Distant Tidings had witnessed it well, and made sure everyone around him would witness it too, by screeching very loudly right before the sun had peeked over the horizon.
It did wake Thunder up, but Tidings didn't wait around for his response, instead stretching his little wings to take to the sky, swooping along with the first rays that had crept across the marsh.
Yes, it was marvellously beautiful.
Gliding on the steady current, he drank his fill of the gentle morning sun, and decided to return to a leafier plane - to whit, a berry bush, low-lying.
In other words, a breakfast plane.
Tidings landed on a twig, the tender sprig barely bending under his very little weight.
It pleased him, such a landing.
How neat.
He clicked a little to show that it pleased him.
Then he flittered deeper into the leaves, where the dark berries clustered jucily.
Delicious.
He could hear Thunder from here, as he picked daintily at the bursting berries - Thunder and the raised voices of squabbling bucks.
He didn't know what they were squabbling about. It was painfully early to be picking fights. But, ah, Thunder did love to fight.
"…didn't ask for this, you buffoon…"
"…buffoon?! you're the buffoon…"
"Buffoon," he repeated.
That also pleased him.
"Buffoon," he repeated again, and chirruped.
He ate another berry.
Thunder quarrelled still.
He was getting bored of berries.
Tidings clicked a little, and then hissed, and hopped down the few inches to the ground. The grass was still sweet with dew, and he clicked his little beak in the droplets, then pecked into the ground at the seeds.
But he was full on berries, really.
Tidings hopped on.
It was amazing how long Thunder could quarrel - oh, they were proper fighting now.
"…take that…"
"…that's not fair…"
"Buffoon," he repeated, again.
There was a puddle, smooth and shining, in the grass.
He looked into it, tilting his head this way, and then eventually, that.
"Who's a pretty boy, then," he squawked, then chirruped, like a laugh, and trilled.
It did please him.
And then he splashed into the puddle, breaking the shiny surface.
"Who's a pretty boy," he squawked, "buffoon."
He trilled.
"…had enough then…"
"…said I didn't ask…"
"…well go on…"
He fluttered, splashing - flapped his wings; shimmied, drops flying. Then he retreated to a perch - a little branch, higher now, preening through his feathers.
Any moment now.
Thunder came galumphing up, looking right and left, until he spotted him on the branch and trotted glumly over.
"Can you believe the nerve of those ruffians?" he started indignantly, "I was just minding my own business, running wind sprints down the marsh after someone" - an accusatory look - "woke me up much too early."
He chirruped, innocently.
"…Barging into someone's wind sprints like that, just an exercising buck, minding my own business, and then they had the cheek to call me a buffoon -"
"Buffoon," he repeated, quietly.
"A buffoon! Me! The cheek of it. If anything, they're the buffoons! I'm not a buffoon, am I?"
That was really a very hangdog look on his face.
"Am I?"
Tidings finished preening out his feathers, fluffed them, and settled back down to tilt his head at him.
"Buffoon," he pronounced.
Perhaps predictably.
"Be serious," Thunder said.
"Buffoon, buffoon," he squawked, "buffoon, buffoon, buffoon."
"I do wish you wouldn't take this form so often," Thunder sighed.
And then Tidings woke up because he was cackling too hard.
END