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Happy and content, Tousled begun preening herself as surreptitiously as she could. It was direly needed, but she really didn't want to risk disturbing Char again. As always, the old Bard's storyteller voice worked its way right in under her feathers and left the most vivid and exciting images in her head. All this and Birch's reassuring closeness by her side made her so distracted that for a moment she didn't notice that Chase's big shape was missing on her other side.

She looked up, almost in panic for a little while, afraid that she might have finally said or done something that made the Shadow regret all his support and kindness. To find him sitting further back, next to Fjord, made her feel slightly better, seeing that he hadn't moved very far away at least, but her chest still felt unpleasantly constricted. He had been so very nice to her, and she really wasn't used to that from sentinels that she did not know, and she wanted so much to have a chance to thank him, that she really felt rather forlorn now that he seemed to want to distance himself from her.

She sought Chase's eyes, hoping to get some sort of clue as to his feelings or intentions, debating to herself whether or not to break the stillness and risk Char's - and maybe Birch's - annoyance just to get a chance to say the things that she wanted to tell him before he might decide to leave altogether. She hoped not. But he was a polite sentinel, that much she had understood. He probably wouldn't leave right in the middle of a performance.

But still... she wanted to make sure.

Birch preened his chest feathers briefly, and found the familiar motions oddly comforting.

The open... Birch fluffed up and sleeked down in a shudder as he was reminded of another story, one he heard as a fledgling. He thought it might have been the first time he saw a bard perform and it was a very powerful moment. It was only a fledgling story, one of many about Mudbeak, but it had cured him of every desire to follow in his fathers wing beats. The story the bard had told was the gruesome tale about Mudbeak and the poppies, where her fascination for the red flowers led her to the open and subsequently to an untimely end. Birch had heard the tale from his fellow fledglings without finding it very scary, but that bard had been good enough to give anyone ground fright.

Working as a gatherer like his father would probably not have worked out for many reasons, but Birch always remembered Mudbeak and the poppies as the reason he dropped his gatherer dream and started to follow bards around.

"Oh, that was lovely..." Fjord commented with a slight smile as Char bowed, though deep beneath his feathers he was still bothered by the fact that the old bard spoke of a sentinel that actually won against the Sky Fiend. that wasn't some sort of ideal that he felt needed to be instilled in the minds of youngsters. He had not been a terribly curious thing as a fledgling, he never had the urge to fly up into the Above to see what it was like, but it was surely a place of intrigue for many.

"Lovely! Lovely! Good, good, many much fun." Feather echoed Fjord's words and added a few scattered ones of his own before he ducked his head and preened an ebony wing.

Tousled fluffed happily, and spent a little time preening the feathers back into place again. She knew as well as any other that no one braved the sky fiend and lived, but stories were stories, and sometimes a happy ending, no matter how unthinkable in real life, was exactly what a good story needed.

She looked up in surprise when she heard Chase speak her name, and instantly fluffed again. He had come to her! Somehow, the fact that she hadn't had to seek out the large Shadow herself made her feel really happy. It was the sort of reassurance that she had needed ever since he had left her side at the beginning of Char's tale. A bright smile usurped her face before she had a chance of keeping it in check, and she buried her beak in her chest feathers for a moment in embarrassment.

"Oh, Chase, oh..." she took a few uncertain steps towards him, as if hoping to hold him in place for a little while longer. "I, uh, I wanted to say that... um... I... I hope we do meet again. And..." To her own surprise, she found that the words waiting in the curve of her beak were 'will you be my friend?' and she resolutely clamped down on them. What a childish, silly thing to say!

"... Um..." the little crafter looked up at Chase's blue eyes and compromised with herself. She said the other thing that she had meant to say, and with a sincerity that almost embarrassed her all over again: "...Thank you. For... for not judging me. It... meant a lot to me. Um. So... thank you." She cleared her throat and made herself sound a bit less serious, and more cheerful. "I hope we meet again!"

