Featherhead

[Calcifur Giordano]

It was four o'clock in the morning and Calcifur was an hour early for his next delivery. This used to piss him off, since it was cold and misty on the esplanade most mornings, but these days he had something to look forward to. He nursed his gas station coffee and clicked to the tern who had been his companion these past weeks, feeding it from the stale roll he'd kept overnight. It was beautifully out of place amongst its ibis, seagull and pelican brethren. He'd spotted the arctic native trying to blend in amongst the gulls, and had said to it 'You're gorgeous. What the hell are you doing amongst these idiots?' and gestured to the smelly flock surrounding the tern. He'd received a cheep for an answer and had walked away, but he kept seeing the tern on every morning walk, and soon he began to greet the bird.

Cal had to keep kicking at seagulls to keep the scavengers away from the tern, and the yappy morons eyed him beadily as he carried on the one-sided conversation.
"I thought I told you to stop hanging out with these idiots. They're going to make you stupid. I don't know what you are, but you can't be stupider than a seagull," said Calcifur to the tern as he broke up the last of his dinner roll. He sipped his coffee and reclined back into the park bench, and all was silent save for the occasion impatient squawk from a gull, until he asked "What's your name?".
It seemed like a stupid question to ask a bird, of all things, but the half blood wizard was sure he'd had an animagus on his hands from the moment he'd clapped eyes on it. Whether it was the tern's attempts at 'talking' back or the icy blue of its eyes, unusual for the sea bird, it all lent itself to the idea quite damningly.​

 

[Sladen Stark]

It was incredible how easily an arctic tern could blend into the New Zealand avian population. He often travelled with the birds his form mimiced down toward their wintering grounds, but as soon as he came to the west coast of Australia, he would branch off further east to rest in his homeland, and then continue onto New Zealand and return northward for the summer. Sometimes, he remained south far longer than intended, and that was exactly how he was finding himself occasionally sneezing from the fresh spring pollen.

Sticking among other birds (even if he was clearly a different species) was always for the best. There was safety in numbers, and he could easily match the flight patterns of the other creatures, then surpass them, whilst hunting for food. It led him to being somewhat exiled from the group, but Sladen wasn't quite looking to befriend a flock of miscellaneous birds. The same couldn't be said for the wizard that had been taken regular walks through the area, however. The animagus wasn't generally a social person, and preferred to exist on the outskirts of socialisation, rather than at the centre, but living as a bird for an extended period of time did lead one to eventually run out of entertaining activities. He assumed that the wizard knew he was an animagus, as his general behaviour wasn't quite right for a tern, and the likelihood of him continuing a conversation with an average bird was slim (hopefully).

Leaving the small cluster of birds to approach the bench, Sladen looked for somewhere to write his name. Perhaps other animagi would have just changed back into their human forms, but Sladen eventually found a loose-gravel area near the bench, where there was a new pathway being constructed in the future. Each gravel piece was around the size of his foot, and this was going to be a rather idiotic idea, but Sladen was committed. An S was eventually carved out among the rocks, whilst the L was relatively easy. A was rather simple (though there was a mishap with the bridge connecting the / and \, but he felt it was still readable. The D looked more like a tipped-over triangle, and by time he started on the E, he was getting rather tired, and stopped by time the E looked like an C.

Sladen looked down at his handiwork and flapped his wings at the gentleman. Good enough.
​

 

[Calcifur Giordano]

Calcifur watched the animagus work with mild amusement, and even chuckled gruffly when the bird abandoned its 'E'. "Slade, huh," the trafficker murmured. "Either that, or 'Sladc'. Nice to meet you. I'm Cal." He didn't like his full name and didn't quite understand the reference his mother made to the practically ancient muggle film it came from, so he went by Cal, and also used the English version of his surname to disassociate from his father. He was happy enough if people thought he was Callum or Calvin.

