Chicken Stroll
Part Fourteen
Sleepy. Nice, warm, fuzzy. Sunlight on head. Nice. Maybe hungry? Yes! Hungry enough to wake up? Tough choice. Voices around...upset?
“Look, the big lout is asleep like a baby, head obviously intact. (Not that he knows what to do with it.) I vote we leave him to sleep it off, he probably found a saucer of beer and got himself drunk as...er...I mean to say...” The voice trailed off, sounding mortified.
“Yes, boy? What did you mean to say about getting drunk?” The second voice sounded calm enough, but had a biting undertone. “Nothing? Oh, good. And do not pretend to be ignorant of the fact that he is under a Sleep spell - not unless you want me to believe you have forgotten everything I ever taught you. His utter immobility, even in the face of outer stimuli, is quite typical, and so is the magical residue of course.”
“Vadrak?” Third voice, female this time. “I'm sorry if I'm prying, but how could you know about...”
“Never mind.” Second voice again, impatiently. “Ah! He is waking up!” Relief this time, clearly audible.
“What? I can't see any change at all? How can you tell?” The first male voice again, sounding confused and a little plaintive. No response. Instead, sensation. Something hard, pushing gently against his face, nudging him. Something hard and smooth. Nudging, persistently. Go 'way...want to sleep. A new sensation, inside this time...calling out to him, dragging him along. Andorel. Time to wake up. They are gone now, you're safe.
“Huh?” Andorel's eyes came suddenly open, and he found himself staring directly into the glittering dark eye of the black rooster bending over him, about to give him another nudge with his beak. “Vaddy?” He flapped his wings, clumsily getting to his feet.
Edwin and Nalia were there too, Nalia looking relieved, Edwin annoyed. As for Dekaras, he looked utterly calm, but through the bond Andorel could feel his friend exhaling silently in a sigh of relief, and the crushing weariness inside his head was too much to belong to just him, he thought. He gave a small cluck of half-hearted amusement.
“Immy always liked stories 'bout pretty princesses gettin' cursed and then woken up with a kiss by some knight in shinin' armour - guess this is the half-orc version, eh? Does that mean we have to marry now, or what?”
Ignoring Edwin's indignant sound of revulsion, Dekaras simply shook his head. “I am happy to see that your entirely inappropriate sense of humour has reasserted itself”, he said. “That would seem to indicate that you're going to be back to normal in no time, or what passes for it.”
“Andorel?” Nalia was watching him curiously, her white head bobbing back and forth a little. “What...I mean, can you tell us anything about what happened in there? I mean, you were just gone, and then Vadrak started acting very peculiar and said that you were about to be butchered!” Her crest turned vivid red with embarrassment as she saw Andorel flinch. “Er...sorry.”
“Nah, s'ok.” He said, shaking his head sadly. “That guy you saw haul me away...” He stopped and shuddered, took a breath and went on. “Well, he held me down on a table and got this bloody big cleaver, and...and...” Andorel swallowed and stopped. He looked at the three chickens plaintively. “Do I really have to talk 'bout this?”
“Not right now.” Nalia said firmly, then yawned pointedly. “It's getting late, and I think we all need some sleep.”
“What?” Edwin snapped. “What he knows could be important. We have no time to pamper his feelings, our lives are at stake here!”
“Really.” Dekaras remarked calmly. “I presume, then, that your behaviour in recent days doesn't count as 'pampering' your feelings. If so, what does it count as? Maybe your temper tantrums were simply your way to prove that you were still capable of bad behaviour as a chicken? An important area of research, I'm sure, but perhaps one that could have waited until later.”
Edwin looked down at his clawed feet in embarassment. “Yes, Teacher Dekaras.”
“Very well then.” Nalia said. “I'm going to go to my ne...bed and get some sleep. Good night everyone.”
Edwin muttered something inaudable and followed his familiar, leaving Dekaras and Andorel together in the gathering dusk.
Andorel yawned hugely. “I'm soddin' knackered.” He declared. “Why do sleep spells leave you so tired?”
“They leave traces of toxins in the body that cause sensations similar to those seen in sleep deprivation victims, but without the mental confusion.” Dekaras said absently, and then turned to Andorel. “What did happen to you?”
“I was scared shitless, but there wasn't much that act'ally happened.” Andorel admitted. “It just made me remember...bad stuff.”
“’Bad stuff’?”
“Yeah. Ya know what it's like.” Andorel nudged Dekaras, making the black rooster stagger sideways slightly. “Stuff you don't like ta think about.”
“Indeed I do.” Dekaras said quietly. “I think you need to rest.”
“Yeah, you do.” Andorel replied, a hint of humour back in his eyes.
The two roosters made their way back to the coop, and eventually settled down on the top perch.
“Vaddy?” Andorel asked. “Any ideas yet about how to get us all outta here?”
“I'm afraid not,” Dekaras admitted, shifting uncomfortably on his perch. “Naturally I realized it would be difficult to do so in chicken form, but I hadn't estimated exactly how difficult it was going to be.” His voice turned stony. “But there is no question about me giving up on it. There will be a way, I simply need to think about things from a different angle. Formulate an escape plan from a chicken perspective, you might say.” He fell silent, once more shifting about from one foot to the other. There was a slight, but highly uncomfortable itch at the back of his neck. I would give just about anything to have my hands back, right now. “It is just...”
