Bird's-eye View

[Sladen Stark]

Week Three of Sladen Watch. France.

It was rare for Sladen to spend more than a week at a location - let alone someone's home. However, it was a little different this time. After finishing his pilgrimage the year before, and spending some time in Spain, Sladen had returned to his life of travelling. He felt that he needed no one else to be with him, until he stumbled upon a woman in the forests of Italy - well, more like she caught him in a trap and tried to eat him. Thankfully that dumb b%tch had no survival skills, and he managed to escape without bringing rise to what he was, or being injured beyond a few ruffled feathers.

He flicked off from his branch, and flapped a couple times, gliding to the now abandoned easel. The painter, a small woman with pointed ears, had just gone inside to get more colours. He peered down at the painting, his head flicking to the side skittishly as he examined it. She had been trying to paint him for the past three weeks, and he did not wish to leave without her finishing. However, he also had nothing to do whilst he waited around here beyond being fed by her, flying with local birds... and causing mischief. He dropped to the palette, and dabbed his webbed feet into the mixed colours of purple and yellow, and walked along the edges of the canvas, using his wings to balance himself, before smearing his feet along the corner to clean them, and flying off. Now at the windowsill of her bedroom, he dropped to her bed and pecked open her jewellery box. He tugged free a chain and flew off with it - back to his tree branch.

He sat himself down, waiting for her to return, now wearing her chain loosely around his neck. If his beak allowed it, he would be grinning like the Cheshire Cat himself.
​

 

[Rue Undersee]

Deep in the forests of France there stood a cottage. It was not particularly large, nor grand; but then neither was the part-goblin who lived there. The small dwelling was set at the edge of a wide glade, where banks of wild flowers sloped down towards a dense, birch wood thicket. On the other side there was a river, which twisted and wound through the valley and occasionally opened up to a grassy clearing. Large rocks carpeted in moss flanked the gently running water, dappled beneath the shafts of sunlight that filtered through the trees. It was here, on a grassy patch between the trees and the river, that Rue had settled down to paint.

"Tried to paint," said Rue, voicing her thoughts aloud. There was nobody around to overhear; even muggles hiking through the forest would fail to notice anything within a several hundred yard radius of her cottage. She cocked her head, brush in hand, to ponder over the anomalies of her oil-painting. Careful brush strokes and vibrant colours depicted the scene before her: two trees, bathed in yellow light, their roots concealed beneath a tangle of overgrown gooseberry bushes. But that wasn't the strange part. What baffled the small French woman was that for the past three weeks, every single one of her paintings had had that bird in them. A small Arctic tern, if she remembered correctly, and she simply couldn't shake it. Wherever she'd set up her easel, the little bird had followed, until she'd had no choice but to paint it. And there it would sit, barely moving so much as to ruffle a feather to the breeze. Bizarre as it was, Rue got the disconcerting feeling that it was actually watching her.

Rue dipped her paint brush to her palette, only to find that the green had crusted over where she'd left it in the sun. Leaving her palette where it was, she slipped off her stool and made the short trek back to her cottage. Whilst there, she grabbed an apple, two sandwiches, tins of green and brown paint, and a basket to put it all in. A quick featherlight charm later (the basket was straining, not her), she returned to the bank, only to get a rather nasty surprise. "What?!" Rue squeaked, dropping the basket to dab frantically at the purple-yellow stains bordering her canvas. There was no doubt about it. Those were birds feet. Scowling, she lifted her head to the trees, but the Arctic tern was still sitting perfectly still. No - something was different. Gold glinted at its neck, and it took Rue less than three seconds to realise what it was. "'Ey!" she hollered angrily. "Give zat back or I'll... I'll..." Lost for ideas, she bent down to pick up the nearest stone. She lobbed it into the trees, but it missed the bird by several meters. "I'll climb up zere and get it myself!" she threatened.

 

[Sladen Stark]

As the woman screamed, Sladen let out a few high-pitched tweets, which could almost be called laughter. Her attention was then drawn directly to him, and he quickly silenced himself. As she scowled, he did as best he could to appear as the innocent bird, that was completely oblivious to what she was saying. It was odd, how frequently she actually spoke to the birds around the area, as if expecting them to reply. There was only one that actually could, but Sladen was still trying to figure out how to say hello to her. It had so far taken three weeks of deep contemplation, and distraction. He puffed his chest, his tail feathers sprouting out as she yelled at him, daring her to give it her best shot. He squawked at her as the rock missed, and to teach her a lesson, flew to her easel.

He looked at her with beady eyes, before looking down at the paints in front of him. His eyes looked at the canvas, then the paints, and then her. He squeaked at her, his foot hovering just above the black paint. Being an oil painting, mixing direct black was never wise - this he learnt from his mother. He dabbed his foot in it slowly, not removing his eyes from her, almost taunting her, before quickly slapping his webbed, blackened foot dead-centre in the canvas, and flying off to an even taller tree. This tree was all very nice and climbable, with low hanging branches and a sturdy trunk. He sat himself down on one of the higher branches and picked at his feathers, pretending to do some preening, before tweeting at her and flapping his wings, daring her to follow through with her threat.
​