Dawn Chorus (Proxies x Reader)

Three Questions

"You were a rather terrible guest the first time," she continues, "but I guess it can't be helped when you hang out with pests. No one was around to teach you appropriate manners."

She opens her fat beak to keep speaking when the hunk of plaster and wood cracks against her chest. It crumbles too easily to quell the anger heaving my chest or rattling the arm I used to hurl the debris at her. Underneath my skin starts to itch and curl.

"Watch your mouth," I say in such an extreme snarl the words are nearly indecipherable in the animalistic sound.

The air flares with heat and the odor of sulfur grows thicker. I taste ash on my tongue. Ambrosia's claws scrape along the wood as she drags her foot forward, claws clicking daintily at the end of her step. She clicks her tongue against her beak, sneering down at me.

"That's no way to treat your elders," she scolds. "You are an improper, feral little--"

The vitriol rises in her voice on each word, climbing to a halt as the shadows begin to twist and chitter and glow. Small creatures roil like boiling water. Walls Crack. Lights hum and flicker on ahead, no bulb or wire needed to produce them. The entire house begins to stir and cry. Ambrosia pauses her next step forward. Jerking her head up, she begins a sweep over her home with her sharp, bird gaze. Her feathers ruffle and she puffs up, shifting from foot to foot. Her eyes snap towards me, pupils shrinking to pinpricks then blowing wide, nearly turning her entire eye the hazy shade again.

"Directionless, untrained young lady," she says much more gently. "You run with mice because a cat told you too."

"They aren't--"

"Calm down," she coos, cutting me off. "I mean no offense. It's simply hard to look at things so fragile, so short lived, and running rampant in life and after life and see anything but a nuisance. I'll be...gentler in my language about your pets. You should be kinder too, if you hope to get anything you want."

I grit my teeth and bite my tongue, let my jaw groan in the force I put it under. Tension is forced from my shoulders and spine, leaving my posture less hostile. I'll store it all in my jaw for now, keep my mouth behaved.

"Why did you want me here?" I ask with as much neutrality as I can muster.

Sensing a shift in the room, Ambrosia begins walking again, starting a small circle around me. Her hips graze toppled shelves or bump into the wall as she tries to keep close but not too close. Her hair is a light in of itself in the darkness of the house. The faint white glow a beacon around her beautiful, near-human face.

"So you can pick up your friends, of course. I have no desire to collect new pets to feed and care for, especially not from that thing," she says, pronouncing thing with a hiss.

"Why without Toby?"

"So I wouldn't be hit with another blade. It doesn't hurt but it still hurts. I'm sure you understand." Her gaze runs over my arm.

Her eyes moving as if she can see despite the milkiness makes me uneasy. I'm not sure if she is blind and going through practiced motion or if it is coincidence guiding her eyes. Maybe she can see, and the milkiness is some other trait. I grip my arm in its sling anyways, tug lightly to remind myself of the pain that hides there. Human pain. She continues to circle in near silence. When a tail feather nearly grazes my leg, she stumbles, without grace, away from me. Neither of us acknowledge this behavior.

I won't beg for an explanation. I'm as willing, if not more than her, to simply wait. She readjusts her wings and stops her circling.

"I'd like to make a deal," she says. "One that will determine what you walk out with and the state the pes--pets will be in when they leave."