When we get home, father is faithfully by the door like a dog waiting for his masters’ return. When he sees us coming up the hill, he gets up and bounds toward us. I am ignored, of course, in favour of him peppering kisses all over mother.

“My love! Light of my life! The single blooming rose in the garden of my heart!”

How cringe.

“I can’t get the crawl space open, so I just left that table out in the garden!”

“Not overnight, I hope?! That’s oak, you know, it’s good wood! You don’t just leave out in the snow!”

“The lock’s rusted shut and last time when I accidentally broke the whole door off, you got even angrier—”

Amazingly, it’s been less than ten seconds and father has already put himself in the doghouse. I ignore their fight as I head inside, dusting snow off my new old hat and fur cape, before hanging the latter one up. I admire my hat, holding it up. Let’s see, that adventurer lady had a big feather in her hat, it looked pretty cool. Should I try to find a feather?

A feather.

Yeah… a feather. A feather would look so cool…

Where am I gonna get a feather in winter?

Spring comes, and with it my fourth birthday. Little changes in my life, except that I have reluctantly accepted my role as “mischievous village child B” in this world. The snow melts and the road to the back mountain opens, and so we can begin Operation Feather Hunt.

Crouching on the roadside next to each other is Jarrod, myself, and little apple. This is a strategy meeting. It is deeply important.

“It needs to be a big feather.” Little apple solemnly states. “Because it’s a big hat.”

Normally I wouldn’t put stock in the fashion advice of a person wearing that many frills in order to go hiking up a mountain, but she raises an undeniable point. It is, in fact, a big hat. I rub my chin, trying to think about what birds in the area might possibly provide a large enough feather. There aren’t a lot, to be honest. It’s mostly small passerines.

I wish there was anything similar to lyrebirds. The tailfeather of the superb lyrebird is indeed superb.

“If we wanted a really big feather it would have to come from a big bird,” Jarrod mutters, entirely unhelpfully. This is common sense, Jarrod. Keep up.

“Yeah, we’d be in luck if there was something like a roc roosting on the mountain.” I sigh idly.

“No, we need a bird.” Little apple points out.

I’m out of my depth in this conversation. To avoid further humiliation, I encourage us to just start heading up the mountain to try our luck. Too bad we’re banned from going past the first boundary line, but when I remember we’re literal children, I figure it can’t be helped.

This is the first time I’ve been up the mountain since last summer. It’s different in the daylight; warm and welcoming. As we ascend, I get this stuffy feeling in my chest and a longing to go higher and higher. It’s like this itch. I feel like the sky is pressing down on me, falling from heaven. If I just get high enough, I feel I could reach out even my small arm and touch it.

In nature, there’s a parasite called the green-banded broodsac. Maybe I have one of those.

We get to an area where the woodsman claimed to have spotted some pheasants, with our hopes high. Although it’s the season to start seeing more bird activity, since the information spread a lot of villagers have been through here hoping to find some game, so they’ve probably scared off any potential prey. If we’re lucky, the birds left some feathers behind in their flurry.

“Then, you two look over there, and I’ll look by the bushes.” Jarrod orders us.

I look at little apple, then look at him. “Shouldn’t you two stay together?”

“Yeah!”

“No, why?!”

“Because you’re the one who wandered off up the mountain by yourself! The buddy system was invented for people like you!” Does this idiot already not remember how he almost died?

“Y-you’re the one who got lost first!”

“I wasn’t lost, I was napping. And if one of you got lost, I wouldn’t run off on my own like an idiot trying to save you by myself.”

They both look at me with judgemental eyes, which I ignore. Early childhood memories are so slippery, it’s easy to misremember things or forget them entirely. I roll my eyes quickly, looking at some rustling bushes with a cunning plan to change the subject.

“Hey, is that a pheasant?”

In any case, we split up according to my arrangements. I got warned, “And no falling asleep or going past the first boundary!” by Jarrod in a serious tone of voice, but I just nodded to him blankly.

I did my best to walk as quietly as possible so as not to spook any wild animals, but there’s only so much you can do when you have limited anatomy to work with. I try not to let my mind wander so as not to get lost, since the last thing I need is more dark childhood history, but I feel like my mind is in a haze. The higher I climb, the more my skull fills with cotton.

Luckily, I’m snapped out of my reverie before things go too awry by the sound of bickering. The voices are high and soft; sounds like children. It’s not Jarrod and little apple, but maybe one of the other village children? They all sort of blend together, so it’s hard for me to recognise based off such muffled voices.

Originally I don’t want to get involved, but… they’re so loud. So I head toward the voices.

I feel like I’m getting closer, but I don’t see anything ahead of me. The treeline in this part of the mountain is sparse, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to make anyone out. However, as I get closer and closer, I find that the sound direction is slightly off what it should be. Specifically, it seems to be coming from… up a tree? Did they climb a tree?

I look up at the branches above, but can’t see any dangling legs. There’s not any reason I shouldn’t be able to see someone up there, surely?

“What are we going to do if she’s been taken, or eaten? That’s your daughter too!”

