[SOLO] Idle Gossip [ Distant Tidings ]

[Jun]

[imgleft]http://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/image ... gs_jun.gif[/imgleft]Distant Tidings must have made the salt a hundred times without a hitch (he hadn't), but nothing, today, was going right. The shell he used, which had been perfect a hundred times (it hadn't), was suddenly too small – or too deep – or hole-riddled – any number of flaws that made the seawater within incapable of drying out just right. Which just goes to show you can't make salt without sunshine, even if said sun was beating down tiresomely straight overhead.

He was certainly in no mood to be laughed at for his woes, and yet here he was, a lone buck on the shore, turning head to tail around the hateful shell as the mocking cackle rang out beyond him – somewhere. Certainly, he was being punished for his ills.

"Oh, just come on out and laugh in my face," he called, eventually, when his irritation had finally overpowered his reluctance to commit irony, "whoever you are. Swamp knows I deserve it, I suppose – hundreds of times I've done this, I have."

(He had not.)

No kin was forthcoming, no leering head popped up behind a palm – yet the mocking cackle rang out yet again.

Tidings paused. Peered around, craned his head, and peered around again. He was stumped, he couldn't lie (or, at least, he wouldn't, on this count). The beach was clear for miles around, just him, and a few slim palms. If there was a Kin close enough to laugh at him so, surely he would have caught at least their shadow? To stay hidden in a place like this, on a blazing day like this – why, it would be a trick he himself would not be capable of.

And yet he seemed alone. Only a lone bird circled above – a dark slash in the beating sun – and he knew well the bark of a seagull's cry.

Nothing, today, was going right. So he did what any self-respecting grown buck would do.

He planted his butt into the sand and stayed there. No salt would be made today.

The laugh rang out again.

"Oh, just come out already," he cried.

There was no reply – it seemed for the longest time there was no response at all. Then circling bird – high above, a dark slash in the beating sun – slowly circled downwards, till it tucked dark wings and perched upon the shell before him, and let out that mocking cackle.

Tidings lowered his head and squinted at the offender.

"I'm pretty sure," he said, "magpies are not seafaring birds."

And then he threw back his head and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. The magpie cackled.

"Well, you've made a fool of me, mister magpie," he said, "you're a better trickster than I."

The magpie cackled, fluttered atop a haunch, and pecked, a little ticklishly, at a scale or two.

"Where have you come from," Tidings said, craning his neck to peer at the terror, "how far have you come? A magpie among seagulls – well, do you know how much a misfit you look?"
The magpie squawked, and hopped half up his back.

"Ah well, I have also come quite far," he mused, "from the sands, to walk the sands again. A desert Acha, all the way at the sea. I came here to find my home, you know. I dreamt it. It was here. But it isn't. It isn't anywhere.

"A fine pair we make, I suppose," he laughed, tossing his head and looking back out to the sea, "us misfits must stick together, you know."

The magpie laughed as well, a different sound, throaty and softer, like it agreed.[imgright]https://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/imag ... idings.gif[/imgright]

*****

Whether or not it had actually agreed was another thing. What Tidings had thought would be a trusty companion turned out to be a fickle one, disappearing for days on end, and reappearing, it rather seemed, only when he had something particularly delicious between his hooves. If the bird had an owner – Swamp knew, he couldn't say it was he. It cackled often, and squawked and trilled, and made many sounds that sounded suspiciously like speech. Idle it seemed, and Idle it was, Idle Gossip, here and sly and gone again.

In this way, they, too, suited each other.

END