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[Cezanne Abella]

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“It’s huge,” Cezanne breathed.

Arahim didn’t answer, instead taking her arm and pulling her onto his gated patio like an unruly child as she stared, aghast, at the giant turkey. She pulled away and ran to the hedges to watch, a slow smile creeping across her face.

“Bees!” She shouted merrily as she cast Nature’s Fury, and watched the summoned swarm of angry insects give chase to the turkey.

“Bees?!” Arahim fumbled with his book and uttered the spell likewise. His swarm fumbled wide, avoiding the feathered beast altogether. “No, THAT way!” Arahim gestured frantically, as the bees turned and moved in toward him.

Cezanne gave a bubbling laugh, cut short by a squeak as the turkey poked his head inside and dragged her out through the hedges and off the patio. A barrage of squeals followed, punctuated by an occasional giggle, until Cezanne lay seemingly lifeless at the feet of the beast.

“Songbird! I thought we were just casting bees?!” Arahim started to leap the gate as the turkey lost interest in the ragdoll at his feet. As it shuffled off to look for more lively prey, Cezanne crawled away as fast as hands and knees would carry her.

Stumbling into the gate again, she grinned breathlessly. “I got dragged through the hedges and pecked.”

“Mhm.” Arahim looked over the turkey scratches on her forehead, and pulled a twig from her hair unceremoniously. “Only you could get dragged through hedges and pecked.”

“Those are all the rage this year in Nujel’m. You don’t like it?” Cezanne pouted, wiping blood from the scratches on her forehead as he examined the twig.

Arahim half smiled and looked back up at her. “Looks like hedge to me.”

[Arahim]

---

Arahim blinked three times in rapid succession like some shoddy actor mugging for the back row. His mouth worked soundlessly with the express intent to formulate some manner of speech. A warning, a cry of dismay...anything!

Nothing was forthcoming.

It was as if his every sense rebelled at the very idea of the scene laid out before him. So colossal the comedy, that they each refused to perform their set functions, and reconcile thought with sight.

An angry squabble.

A strangled shriek of surprise cut short.

The creak, and violent rustle of sundered hedge, followed very closely by a sudden flash of pale blue, and bare legs strangely parallel to the ground.

His Songbird had truly taken flight.

'Struggle' was too strong a word to hang upon the events thus far. Cezanne lay at a crazy angle, arms and legs splayed wide in the grass. Leaves still drifting in the unceremonious wake of her passage. Her dress was torn by her unexpected trip through the bush, and the resolute stamping of giant turkey talons. The feathered beast dancing atop her in time with the staccato rhythm of several quick, and agitated pecks.

His point made, the monstrous fowl left Cezanne for dead, or at least for well-mauled, and strutted away. A guttural gobbling sound left to serve as a future warning. The brevity of the violence, and its punctuated surcease was incredibly jarring.

Half helping, half dragging Cezanne back to the house, Arahim had still not found his voice.

Chastised, but clearly feeling wronged, she pointed to her scratched up forehead and proclaimed her outrage with a healthy dash of the obvious.

"Did you see that!? He pecked me! Right here!"

[Cezanne Abella]

---

“Lean back.” Arahim hovered over her with a warm, damp cloth, examining and cleaning the scratches on her forehead as she tried to comply with his commands.

“Ow.” Cezanne winced.

“I had no idea you were such a baby.” Amusement painted his features as he continued his work.

“You don’t have turkey scratches.” She winced again as he finished up. Outside, a guttural gobble echoed through the wood. Cezanne stood and marched over to the window, throwing it open wide and leaning out to look down, bracing her hands on the windowsill beneath her. “GO AWAY!!” Then, more quietly, “ Stupid turkey…”

Arahim chuckled as he poured two cups of tea and brought her one. “ You know, you’ll have to stay here tonight, now. He’s gotten a taste for you – he won’t go away so easily. Yelling out my window tells him one thing, but flying across the grass toward him says something entirely different.”

“He dragged me out there.”

"So you say…”

Cezanne grimaced.

“The bedroom door locks.” Arahim sipped his tea.

“The bedroom – that’s where he WANTS us to go.”

“Are you suggesting the turkey will be hiding in the bedroom?”

Cezanne looked smug. “He might. If I’m staying, I’m sleeping right here on the rug by the fire.”

Arahim looked down at the bearskin incredulously. “But the door locks….”

She cast a sidelong glance toward him. “No one has ever turned me down for a bearskin rug by the fire before.”

Arahim grinned. “You’ve never offered it to anyone.”

Cezanne furrowed her brow and insolently nibbled the browned edge off a shortbread cookie. “What if he comes for me in the middle of the night?”

Arahim thoughtfully washed down a cookie with his tea, then sighed. “Wake me, and usher me a safe distance away.”

[Arahim]

---

He rolled his neck slowly. Tensing, then relaxing his shoulders as he worked out the night's kinks and leftover stiffness.

For all of its soft, and tactile comfort, the bearskin rug near the fireplace was just that...skin and fur. There was no cushion or volume to it. And so, it was only slightly better than sleeping on the unyielding stone below.

His back and neck bore nagging testament to this newly discovered revelation.

The sleeping arrangements had been suggested, and implemented by Cezanne. Bolstered by her staunch refusal to head upstairs for safety reasons, or some such. Likely lent legitimacy by the lingering effects of her recent tussle with a tempermental, seasonal species of flightless bird, and the possibility that said bird could very well be lurking on the upper floors. Though she did concede that the bedroom could serve as a likely fallback position should the need arise, and said bird was actually on the lower floors.

In any case, Arahim had reservations about spending the night on the floor, however well decorated.

"No one has ever turned down sharing a bearskin rug with me," she pouted.

Arahim could not help but note the vague sense of amusement she betrayed at the cliched notion of the offer, yet in the end, he knew surely where he would sleep.

The rising sun fingered the glass of the room's windows with newspun gold, and edged the shallow shadows of foregone night towards the World's quiet corners to be forgotten.

Cezanne lay with a large white paw slung over her shoulder. The peach of his shirt she had appropriated as pajamas, bright against the white fur. The tiniest of smiles adorned her softly featured face. The sort of smile that hinted at a barely kept secret. The scratches on her forehead did nothing to mar the perfect picture she struck.

She had gathered, and then strewn the rug with every pillow, cushion, and blanket she could find. Undoubtedly taking her to venture upstairs in secret.

It seemed to Arahim that she made use of, or at least touched, every stitch of bedding all at once.

His Songbird had truly nested.

Rolling over with a sigh, she twisted a thick blue quilt onto herself, and nestled into a different pillow on Arahim's former side of the makeshift bed.

"Smells like you," she murmured drowsily.

"Shirt or pillow?" he asked quietly.

"Mhm."