[Hana] Ornithology Expert

The word felt weird on her tongue: bir-duh. Without the stress on the d, the bir sounding like brr, it was so fucking cold out! Hana rarely wore pants since usually her baggy sweaters were enough to keep her warm throughout the year (and when it was too warm, she always had spaghetti straps for those). Now that winter had officially rolled in, with snow falling and piling on the ground, she was sporting double, sometimes triple layers on the particularly snippy days, and a pair of pants with some leggings for extra warmth. She also had a thick, starry scarf, making her long, curled hair sometimes get caught and stick out from the cloth.

Anyway, she was able to shed one layer of clothing when Mercy decided to throw a library pass onto her and Jackal so that they could look more into the feather, or more specifically birds. Now, she liked to snark as much as the next bun, but she also knew that messing with the head nun without any real reason other than them acting suspicious (which they always did when it came to carats) was going to get them in big trouble. Thus, she had to make a gesture to Jackal not to push it. The envy bun only shot her a glare that she was perfectly aware not to overstep.

The library was large, as expected of the church. Hana hadn’t been here before, actually, since she barely spent time in this institution before she was helped placed in a home and a job. Jackal, on the other hand, seemed familiar with the layout, though the starry bun never thought her a reader.

“Where are we even going to find something about birds here?”

The envy bun shrugged, “Could use the catalog to start.”

“The, err, catalog?”

“The Coney Decimal System, duh.”

Yeah, this was kind of weird, but Hana rolled with it. Like, she didn’t want to say it out loud, but it did go against the super cool badass rebellious punk vibe she had of Jackal. Hana had been the one to mosey herself into joining in today’s vibe though, though she certainly didn’t expect for it to lead to, well, all of this. A mysterious bun, with no horns (what was up with that?!), and a feather with a texture that was just…so so weird. Everything was weird.

“Right.” the starry bun went to the catalog that Jackal was gesturing to while she was starting to wander close to the wooden shelves. Hana read through the instructions and then started to comb through the categories. There was something on Literature and another on History, which seemed to be a good place to start. Come to think of it, Hana had thought little about Burrowgatory’s history. A hundred or so years seemed like a really long time, but she knew that there were many buns that had lived a quarter or a half or even more of that already.

Much of the literature was like…the classics (most had porn), but there was something about myths, and that seemed like a good place to start. Hopping off the high chair, she made sure to memorize the number before setting off to find its match somewhere in the shelves.

“What’s the number over there?”

“Four hundred.” Jackal replied, and Hana caught a glance of her holding a dictionary.

“Found anything?”

She shook her head. Admittedly, the printed dictionaries in Burrowgatory were terribly inconsistent. The internet had a much more up-to-date one, and the inconsistencies often came with how the demon caretakers taught words to their Succubun charges. It wasn’t as if there was a standard amongst them, and many of them had the habit of telling tall tales. Did the word “bird” ever appear in their vocabulary?

Turned out there was a bun that did hear it from their demon caretaker and actually became a writer, go figure. Hana found the book in question snug in the middle of a shelf; it was thin and had a nature-y cover, but the landscape looked really odd even in the not so well-lit library. Trees didn’t look quite right, and what was even weirder was that there were colorful creatures on it. Very tiny, though, dotty, but they didn’t look like any of the imps she had seen so far. Flipping through the pages, it turned out to be something like an almanac. The author (who hired an artist) dedicated it to the demon who raised them, and remembers their stories fondly. Aww.

But man, these creatures were weird.

Carrying the book between her arm and body, she headed back to where Jackal was (and also where the lighting was better) so that they could flip through it together. They were both bewildered and doubtful about the creatures that appeared there: most of them were as tall or much taller than a doll form Succubun! Some even towered over trees, and ate from them! Their necks looked grotesque and their eyes bulgy; Hana thought she was reading from a horror book instead of an almanac.

Some of them had the anatomy that loosely resembled the Avia in Hutch’s shop, which Hana explained to Jackal that they needed to watch out for. The new imp was probably the closest reference they had, since, well, now that she thought about it…that funky thing kind of looked like an elongated Impup, didn’t it? Like an Impup with long legs. And a mouth.

For the ones that she figured that were “birds”, they did have wings, but they didn’t look like the ones that buns could get from drinking too many Peach Hellinis. They were round-tipped, almost like a child’s scrawl, and they had weird triangle snouts. They reminded her of Bunrito’s. 

“I’m pretty sure that this demon was just embellishing a lot of this, right?” Hana was looking at the tail of one of these “birds,” which looked like somebun tied a bunch of ribbons of different colors together and called it a day.

“The question’s which parts they’re embellishing.” Jackal muttered, noting that the more they flipped through the pages, the birds they did take note of did have a fairly consistent body shape–a head with a varying triangle, a pair or more of wings, and a pair of legs.

“All of it?”

The envy bun looked deep in thought. On the top right side of their table was a drawing that Hana did of the Avia from memory. It wasn’t great, but the patterns they were noticing with this book and the imp were a little too coincidental to be ignored.

“Were there any other books from the shelf you were looking at?”

“Hm, lemme check.”

“Make sure it’s from a completely different bun.”

“Uh huh.”

Hana was about to walk off before she turned around to face Jackal again, “You think Misty is a bird?”

The question seemed to catch the envy bun off-guard. “Huh?”

“Did you check if she has wings?”

“She doesn’t.” Jackal scowled, her tail flicking in annoyance.

“They could hide it under their cloak.”

“What’re you suggesting?”

The starry bun let out a little squeak, noting that Jackal was being very much riled up by the questions. “Nothing, it’s just, y’know, she doesn’t have–”

“Shut it.” 

And Hana promptly covered her mouth. Fair enough, they weren’t sure if anyone, especially Mercy, was listening in on them. “Right.” it still left her thoughtful about the stranger’s actual appearance, though. Jackal was being very protective of them, and it reminded her of punk gf soft gf kind of vibes. Hehe, that would be cute actually. Was Misty going to stick around? Or what if she was a ghost? Hana decided to keep these thoughts to herself as she climbed back up to the higher shelves to search for another almanac.