There were two large, comfy-looking couches and a table with two glasses on top of it. In the corner was a perch with a bowl of seeds and pellets connected to it, and a large tarp around it covered in shell husks.
"Let me get you two something to drink. What will it be?"
Aderyn laughed at that for some reason. "Water's fine. How about you, Leo?"
He followed her to the couch and sat down next to her. "Just water, please."
He watched out of the corner of his eye as Emily went into the kitchen. He heard a heavy door opening and shutting, some clinking in a glass, and soon Emily returned with two glasses of water that she set in front of them.
"Thank you."
"Yeah... Thank you."
After Leo took a sip, he asked: "How did you meet?"
"Oh..." Emily looked sad. "There was a flock flying one day in summer, and she flew right into my window. I picked her up and took her inside, cleaned her up and set the bone as best I could. I was able to get on the phone with a rescue outside of Zuzu City, but they weren't able to get anyone out here. So I just followed their advice on how to keep it still and set it, and eventually one of the bus lines came out here so I could take her to the vet. By the time we were able to get her into the rescue she just didn't want to go."
Even then her flock still didn't seem to be concerned about her, Leo thought. He began to look her over. "Her wing looks really good."
"Yes, she healed really well. I was concerned about her for a while. Their bones are so delicate... Poor things. But I guess they wouldn't be able to fly if they were denser."
Leo gingerly lifted up the bird's wing as Emily spoke, slowly looking underneath until she finally had enough and squawked at him. He let her wing fall and put his hands down. She did look really good. Her feathers looked very nice and clean - cleaner than his flock did sometimes if he touched them a lot - and she wasn't missing any in places she wasn't supposed to. And she looked bright and alert...
A door swung open and Leo jumped. He turned to see a young woman with blonde hair and light clothes step out, a frown on her face.
"Hey there, Haley!" Aderyn said.
The woman blinked. "Oh, right. I forgot you were coming over today."
"Everything okay?"
Emily's sister - Haley - sighed. "I'm just having to play phone tag with this company that was supposed to deliver my new camera. I've been doing it for two days now. They keep transferring me to different departments."
"Come and sit with us! Did you get it sorted out, at least?" Emily asked.
"They're going," she said, "to call me back." She rolled her eyes and flopped down on the couch next to Emily. "I guess it's not a big deal, but-" She stopped as her eye landed on Leo. "Oh, you're...Leo, right?"
He nodded.
"Yes, he came to see our mutual friend!" said Emily.
"Right, the little troublemaker." Haley chuckled and picked up the leftover glass, apparently hers. But after taking a sip she sputtered and spit her drink back into the glass. She then scowled at Leo- or rather the parrot on his shoulder. "Again?! Stop putting your pellets in my drinks!"
The parrot on his shoulder tittered and Haley sighed. "You think you're so funny, don't you?"
Suddenly, music started playing from her room.
"That's the call back," Haley said, standing up. "I'll have to catch up with you later."
She got up and left, closing the door behind her.
Emily held out her arm. The parrot leapt off Leo's shoulder and flew over to Emily. "You need to stop picking on her," she said sternly.
The parrot innocently bobbed her head back and forth, then worked her way up Emily's arm all the way up to her shoulder.
"They like each other," Emily said, "it's just this one likes playing tricks on her."
Leo wasn't so sure. "She should know better after the way the other birds treated her."
"I think that too," Emily said, fixing the bird with a stern look.
The conversation changed from there. They talked about Leo's experiences in the valley, about how things were going with Aderyn's work ("Yeah...I've never been that great at fishing," Aderyn said at one point, and Leo was reminded of what Linus said), and about Emily's friend who lived all the way the desert. Leo remembered hearing about deserts before, but it was still hard to imagine a place where it barely rained at all. "She does miss the rain," Emily had said when he mentioned that.
The clock in the house struck two times. That meant...that meant it was two, if Leo remembered correctly.
"I need to start getting ready for work," Emily said. "But it was nice meeting you!"