“Just what?”
“A curse can be an insidious thing, Andorel. As we both know, magic can influence your mind without you even being aware of it.”
“Er...heh. Yeah, we do.”
“Suppose,” the assassin said, “that I let myself slip too far into a rooster frame of mind?” He drew one of his legs up, balancing on the other as he attempted to reach his neck with his claws. It didn't work - his leg simply wouldn't reach far enough. “I...might not be able to come back. The same could happen to all of us, it seems likely that the more we accept this form, the more it will influence our minds.” The itch was getting stronger, prickling persistently. “I don't want to wind up either as a regular chicken or as a human believing myself to be one.”
“You won't,” Andorel confidently said, then clucked a little. “You're just too plain bloody-minded for that, ya know. Want me to preen you?”
“What?!” the baffled Dekaras said, pausing in the process of attempting to twist his head around in a 180 degree angle in order to reach the back of his own neck with his beak. “That itch. Chickens can't preen their own necks, see. They like to give each other a hand, or beak I guess. Want me to do it for you? It's dead nice.”
“Ah...no thank you, Andorel,” Dekaras very carefully said. “It is no big problem, really.” At that moment, somebody nudged him lightly in the side, and there was an eager female voice next to his ear.
“Hey...me can preen!”
“She good preener.” Said another voice from Andorel's left side. “Try and see.”
“Oh, hello again.” Andorel said.
The mottled brown hen pressed into his side. “You got out of box. That good!”
“Yeah, I did.” Andorel replied. “Andorel, do you know these two...hens?” Dekaras whispered across.
“One of them. Sorta. Met her this afternoon. I've seen your hen about quite a bit. She keeps following you around.”
“’Your hen’?”
“Me called Jackie.” The black-and-white hen by Dekaras' side piped
up.
“Really.”
“Am Saffron.” The other hen said.
“Pleased to meet ya.” Andorel replied. “I'm Andorel, and this is my pal, Vaddy. He's a miserable bugger but he's got a heart of gold.”
Dekaras opened his mouth to object, but was unable to decide which of the two descriptions of himself he wished to object to first. Instead, he whispered to Andorel again. “Andorel, what are those two chickens doing here?”
Andorel gave him a long hard look in the darkness of the coup. “Are you thick or what, Vaddy?”
“What do you mean by that?” Dekaras snapped bad temperedly. “They fancy us, you idiot! Ain't it obvious? Jackie's been followin' you about all day.”
“Don't be ridiculous! As if that is even remotely plausible. Need I remind you that we are transformed humans, and thus unlikely to be attractive to any normal chicken?”
“So? They're humans too. Saffron told me so.”
“So,” Dekaras said, in a determinedly level voice. “I am a human who has been turned into a rooster, and I now find myself an object of attraction to a hen that was also once a human who wishes to show her level of affection to me by preening my itchy neck.”
“Yeah.” Andorel replied, and then sighed. “What I want to know is, why do you always get the looker?”
Dekaras looked at the black-and-white hen sitting next to him. She looked back, her head cocked to the side, and her eyes remained fixed attentively upon him, roaming back and forth with practised appreciation.
“Pretty tail...” she crooned. “You want me preen you now?”
“No thank you!” the assassin hurriedly said, and edged away sideways in order to keep her from trying to do so anyway. “Truly, it isn't necessary.”
“Me not mind - me like you. Me happy preen you all over.” She edged along after him, gazing into his eyes. “Only preen those me like.”
Saffron nodded, and temporarily ceased playfully nibbling on Andorel's headcrest. The big rooster sighed with disappointment. “That true. She peck those she not like, real hard.”
“Peck them in soft spots!” Jackie agreed. “Make them mush.”
“It fun,” Saffron clucked. “This one stupid hen, she try pick fight once over fat worm. She scream lots then, bleed lots, but lots quiet since.”
“But me like you,” Jackie assured. “Will be nice.”
“I am...happy to hear that,” Dekaras said, and tried edging yet a little further away from her without being too obvious about it. Unfortunately that meant he bumped into Andorel who promptly nudged back with great enthusiasm and sent him staggering a few steps back in the other direction, until he wound up beak to beak with the lovelorn hen.
“Go for it, mate!” the former half-orc suggested. Saffron was leaning her head tenderly against his neck, clucking softly.
“Look,”Dekaras said, as carefully as he could, “I...appreciate the thought, but you see, I could not possibly engage in any sort of preening activity, even though I am certain you mean it in a perfectly innocent way. You see, there is a...well...special person and she would not be happy about any such thing.”
Jackie thought about this for a moment. “She human or chicken?”
“What? Human, of course.”
“Then it not matter,” the hen said in a bright and happy voice. “She
no can use you now anyway. Not unless she really kinky.”
Andorel made a low clucking noise that Dekaras realised was a laugh.” She's got a point there.” He paused for thought. “Is she that kinky?”
“No!”
“Shame. Guess we'll just haveta be turned back then.”
“If you remember, that was what we had planned from the start!” Dekaras said hotly.
“Oh...yeah.” Andorel replied absently. “I guess we do have to go back...sometime.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you are enjoying being a rooster?”
“Well, there's grubs as big as yer head and no one minds you eatin' them, we don't need to pay for nothin', and,” Andorel looked at Saffron, who was currently preening one side of his neck, “Who can resist all these hot chicks?”
