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Today feels particularly sluggish, though Ei can’t exactly put her finger on a reason why. All she knows is that she rouses with the sun as she always does, but with aching shoulder blades and yawns that plague her with every few steps she takes. Her morning schedule is just as slow and painful, meetings and affairs that feel as awful as needles sticking out of her back.
She can go as far as to say that the morning feels claustrophobic.
Perhaps that’s exactly the reason why she decides to excuse herself about partway through her fourth assemblage of the morning to walk through the halls of Tenshukaku. She takes her first deep breath of the day, enjoying the mingling of the sweet air in her lungs. Her light steps along the floor make clinks against the ground, and its echoes through these chambers are a testament of the solitude that she endures.
Ei comes to a window and opens it to let in more air. It is impossible to be greedy when it comes to the likeness of fresh air. She’s moreso surprised that not as many people share that sentiment with her.
Which is why it comes to her as a thorough surprise when she opens the window and finds a small, injured bird on the windowsill.
She can liken its appearance to a crow, if not for its smaller stature. Its dark feathers are almost black, but the sunlight illuminates its darker shades of purple and blue. The sheen along this bird is only disrupted by the dark red that pooled on the sill, tainting the bird’s poor clawed feet and presumably under its wing.
Ei stares at it in shock, only for her surprise to be curtailed by the bird’s strangled caw and the way it tries to move away from her. Its amber eyes peer into hers, wide and apprehensive. Ei swears its feathers are beginning to shake from fear.
“You have nothing to be afraid of, my little bird,” Ei says gently. Her voice is soft, at least softer than any tone she would use on anyone else around her. She holds out her hand, her pointer finger curled towards the bird to offer it patiently. “If you’d let me, I can tend to your wound for you and set you on your way.”
The bird tilts its head at her. Unlike other birds she has helped in the past, there is no confusion in those eyes. It seems almost… contemplative. Hesitant, of course, but more so to think about what she’s said.
Ei marvels at its intelligence. She’s known about nature’s acumen, but it’s the first time she gets to see it so close to her eyes.
Finally, after what seems like a long battle in its head, the bird ducks its head towards her, almost in reverence. Before Ei can open her mouth in surprise, it approaches her slowly, the top of its head only a mere half an inch away from her curled finger.
Her heart warming at the idea that this bird feels so willing to trust her, Ei picks it up as gently as she can, doing her best to avoid touching underneath its wings. She brings them to her training room and sets the bird down to tend to its wound. Injury is commonplace when she trains as hard as she does, which makes it easy for her to find the necessary supplies to tend to the bird’s wounds. They are almost one and the same, in that regard.
It takes less than five minutes for Ei to bandage the poor thing. Not once does it cry out, instead putting on a brave face even as Ei murmurs gentle apologies to it before she raises the wing to pressurize the wound. A brave bird indeed, and a girl, to her shock.
Once the bird is bandaged and Ei inspects every inch of her wing to ensure her health, Ei picks her up and takes her outside. She pets the bird’s head with two gentle fingers as she does so, whispering encouraging words under her breath.
Oh, how hard Miko would make fun of her if she knew she was speaking to a bird this way— but then again, this bird has proven once before that her intelligence is not to be played with. In fact, this little bird must be the shrewdest little thing she’s ever met.
Ei sets the bird down on a higher branch. She’s confident that the bird can find its way home from here, but it doesn’t stop her from feeling a little concerned.
“Fly more carefully next time,” Ei advises sternly. The bird turns around to peer at her with owlish eyes. “This injury doesn’t seem akin to something a kind-looking bird such as yourself can so easily catch.”
The bird peers into her eyes for a moment longer, regarding her with striking eyes. Then, after one calculated blink of her eyes towards her, the bird turns around and flies away.
Ei swears that the bird turns back to look at her at least once, before flying off into the clouds and the green leaves of the summer.
For a moment, Ei thinks that her beautiful sunny morning had been modified by a shower of rain. It’s easy to think so; the soft pitter-patter of her window is almost melodic, and it is certainly gentle.