Leo smiled. "Yes, you too!"
"Thanks, Emily. See you soon."
The parrot bobbed her head up and down, and Emily scratched her under chin.
"Feel free to visit us!" Emily said.
"Thank you," said Leo. He left with Aderyn, feeling a weight off his shoulders.
***
Next week Leo went back to the library. Usually after a while Miss Penny let them do something called "free reading", where they could look at any book they wanted while she helped another student one-on-one. Right now she was helping Vincent, so Leo and Jas were allowed to read by themselves. After a few minutes of him trying to remember what section was where, he eventually found an old, beat-up looking book that had the faded words "Cities of the Ferngill Republic" written on the spine. He pulled it off the shelf and brought it back to the table and sat next to Jas, who was reading something whose pages were full of only words. The book Leo picked out kind of smelled when he opened it, but he was able to find what he was looking for. Under some pictures of tall buildings in faded color, he saw the text:
Zuzu City
Population-
"Miss Penny," Leo began, "what's this word mean?"
She looked over his shoulder. "'Population.' It means how many people there are."
"Oh. Thanks."
Miss Penny smiled and went back to helping Vincent.
Leo looked at the book again:
Population: 250,000-
"Miss Penny?"
She looked up again. "Yes, Leo?"
"How many people are in Pelican Town?"
She frowned slightly. "I think about thirty-three-"
The 250,000 on the page zoomed in and out. With a squawk, Leo slammed the book shut.
"Leo, are you okay?" Miss Penny asked.
He looked up. Everyone - including Vincent and even Jas too - was staring at him.
His cheeks burning like a rock heated under the Sun, Leo swallowed and nodded.
***
It was now summer and Miss Penny didn’t tutor, but Leo still went out to the library twice a week. Even if he didn’t want to look at the book about Zuzu City, there were still other interesting books. Gunther and Miss Penny had told him that he could take some home with him if he checked them out, but Leo was concerned they might get dirty. Or that his friends might tear out the pages and use them to make nests. So Leo had no choice to come back to the library. But it was all right - afterwards he'd often go by Emily's house to visit his friend. And visit Emily too.
Today he'd been really enjoying the book - it was about a boy who was trying to impress his crush and, even though the crush was a boy in the book, it reminded him a lot of his own feelings for Jas - when the clock in the library struck four. He realized he'd stayed far longer than he'd meant to.
He rushed over as fast as he could, passing several people on the way (and remembering to say excuse me), but when he arrived and knocked on the door, there was no answer. The windows were dark. It looked he had missed her. Leo sighed.
"What are you doing here?" A voice said behind him.
Leo turned to see Haley. She was carrying a very large, very shiny pink box tied with an equally shiny blue ribbon in both hands.
"I came to see my friend," Leo said. "Is Emily here?"
"She's probably already gone to work."
"Oh." Leo shuffled his feet. "I can come back later-
"It's fine. I can let you in. Here, hold this."
She shoved the large box into his hands while she rooted through her purse. Leo could see his very pink reflection in the box's shiny packaging. After a second there was a jingling and Leo looked up to see Haley putting her keys in the lock and opening the door.
"Thanks. Come on in," she said, putting the keys back in her bag and shifting her purse back onto her shoulder. She took the box out of his hands and walked through the doorway. After a moment, Leo hesitantly entered after her, shutting the door behind him.
The sun's late afternoon light was streaming in through the kitchen window, but the front room of the house was dark. Heels clacking through the silent house, Haley walked to the doorway between the kitchen and front room and flipped on a switch. Lights came on with a faint buzzing noise. Only then did Leo walk further inside.
She set the box down on the kitchen table. "Just a minute," she said, as she went through Emily's door.
Leo waited for a minute. He heard some shuffling and then Haley yelling "all right, all right!"
The door swung open and the parrot flew out, hovering in the kitchen for a moment before noticing Leo. Immediately she flew over and perched on Leo's shoulder, nuzzling him. He nuzzled her back. A second later, Haley came out of the room. She smoothed her hair and picked a feather out before closing the door behind her.
