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“Hey little guy, welcome to space!”
“AAAARGHH—“
Thump—!
The entire ship shook as something struck the hull. Flashing lights and alarms all screeched for his attention, but Astrodude had lost the ability to move.
He floated, still in his EVA suit, locked into a staring contest with the airlock. He might stay in his suit actually, just in case whatever was out their succeeded in ripping his ship apart—
There’s nothing out there, said a small but still reasonable part of his brain. He was in space. Nothing was out there apart from a vaccuum and distant celestial bodies.
But what about— no, get it together. You’re stressed, and probably hallucinating. The sound? It was just a bit of debris hitting your hull. Not ideal, but no need to overre—
Thump—! Thump—!
That was too rhythmic to be natural.
He realised that grating, high pitched sound was coming from him. That explains why my throat hurts so much. He must've used half the oxygen on this ship with all his terrified screaming.
There was sound, coming from outside his ship, only that wasn't possible because sound couldn't travel through space.
“Astroduuude,” came a muffled but real voice from outside and Astrodude gulped. Whatever was out there didn't seem to particularly care about the laws of reality. “Come out. Please? We made Sun promise not to flare you again!”
The window was approaching him now. Either he'd accidentally pushed himself closer, or the ship had decided to move. He swallowed and steeled himself, waiting for his vision to sharpen back into focus so he could look where he knew a planet should be floating passively in space—
He blinked hard. The image wasn't changing. He pinched himself. This can't be real, right?
No. No it’s just the stress of the launch. I’ll prove it to myself. He pressed his face against the sold glass and saw—
Feathers.
Not just feathers. Long, colourful green ones that moved and overlapped like waves, silkily swimming past his window in an endless train. Thousands upon thousands of eyespots winked at him hypnotically beyond the glass, catching and warping the sunlight and—
He knew feathers like that. Everyone did. From paintings, and pictures, and that time he and his wife had to run away from a particular vengeful bird as it chased them down a farm road once. They were familiar, pretty. Completely out of place in space—
The feathers moved and suddenly there was a ring of gold green taking up the entire window. He floated dumbly, unsure of what it could mean, until the ring blinked and he realised with a wave of horror that it was looking at him.
“Astrodude? Astrodude, did you die? Please don’t die, it’d be so uncool of you.” Earth pressed his head closer to the tiny ship, trying to see into the windows. He caught a glimpse of a tiny flash of grey cloth before it disappeared further into the ship. Urgh.
“Wow. Five minutes in space and you already killed it.” Venus’s gruff voice came from where he was still unhelpfully standing off to the side. “That’s got to be a new record.”
“He’s not dead.” Earth bristled.
Venus fluffed up back, tilting his head dismissively. “Whatever you say.”
“He’s not.” Earth swung his head towards the centre of the system and glared at the one who started this whole mess. “Sun just freaked him out with that flare.”
Said star had quickly lost interest, it seemed, and was back to terrorising Mercury. Earth clicked his beak together and rattled his tail feathers. Never mind that all our ears are ringing from that scream. And now my Earthling won’t come out and say hi.
He turned his attention back to the metal construct. Maybe if I peck the ship, he'll come out?
His moon seemed to be one step ahead of him. Luna approached the ship with his body, walking almost like a crab. When he closed the distance, he quickly pecked the side of the metal and jumped back at the tiny shriek they heard inside.
Well, he’s still alive. Earth tossed his head and smoothed out his feathers. He thought all the screaming was an overreaction. Sure, sentient planets were probably hard to quantify the existence of, but it had been like ten whole minutes!
Venus ambled over, tilting his head at the ship. “Is it supposed to be making those noises?”
Luna pecked the hull again, earning them all another high pitched scream. Earth pulled Luna back with his gravity, ignoring the surprised squawk coming from the moon. “It’s fine.”
“It sounds like it’s broken.”
“Well, what do you know about Life?” he snapped, annoyed.
Venus’s head feathers flared at the words, and he was marching back to his orbit without even saying goodbye. Rude. What’s got his feathers in a twist?
Earth rolled his eyes and turned his attention back. Urgh, come out. I want to see my earthlings!
To his glee, after succesfully restraining Luna from pecking the ship more, the airlock door slid opened and a tiny organic creature was peaking out at them, still wrapped in his clever protective suit.
Excited, Earth took a moment to preen a few loose feathers and puff himself up. He raised his head high, time for introductions. “Sup. I’m the Earth.”
A peacock.
Astrodude was looking at a peacock.
A talking peacock.
He didn’t know what strange force had compelled him to brave the airlock again. Astrodude had just finished having a rather hysterical conversation with Mission Control that he barely remembered, but wasn't very helpful. And then the thumps had stopped and for some reason he’d decided it was safe enough to go outside.
And now he was looking at a peacock.
“You…. are a peacock.” He was only capable of one thought right now, apparently. “A giant, space peacock.”
“Yup!”
“Am I dead?”
“Nope!.” Damn, there went his theory about this being some weird postmortem hallucination.
…After some further consideration, the theory was still on the table. Why was he listening to a giant space peacock? He was almost definitely dead, killed in some freak malfunction during launch. Why birds? he asked his dying brain. It was a really weird choice.
Oh god. The realisation hit him like a ton of bricks. Oh god, he’s dead. He’s never going to see his wife again, and oh no he promised Junior he’d be—
"Uh, little guy? Breathing is important. You might want to start doing that."
"I'm dead," Astrodude squeaked out. "I died."
It stamped its feet and he flinched back, but the bird just seemed annoyed. "No, you're not dead. Trust me, I would know."
Astrodude wasn't listening. His lungs refused to inflate and his vision was going blurry. Oh, so this is what dying feels like.