But it’s also too quiet for rain, and Ei forgets that Inazuma’s weather is whispered and bended only by her.
She turns her head towards the sound of the tame rattling of the window, brow pulled together in a quiet act of curiosity. She doesn’t remember any prior commitments for the day, nor anyone who needed her rapt attention so early in the morning. Especially not through her window.
The window pitters again, a little more urgently this time, and Ei sighs through her nose. She gets up from the comfortable position she’s situated herself in and swings the door open with one fluid motion, nearly startling the feathers off the small bird perched on the sill.
A quick apology bursts from Ei’s lips before she can stop it, and she bends at the waist to look at the bird at eye level. It doesn’t take long for her to recognize her feathered friend.
“Now, what brings you here?” Ei says to the bird. Her feathers are shinier than they were the last time they met, and her bright eyes are looking directly into hers. Ei is pleasantly surprised to see her, and just as relieved.
It takes her a moment to realize that the bird is carrying something in her mouth: a small trinket, shiny and golden and almost like a thimble. The bird looks almost embarrassed when she realizes that Ei has taken notice.
Ei laughs, heartily and profoundly. “Thank you,” she says gracefully, and after a small beat, she adds, “Birdie.”
She’s never claimed to be the most creative with names. Miko had berated her multiple times in the past over it, mostly over the fact that she couldn’t help with naming the characters in Miko’s new pitching novellas. At least this bird is more gracious with her ineptitude, her eyes only gaining a slight glisten to them in amusement.
Ei clears her throat and straightens her spine, too stubborn to back down. She takes the thimble from her little birdie and pockets it, thanking her again one more time.
Stroking the top of Birdie’s head with two gentle fingers, Ei says to her, “You owe me nothing. I helped you simply because I wanted to. But… I am very grateful to be seeing you again.”
The little bird chirps as if to agree with her. It makes Ei chuckle.
“Would you like to stay for a little while longer?” Ei asks. Birdie tilts her head, silently asking her to elaborate. “My tea is almost finished brewing. I can ask someone to fetch you some seeds to eat.”
Birdie only stares. It’s hard to discern, even for someone like Ei, so Ei tries to take a gander and continues, “It’s not everyday that I get company so early in the morning. The companionship can be nice, if you would like some as well.”
It only takes a moment for the little bird to react. She chirps twice, ruffling her feathers, then looks back at Ei with compliance in her eyes.
It makes Ei smile.
For the next twenty minutes, she brews her tea and pours herself a cup, then brings along a small pile of seeds for her new friend to enjoy. Ei herself takes a few sunflowers to snack on, and Birdie watches her eat as if taken by surprise. The morning is bright, other birds soar in the distance, and her people mill around Inazuma to start their own errands for the day. Birdie watches them as intently as she does, and she wonders if she feels the same about these miniscule dots in the distance— with pride.
Somehow it feels more peaceful today, and she tells Birdie all about how she feels about it over their cup of tea and pile of seeds. She must look insane, speaking to a bird about her day, but she can hardly find it in herself to care.
Eventually, Birdie sets off into the distance after letting Ei stroke her head fondly one last time. Unlike last time, Ei is almost certain that she’ll be seeing her new friend again in the future. It makes her heart feel as warm as the cup in her hands.
Ei bumps into General Kujou Sara a few hours later, just outside of the sparring room.
It’s been a while since she’s seen her. Sara barely looks her in the eyes, her muscles straining with the effort to keep themselves tense under Ei’s gaze. It makes Ei press her lips together, but she doesn’t say anything about it.
Instead, she focuses on the tightly wrapped bandage around Sara’s bicep. A new wound, she guesses, but a wound that seems to be taken care of. It makes her relax, just by a fraction.
“Make a speedy recovery, General,” she says. She hopes she sounds warm, but the flinch of Sara’s shoulders guides her to a different revelation.
Sara looks away and murmurs her gratitude, briskly walking past her like the cut of a sword to the wind. Ei watches her over her shoulder, frowning at Sara’s tense back.