Emily had been treating his friend well, as Leo expected. They'd enjoyed the sunshine together a lot recently, and Emily had gotten a perch for the shower, so the parrot could the spray of water too.
"It'd be a crime to eat this without getting a picture first," he heard Haley say in the background.
Leo looked over to see what she was talking about. The box had fallen away and in its place was a very large cake. He stood up to get a better look at it. It was round and pink, with its icing smoothed down to be perfectly level. On its top were eight little red heart things - probably candies, Leo realized - arranged in a perfect circle on top.
It looked really cool, in the way that some of the things at the museum did. It definitely reminded Leo of the statues or the smoother gemstones. Even if she was going to end up eating it, Haley apparently thought so too, since she was using her phone to take several pictures of it from several angles.
She looked up and saw him watching her. "Do you want a slice?" she asked.
Despite them being the only humans in the house, it took Leo a minute to realize she was talking to him.
He got up and walked over. The icing seemed pretty thick, and the more he looked at it the more unlike anything else he'd ever actually eaten. The texture almost reminded him of the walls in this house, actually. "I don't think I can..."
"Oh right. You're probably not used to something as rich as this." She cut a slice into the cake, the knife slicing into it far easier than Leo was expecting it to. Sliding the knife under the slice and using a hand to steady it, she carefully maneuvered it to her plate. Then, she thought of something.
"We have some melon in the fridge. They use that to make this kind of cake. Do you want that?"
"Oh...you don't have to do that," Leo said.
"It's fine, we've already got some cut up. I mean, I'm gonna feel bad if I eat and you don't."
"Okay..."
She took one of the plates and walked over to the fridge, setting it down on the counter beside it. Opening the door, she pulled a bowl with some sort of cloudy covering on top. She pulled the covering back and picked out several pink pieces with a fork, before covering the bowl again and putting it back in the refrigerator.
"Here," she said, putting the plate in front of him and sitting down in front of her own slice of cake.
Leo looked at the melon. The pieces did look pretty good. Leo had seen enough of fruit kept in the refrigerator to know they weren't quite as juicy after a couple of days as they were when they first cut open, but they still looked pretty pink and tasty. He took his fork in his hand - much steadier than he had held it in the past - and took a bite.
"I'm not much of a fruit person," Haley said, between bites of her cake. "I only really like it when it's used to make something else - like this cake or fruit salad or something like that. Emily's the one that's big on eating healthy."
"This is pretty good!" Leo said. He still liked spice berries better, but the mild, refreshing flavor of the melon was good too. The valley had some good fruits.
"I got it from Pierre's down the street for Emily. He says he grew it himself, but I think he might have bought it from Aderyn."
"You think he would take credit for that?"
Haley shrugged. "I don't know. Emily says they have a small greenhouse, but Aderyn makes it sound like you have to have a lot of room to make the amount of stuff that he says he grows."
"Oh."
They ate in silence for a few more minutes. Leo broke apart more pieces of fruit for his friend and she gratefully ate, but after a point she nudged him. You wanna ask her something, don't you?
"Did you get the cake from Zuzu City?"
"I did. They have this cake shoppe there... Have you ever seen the Queen of Sauce on TV?"
"I don't watch TV."
"Oh... Well, there's this chef, right? And she has a cooking show. She's really famous for her cooking - she has several restaurants across the country and one of them's in Zuzu City. They have a little bakery where you can buy cakes and pastries, so I had to buy their pink cake while I was in town! I have the recipe, but we never seem to make it as good as they do." She took another bite, chewed for a minute, and then frowned. "...Don't tell Emily I said that, though. She and Aderyn made it for my birthday and I know they worked hard on it. It still turned out really good."
"I won't." Leo wasn't sure when he'd have a chance to even say that to them in the first place, but all the same he agreed.