Birch could only agree in the general praise for Char's story.

"Excellent tale indeed."

As Chase approached he tried to nod politely to the shadow, but the end result was more like an odd mix between a stiff nod and a twitch. From Tousled's response he had figured out that the other male was probably not the cause of the uncomfortable tension before, but Birch couldn't just ignore his first impression. The shadow male made him uneasy and he wasn't willing to trust him just yet.

He opened his beak to say some polite parting words to Chase (for Tousled's sake at least) but Sequoia's outburst interrupted him. Birch stared at the furious Artisan, beak agape, and at a loss for words.

Chase felt the cold stare of the bard run through him and his inner child rebelled inside him against the unfairness of it all. A silent moan briefly left his eyes (‘It wasn’t me!’, the bright blue gaze seemed to say) but he quickly perked up at Tousled’s words. Eartufts twitching cheerfully, he bowed as low as he could without touching the bark and looked up at the female, beak opening in a slightly mischievous smile.

“I’m sure we will. And if we don’t, I’ll make sure to find you! But… I don’t really know where you live…” Eyeing Birch’s talons for an instant, again he feared to be trespassing on another Sentinel’s turf but he couldn’t leave Tousled without making sure he got his feelings across. As he lifted himself up to his full height, he waited expectantly for the words that never left Birch’s beak, ready to clear any sort of misunderstanding he might have caused.

Sequoia’s sudden outburst and departure left him wide-eyed with astonishment. He watched the aberrant bard in silence for a few moments until the words returned to him.
“I guess we’re all a bit edgy, today…” he joked quietly before his voice turned abruptly grave. “Family tragedy, perhaps…? I don’t think it was personal, Fjord…” He watched as the colorful Sentinel disappeared in the distance and his mind wandered softly to his own fledgling years, old times flashing before him. The fear of losing his mother, a brave scout that constantly defied the heights, brought bitter memories to his heart. The colorful male’s reaction was probably not unfounded.

There were many sore spots being prickled tonight. Some in a rather intentional way while others… quite the opposite.

The location of Tousled's tree was no big secret, but Birch had not known much about it. He felt an unwilling gratefulness towards Chase for asking and giving him a better idea of where she could be found when she wasn't here at the theatre. A willow... Willows were nice.

In the wake of the Artisan's sudden departure Birch could finally channel his lingering grumpiness towards something else than the Shadow male.

"Extremely rude," he agreed, "I wonder what crawled up his vent and died to make him that irritable. Family tragedy or not... I think he was overreacting."

The above was dangerous, accidents happened. Everyone knew that and most had to deal with it at one point or another. Birch could think of one or two close to him who had disappeared this year alone. His favourite cousin was one of them, but he didn't throw a fit just because of a fairy tale. Birch's feathers rose in annoyance as he saw how the outburst affected his friends and he moved closer to Fjord.

"It's our duty to tell what happened, remember," he whispered to Fjord, "Bards preserve history. It's just as important as entertaining, first thing I learned as a bard. You did nothing wrong."

He wasn't entirely comfortable discussing his initiation as a bard and that was why he was whispering. The songs bards sang to each other to learn and to remember their purpose were not something that was discussed among non-bards. Still, he was pretty sure that Fjord would recognise and remember the subtle reference to the first song every bard had to learn, and he was pretty sure the others wouldn't.

“Don’t worry about it too much…” Chase said softly between mouthfuls of feathers, preening his chest carefully. “So I’ll look for you near the Sparkle River. All I have to do is ask for Tousled, the…” The male froze again ad chuckled. “… Forgive me, what is it that you do? I’m not sure I got your occupation and I daresay it will make my search needlessly harder.”

He was starting to reject the possibility of a romantic relationship between the deep woods female and Birch. After all, any male would probably have interfered by now. Still, considering the assumption had been perfectly valid just a moment before, the shadow wondered why he was being unusually pushy.