"Astrodude? Yo, come back."
He couldn't even live out his dream and see space before he died. The pain in his chest grew more and more intense, was this-
A loud, brash honk cut through his thoughts and slammed him out of his panic so fast he actually sent himself spinning. The safety cord connecting him to the ship went taught and snapped him back in the worlds saddest bungee jump.
By the time he’d turned around, and had stabilised himself, the bird was fluffing up and looking mighty pleased with itself. “Oh good. You snapped out of it. Yeah, you're not dead. I'm the literal Earth so you can trust me on this."
Right. The peacock had introduced itself like that before. As the Earth. As in the planet that Astrodude lived on.
He took a few deep breaths of the air coming in from his air supply. His heart was still beating loudly against his ribs. Dead people didn't tend to have heartbeats. He moved the I am dead theory into the 'possibly' category and left it there for now. He had bigger fish to fry.
Like the giant bird claiming to be a planet. Except when Astrodude looked around, his home was nowhere to be seen. There wasn't a lot of places for a giant watery sphere to hide, especially in empty space.
His intense panic over his possible death was ebbing away. This still doesn't make any sense... but let's humour this for a second.
“Why are you a peacock. How are you a peacock? This is… what. Why do— why is the moon a bird too!?”
He hadn’t noticed the second bird until then, so focused was he on the familiar shimmering blues and greens. This one was smaller than the first, but still huge. Familiar blotches weresplattered across its body and head, looking almost like lunar mare and craters. Staring too hard at the feathers made his eyes ache, as the plumage seemed to flicker between appearing soft and downy, and solid and rocky. Astrodude made himself look away.
The grey bird’s tail flicked up at the mention, and it hopped forward slightly, tilting it's head to get a closer look with piercing silver eyes.
"Well," the peacock began, "Long story short, planets are alive and sentient, and we just so happen to look like birds."
"But why?"
The Earth shrugged.
Astrodude stared blankly. Perhaps for a bit too long.
The Moon skittered back to the larger one's side, flapping its wings and causing iridescent flashes of red to bounce straight into Astrodude's eyes. “Is he broken?”
“Why do all of you keep asking that?" There was a rattling sound as the long train of feathers shook imperceptibly. "He’s fine!”
Astrodude didn't feel 'fine', but that was besides the point. He pointed at the planet. “You’re the Earth.”
“We just went over this, dude."
Astrodude ignored him. He pointed at the smaller grey bird. “That’s the Moon.” He got a head bob which he assumed was confirmation. "Who is a crow?"
"Magpie," corrected the Moon in a clipped voice. Was that an insult for them? Well, he was close enough in his guess at least.
He then pointed vaguely in a direction where he had seen a giant orange bird show up before. “Venus?” He guessed.
“Yeah.”
“A… what is he, a crane?”
“Secretary bird. C’mon, dude keep up.” Earth ruffled his feathers again. Astrodude fought the urge to wince at the soft scraping noise caused by the feather shafts rubbing together. Earth nodded his head behind himself. “Aaaand you’ve already met the Sun.”
Astrodude knew that directly staring at the Sun was, generally speaking, not recommended. So of course, he swung himself around without a thought and was promptly blinded.
Luckily, his helmet was built for this in mind, so his loss of vision was only temporary. And maybe it was the distance, or the light, but it was really hard for him to make out... anything about the Sun. If he squinted, he could make out strange curved shapes coming off it's head, and a movement that may have been a flutter of a wing.
“Uh… the Sun? What is…?”
“Cockatoo,” the Moon supplied.
Right, cool. Cool, cool, cool what the hell?
“This is taking too long.” Earth suddenly declared, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Right! Well, you can go… try and understand our existence or whatever. We’ll be around and I’ll tell the others not to eat you.” He paused when he saw the humans expression drop and hurriedly added, "I'm kidding!"
Astrodude was not entirely convinced.
Astrodude stared out of the window of his ship. It had been about two weeks and despite all his hopes, the space birds had not disappeared.
He’d glimpsed what he assumed were Mars and Jupiter, too. Both were in familiar forms of hawks... or maybe eagles? He'd even seen Mercury through the telescope on his ship. The smallest planet also looked like a hawk, or maybe a falcon. What’s the difference? Did the difference even matter?
Urgh. I don’t know much about birds. This wasn’t covered in astronaut training.
He wished his wife was here. She loved birds.
She could probably tell him exactly what species every planet was with a glance and save him this headache.
Astrodude let his head fall onto the headrest with a thump. It was a little awkward in zero gravity but he wanted to sulk properly. Logically, he could probably ask one of them— maybe the moon?— about what kind of bird all the planets, but himself the wasn’t really read to acknowledge the talking aspect of this just yet. That was a crisis for another day.
He could probably write a book full of all the questions he had over this, but through trial and error he’d learn to carefully switch his mind and just go with it. After watching a shed green feather disappear into the aether, he knew if he kept thinking about it, his head would explode.
Urgh. I’m never going to be able to look at birds the same way again, am I?
The moon was hopping by and made eye contact with the astronaut. He flicked his tail at him. Dumbly, Astrodude lifted a hand and waved back, he assumed that was the bird equivalent of a wave.
He exhaled heavily and ran his fingers through his hair. “Uh….. computer?”
“What do you need, Astrodude?”
“That’s not… uh…" He waved a hand. "Never mind. Do we have any resources on um… birdwatching? Ornithology?”
He looked back out the window to where the Sun was stretching his wings. He stopped briefly to let out an ear splitting scream, then fluffed up his feathers and began to run his beak through them. Astrodude sighed. “I feel like I’ll need them.”