There was silence for the next couple of minutes. Leo tried to use the fork to break the melon into chunks for his friend, but the piece of fruit kept slipping away, sometimes flying off the plate. He gave up and grabbed a piece, tearing it apart with his fingers and getting juice all over them. Haley didn't seem to be watching them, so he held up the piece to his friend, who nibbled on it gratefully. He did this until he came to the last bit of fruit, but this time his friend turned away from it, then stretched her head in Haley's direction.
Leo made himself ask: "...What else is in Zuzu City?"
"Oh, a lot of different things. I usually go there for shopping, but they've got sports games and night clubs and different shows that come to town. There's this shop there that Emily gets her crystals and stuff from. She used to work in a place like that in our old town, but it was a lot smaller. I think that was her first job. Why? What kinds of things did you want to know about?"
"I don't know... Miss Penny says some day I'm going to need to go there to 'take care of some paperwork'."
"Oh. I don't know much about that." She thought for a minute. "...There are some nice parks there. We saw a lot ducks in the ponds. They're pretty friendly - a lot of people feed them, so they came right up to us." She smiled. "It was spring, so there were a lot of fluffy babies!"
Leo laughed. "Birds are very cute when they're!" He didn't know if he looked anywhere near as cute when he himself was little.
"There are a lot of pigeons, too. We saw a bunch when we walked through Main Square." She ate the last bite of her cake. "All right, I better put this away. I'm should save some for after dinner. Do you want any more fruit? Or do you maybe want to stay?"
"Oh, no thank you. I should go too." He put the last bits of fruit in his mouth.
"All right."
His friend nuzzled her goodbyes as Haley took the plates, and then flew off his shoulder and landed on Haley's. It surprised her to the point where she almost dropped the plates, but she recovered, turned to the bird and rolled her eyes at him. But she was smiling. And when he left, she was smiling at him, too.
***
Zuzu City
Population: 250,000
Founded in 16XX by railroad tycoon Kalmar Arany and named in honor of his daughter Zsuzsanna, Zuzu City is the seat of the state government.
Leo still wasn't ready to visit the city by any means, but it was okay to read about it now. Even if the book still kind of smelled.
...Though not the largest city in the modern Ferngill Republic, the city boasts several historical buildings dating back to its time as a relatively small railroad outpost along with many modern amenities, including the recently constructed stadium for the local gridball team, the Zuzu City Tunnelers. In 19XX the Tunnelers played their first game against their long-time rivals, the Grampleton Lumberjacks...
***
"I met Haley," Leo told Linus one night at the fire. "She seems nice. If people are like her in the city, it could be okay."
Linus nodded. They were roasting fish on sticks, one stick for each of them. Leo had already told him about meeting Emily and he'd seemed pleased and unsurprised. But he was quiet now.
"The good thing about Pelican Town is that most people tend to leave me alone," Linus finally said. He turned the fish over in the fire. "That's one of the reasons I stay here. The people here don't even care enough to destroy my things. I don't fit in, but better to be left alone than not."
That's not true that you don't fit in! Leo thought. But as he thought more...he did realize that Linus didn't seem to have any friends other than him and Aderyn, and maybe Gus. Emily spoke nicely about him and Miss Penny worried about him, but they didn't talk much. Mayor Lewis didn't say anything about Linus being a well-rounded citizen, and mostly when people brought up Linus, it was to ask how Leo was doing living with him, not asking anything about Linus himself.
"It might not be the same for you," Linus continued, staring hard into the fire. "You're still young, and growing and changing."
"You know I'm not going to leave you, right? Even if I do go visit the city someday."
Linus turned and blinked.
"I mean it!"
A moment passed, and then Linus smiled and put his arm around Leo.
"Well, I stay here for nature's bounty, too. No matter the season, this valley will provide for you if you respect it."
Leo nodded. "It's great, even if it is different from Ginger Island." He pulled his fish from the fire, well-seared, and took a bite. It was good, if still a little dry. Even if he never got used to eating fish like this, that was okay.