Eh, daughter? Child?! No, wait. Ah, don’t tell me it’s children playing house. So the “argument” was just a bit of play drama. I got momentarily worried over nothing. I turn to go, but then the argument continues.

“O-of course I’m worried about her. She’s only a week old, she should never have left the nest in the first place. B-but, who knows where on the mountain she is! It may already be eaten…”

“Then I’ll go alone.” The voice trembled with obvious fear.

I kind of felt like something funny was going on now, and it was hard to just walk off without saying anything. So I turned back around, pulling myself up to the lowest branch at least.

“Hey up there, what’s going on?”

The voices stop, completely startled by my interruption. I hear quiet whispering, then a rustle of leaves and branches and… something else. Then suddenly there’s a blur of brown and I see something landing in front of me. It’s just a little mountain finch?

No… don’t tell me… although I can believe that monsters may have their own dialect, but to even be able to do this much… isn’t that kind of power approaching OP levels…

“Hey, it wasn’t this one that was singing, right?”

Another finch lands beside it. They must be a mating pair? Worse still, I definitely saw the first finch open their mouth right as the words came out. No, it wasn’t words. Rather than it being a case of hearing normal words coming out of the little bird, it’s all just tweets and twitters. It’s just that I sort of instinctively understand what they mean, through sound and pitch and body language. It’s an emotional expression more than a really constructed language, but I am automatically reshuffling the information in my head into a more complex “language”.

It’s a long process to explain, but it happens naturally and without any feeling of disconnect.

“Yeah… the birds are talking.”

The finches puff up in shock, one of them shouting, “No way. I thought it was a new neighbour?! Hey, do the big bald animals normally sing? They don’t, right?”

Big bald animal…

They’re not wrong. Humans are a type of animal. And we are mostly bald.

“Yeah. I talk.” I think for a moment. If I go down this road, I’ll definitely end up being involved in some kind of RPG style rescue and escort quest, but it’s hard to just walk away now that I have a scope of the situation. If they were just animals, I wouldn’t care unless I happened to find the baby bird by accident. But because they can talk, because I can communicate with them as “people”, I can’t simply say, “well, good luck!” and walk away.

So I say, “Do you need help?”

“Wow, it really sings… it’s so ugly, yet it sings so beautifully. How weird!” One of them says. The fate of your beloved child could be in my hands, bastard.

“Yeah, the song is like juniper berries and the morning sun. Hey, doesn’t it sound familiar?”

“Oh yeah? Oh yeah! No, they’re similar but different. Could it be this is the other one’s hatchling? Could this be a sky prince… ess… sky royal child? It sings more beautifully than the lord. His song is just cloud roar and sky fire.”

“Yes, so gentle. Hey, little royal. Will you really help us? You’re just a little hatchling yourself, but would you really help us find our daughter?”

I don’t get a word in. The finches twitter back and forth so quickly, hopping around in a fervour at my innocuous offer. When there’s finally space for me to break into the conversation, they’ve cleverly managed to make it difficult for me to say anything other than, “Sure. No promises, but I’ll try anyway. Um, do you have any of her shed down, or bits of her shell maybe? It’ll help.”

I don’t know 100% for sure if it will, actually, but if there’s a chance of making my life easier, I may as well ask about it.

“Ah, of course! Anything you need, little royal!”

“I’m really not royalty. It’s fine just calling me—” I falter. There’s still an empty spot on my character sheet, isn’t there? I didn’t really know how to finish the sentence, so I lamely spat out, “—whatever else you want.”

“Then, little sky. Here, my wife will bring you some of our hatchling’s moulted feathers. Please bring her back to us!”

I take the fluffy little down feathers in hand and tuck them somewhere safe, climbing down the tree back to the ground. I wave good-bye to the pair of finches, then begin to look down at the ground for any signs of a baby bird. Let’s see, if it’s only a week old, it probably couldn’t have gotten far on its own. If it’s really missing, probably it got picked up and carried off by someone, or something.

It doesn’t bode well for her parents.

I try to search around for any signs of something trampling through, or loose feathers, or maybe even blood but the fact of the matter is I have no background or experience in this kind of tracking. I think if I just stare hard enough maybe I’ll develop the skill spontaneously, but when no such luck happens, I decide to just rely on cheat codes instead.

Gripping the feathers in hand, I hope this works. I haven’t seen or met the hatchling, which would normally make it impossible to use “Seek” since I need a clear image of what I’m searching for in my mind. But I’m hoping having part of her will facilitate some kind of response. Starting at the base of the tree where the nest is, I cast the spell.

“Seek!”

Seek Lvl.3: 3 MP

Find any person, creature, or object you are familiar with within a [15 FT] radius.

Warm magic wells up in my chest and spills out of me. It spreads out in a wave, flowing unhindered over the surrounding area. But there’s no response within the spell’s range. Either she’s not here, or having her feathers on hand as a focus material isn’t enough.

I have another option. Casting “Guidance”, I focus on asking the direction of the lost hatchling in my mind. The golden arrow appears, spinning around like a compass needle on top of my hand before finally settling on a direction. When I check where it’s pointing, as I feared: it’s up the mountain.

I feel like god is playing a prank on me.