Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Awakening .
Berdly's eyes delicately fluttered open as the slightest preludes of sunshine scattered ever so slightly across the bedside. As he slowly shuffled in place, his eyes recoiled slightly in the contrast between the thin beams of sunlight, and the dusky darkness of the remainder of the room. He tried to focus his eyes on something nearby, to try and clear his sights. He settled on the bedside lamp.
In the breaking of dawn, the lamp was shrouded in shadow. Berdly could not help but question if he was looking at the lamp at all. The only thing his eyes could perceive was the shadowy contour of the lamp.
“(Heh. The Germans have a word for this.)” he thought to himself. “(What was it??? Unriss? Something like that.)
He gradually sat up in bed, the covers slipping off of the graphic tee that he has rather recklessly decided to sleep in from the night before.
“(Hey, this almost like Plato’s allegory of the cave! Well, unlike the cave-dwellers in the thought experiment, I already know what a lamp is. I know that there is a lamp in my house, but nonetheless, I cannot be sure that the lamp is truly present until I challenge it.)”
Confidently, the Bluebird reached for the pull cord of the lamp beside him. Success. Feathered fingers grasped the cord, and light filled the room as the simple machine clicked.
“Babe… it's… it's seven… why are you…. * Yawn* why are you up so early?”
That was the sound of something in Berdly's life that he had to admit mattered more to him than any lamp, allegory, or descriptive German noun. It was… well… his wife.
The two of them hadn't gotten along for much of middle and early high school. In fact, they had actually butted heads often. He would tattle on her for spray painting her name onto school property. She would knock the papers out of his hands. However, one day, the dynamic between them shifted. They had been randomly paired together for a school project, and just as randomly discovered a fondness for each other. They had been quite alike, actually. They were both actors playing up a facade of themselves to mask over their vulnerabilities. In time, they had learned to take these masks off around eachother, and eventually, around anyone.
And she was truly amazing. She was perhaps the most honest person he had ever met. She was witty, too. Maybe not bookish or nerdlike as he was, but she did have a great intelligence to her. She was surprisingly social if you took the time to know her. She had a beautiful, slightly raspy voice that tickled the ear, and a sense of humor that has dramatically elevated his enjoyment of Community College.
And out of all the boys, and all of the men, she chose him. It was truly exceptional.
“Oh, uh, sorry, Susanna. I… I’ll turn it back off-”
Susie (that was her usual nickname) sat herself up, and pulled an arm around his shoulder.
“Nah, don't worry about it. I shouldn't have made a stink about it.”
Her eyes darted to the nightstand, and following this, her manicured claws clicked against her nightstand. Berdly shot her an understanding gaze.
“I know this is tough for you.”
“What? Aww… c’mon Berdly, I’m tougher that a box of cigarettes.”
A hearty sigh spilled from between her teeth in a dull hiss.
“I mean, but still,” she added “I’d be lying if the temptation wasn't there.”
The bedsheets fluttered aside as his talons connected with the floor.
“Suz, how about I get you breakfast? It’ll take your mind off of it.”
Her slightly yellow set of teeth locked in a sincere smile.
“I’d love that, babe.”
_ _ _
The kitchen was certainly not Berdly's “element” (he would rather assign that title to his home office), but nevertheless he had developed a fair degree of competency. He considered himself to be “capable of cooking”, in the sense that he had enough fundamental knowledge to generally impress his family and friends.
However, none of that really mattered when making seven eggs.
That was Susie’s typical breakfast. He had to admit to himself, her appetite had been mildly intimidating early on. Thank goodness community college had a buffet-style meal plan, he would sometimes think to himself. It wasn't as if Susie was gluttonous to any degree. She was quite fit, very strong, and most certainly not unhealthy. She simply had needs that varied from his own.
Usually, if making eggs, he would have thought to do something fanciful with them. Perhaps ever so delicately folding into a French Omelet, with a few chives chopped on top, that would have been the height of his ability. However, the thing with cooking seven simultaneous eggs was that you really couldn't put much more class into them than turning them all into a single, homogenous scramble.
He held the first egg in his hand now, the pan buttered. Susie had asked him the first few times if he felt any revulsion to cooking with chicken eggs.
“Doesn't it ever feel like you're cooking… ‘you’?”
That's how she had phrased the question. Well, to him, biologically, there was no source of revulsion at all. His mother's explanation still reverberated in his head. Chickens didn't have souls. He did. Chickens were categorically not the same sort of being he was. Well, perhaps under Plato’s classification of man as a “featherless biped”, maybe a plucked chicken would count. However, Plato had evidently never encountered Avian Monsters in Ancient Greece, and likewise his claims were tainted by an inadequate sample size. In fact, Plato would not classify Berdly as a man, would he? Had he not been cooking, perhaps he would have briefly journaled on the topic.
Eventually, the entire scramble was heaped into a ceramic bowl, topped with a copious amount of pepper and a drizzle of hot sauce, just how she liked it.
He crossed back into the bedroom. Susie’s eyes lit up in excitement as the bowl was ever so delicately set onto her lap.
“Babe… aww…. These are perfect. Thanks.”
Berdly sighed, grinning as he returned to the kitchen to prepare a pot of coffee and two fried eggs for himself.
“No problem.”
_ _ _