Calcifur got up to stretch and threw the empty styrofoam cup into the nearby trash can, leaving the rest of the roll to the tern. He'd been calling his feathery friend 'Sandy' in his head, thinking it was a girl, and it was hard to break the association. Slade was a weird name, anyway.
Before he left, he had to ask. "Do you ever eat? Not including now, though, but as a human. I don't know much about birds, but I'm pretty sure they shouldn't have bread all the time, and I sure as hell ain't buyin' you sardines. S'enough to feed myself." He asked this question idly as he didn't expect an answer except in the way of entirely useless chirps.​

 

[Sladen Stark]

Sladen ruffled his feathers and flapped his wings in a quick motion that was his form of an eye-roll. In the end, however, it was nice to be able to stick a name to a face. Cal was, presumably, a shortened form of something, whether it be Callum, or Calvin, or something more unique - not that he was one to talk, especially since he was in the unique position of having picked his own name.

Sladen tilted his head at whilst looking up at Cal, admittedly a little surprised by his question. Assumption would say that, of course, he ate as a human. He was, after all, merely a human being that could become an arctic tern, rather than the other way 'round. The reality of the situation, however, was that he rarely ate as a human - he was rarely a human to begin with. He slept as a bird (in a nest that is most often placed high up in a tree - unnatural for his mimic'd animal, but he wasn't a zoologist), ate as a bird, and was right now even communicating whilst a bird. The whole point of being an animagus, in his opinion, was to experience the world in another form. That wouldn't really work if he switched back to being a human whenever it suited him, especially just to do something as perfunctory as eating. It was also simpler to hunt whilst a bird - humans had to work, and then pay for meals. All Sladen As Tern had to do was go for a short flight and use his senses.

He wasn't sure how to completely communicate this to Cal, however. He didn't really rely on the man's generosity at all - bread wasn't exactly sustaining to an active bird such as himself. He took flight towards town, flying through the air smoothly as the short distance was closed by surprising speed. The long distance flier found ducking through the magical population a relatively simple task, and his size caused him to mostly be ignored except by the odd small child taking a fancy at the graceful bird. He eventually returned with a piece of raw fish, which was most likely stolen from one of the many fish sellers that were sprinkled around the harbor. Usually he would do the sensible thing and get something truly fresh (Merlin knew what this piece of fish had endured between being caught and sold), but he was trying to prove a point in under a minute.

Returning to Cal, he ate the fish piece swiftly, and dropped down to sit on the bench. He twittered at Cal with an air of accomplishment. He was perfectly capable of feeding himself, and definitely didn't need sardines.
​

 

[Calcifur Giordano]

Calcifur watched the tern take off and assumed he'd begun to bore the animagus, but his little friend soon returned with fish in its beak, inducing a wry half-grin in the trafficker.
"Alright, cheeky, I get your point. I was just wondering about the need to eat less in an animagus form. Never studied it, so I don't know poop about it. Seems like it's not a problem, though." Clearly Slade needed to eat, and more than that, he was capable of looking after himself. Calcifur's bread rolls were likely doing nothing to add to his diet, but he couldn't help but try anyway. The gruff Kiwi was a softie at heart. It was the dead of winter and Cal was starting to get cold in his thousand-patch jacket, so he gave the tern an awkward wave as before, and left him to his messy lunch. "S'long, Slade."​

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four days later​

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<FONT font="Arial">Cal was starting to look forward to his freezing morning walks, which was still pathetic, but he was strangely disappointed when Slade As Tern was not at their usual bench to greet him. He looked about for a moment and sat down anyway, but there was no sign of the exotic bird anywhere along the esplanade, as far as he could see. After a while the trafficker got up, resigned to not seeing his feathery friend that day, and he walked a ways until something tickled the edge of his consciousness. Large pine trees dotted the esplanade, which weren't natives but had large roots to keep the ocean at bay, and high in the branches above him came a mournful song sung by a very familiar voice.
"Slade?" Cal called out without thinking. The trafficker shaded his eyes and peered between the thick branches, and lo and behold, a tiny nest with a white splodge in the middle of it was nestled in the spindly upper branches of the tree. The tune was not a happy one, and being in a muggle part of New Zealand, he couldn't grab his wand out and start levitating down small, arctic birds from their nests, so Cal dropped his pack on the ground, shucked his jacket and went for a climb. ​