For the next few days, Birdie comes back around the same time like clockwork. Tea and seeds and biscuits often come with their little meetings next to her windowsill.
Ei regards her like a friend with each visit, and she spills all of her heart’s contents and frustrations in subsequence. Including, as embarrassing as it is to admit to a small bird after knowing it for a week, her affections for Sara.
What could a bird do to tell Sara of her affections anyway? Ei has barely told Miko such things like this out of fear of being teased and tattled on, but a bird like Birdie rides nearly no consequence for her. Perhaps that’s precisely why it’s so easy for her to get it off her chest, confession after confession spilling out of her mouth easier than the spout of a teapot.
She tells Birdie that she’s incredibly fond of the General, and regards Sara as one of her closest confidants.
Birdie sits there staring at her, with a human emotion close to shock.
“Oh, other than you, of course,” Ei insists. She brings the tea up to her lips and takes a hearty sip, shaking her head slightly at the dismaying thought. “She may not look like it, but Kujou Sara is a wonderful listener. She’s heard me ramble on about my duties more times than I can count. I’m just moreso frustrated at her… inability. To take care of herself.”
She thinks back to that wound on Sara’s bicep. Why hasn’t she said anything about it to her? Though they were far from intimate, Ei had been spending more and more time with her recently. It warrants nothing, but Ei had hoped it meant that Sara would open up to her, at least in small increments. Especially on accounts of harm. And most especially when Ei was involved in it.
Ei tells her feathered friend that she hopes that Sara knows that she would move the clouds in the sky to prevent harm onto her head, and hopes that Sara comes to one day understand that Ei cherishes her as much as a bird cherishes the nest that feels like home.
Birdie gazes oddly at her. Ei finishes her spun tale with a deep breath, then takes a biscuit from the plate.
“I’m sure you know nothing of my struggles, or of Kujou Sara,” Ei tells her. “Maybe you do. I wish I could ask a favor of you, to watch over Sara and make sure she knows that there is someone who wants nothing more than her prosperous health and happiness, but speaking to you as my little friend is more than enough.”
Her friend only stares.
Then, she hops forward to chirp quietly at Ei, low and gentle, before she turns around and flies off into the chiming winds of the morning.
Ei closes the window, shaking her head with a twitching smile tugging at her lips.
No bird shows up at her window in the morning. Ei brings a chair next to her window and sips her tea all morning just in case, but not a soul shows up next to her. She finds that there is no worry in her heart about it. She couldn’t be, not when she knows exactly why.
With the early afternoon hanging over the air, Ei brings herself outside. The winds are shifting and the birds soar above the air, all in one direction. If there can only be one thing that she can be proud of, it’s the fact that she knows how to read the weather with only the feeling of the electricity on her skin.
Kujou Sara shows up on the front steps of Tenshukaku with dango and various treats of apology. She’s breathing hard from running all the way there and is bent midway at her waist to bow to Ei.
Ei waves at a hand at her, dispelling whatever rectitude is holding Sara back from speaking candidly to her.
Sara hesitates, but she holds her eyes. Ei knows the wit and perceptiveness behind Sara’s eyes more than the lines on her palm.
“I want to apologize to you,” Sara says quickly. “And to promise you that I— that I will make it home to you, my god and protector, unscathed, unharmed, and more compassionate to myself. Everything that I am is thanks to you, and the least that I can do is repay you with my honesty.”
Before Sara could go on, Ei wraps her fingers around Sara’s wrist. It stuns the woman into silence before she can go on about her meticulous intent to watch over herself, or whatever Sara wanted to say to her further. Nothing is more important than seeing Sara now, though.
Ei presses her lips to Sara’s brow in reverence. Sara tenses underneath her fingers, but then relaxes when Ei gives her a quiet, “Thank you.”
Sara whispers about needing to tell her something else, the beginnings of her story about her ability to shapeshift into a bird expelling from her tongue, but Ei only laughs in her ear and says, “There are no secrets of which you can hide from me, my songbird.”