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When the other Deep Woods female butted in and started to scold the clumsy bard Granny backed down. It was only proper to let her handle Birch and make sure he made it in time. Linnéa, known as Granny to all her students, shook her head. She had little patience with chicks who hopped around as if they had their heads among the treetops, and she had even less patience for graduated Sentinels that acted like that.

"Aww..." Birch said as the female herded him away, "Not even a piece of dried apple?"

"You can have your snack afterwards," Linnéa said sternly, giving him her most terrifying glare, "And tell your mother that Granny wants a word with her if you see her."

His mother had been a good student, but she must have had a spot of bad luck with that son. She watched them fly before turning to the young Snow female again.

"You didn't happen to see which way my Rose went in all the commotion," she asked in a soft voice that sounded nothing like the one she had used when lecturing Birch, "I'm afraid I only heard her panic and flee, poor thing."
((tell me if I go too far with the colours, I tend to get carried away and I don't want to be annoying))

((I don't mind as long as it's not such a light colour that it almost blends into the white background, and I have to highlight it to read. *is lazy*))

"No! No time, no time!" Tousled herded the bright bard into the air and fell in behind him, feeling a peculiar buzzing at the back of her head that made it difficult to concentrate, so she made sure to keep the bright green-and-yellow tailfeathers in her view while she flew, hardly even noticing the other sentinels travelling through the airspace before they whooshed past above or below her.

The buzzing had intensified by the time they came down for a landing, and she hit the bark with an unpleasantly jarring thud, staggering a few steps as several of her cleverly hidden berries scattered out around her. She righted herself and looked at the spilt berries, wanting to pick them up again, but the image swam slightly before her eyes so she closed them for a moment. Ear tufts pressed back against her skull and swaying slightly where she sat, Tousled slowly began to fight back the buzzing noise and the small waves of nausea that kept rising in her throat.

Raine blinked, seeming to come out of a daze. Huh? Where the hoot was she? And what had just happened? Something about Hazel and a Skurri...
Slowly and fuzzily, the recent events started to float back to her. Oh dear, she must have had another one of her anxiety-induced panic attacks.
"Yes, yes, quite a shame..." She paused, before nodding amiably at the two Sentinels. "It's a great pleasure to meet you, too. I'm Raine by the way, and this little rascal is my companion, Hazel." After another lengthy silence, debating if it would be appropriate to joke, she chuckled softly. "It seems that there are two Hazels at this gathering, in different shapes though they might be. Isn't that quite the funny coincidence?"

((EDIT: Omigod...is anyone a medic? *stares at Tousled*))

Tousled felt something soft press up close to her and gratefully leaned against it. Birch's voice came to her as if from a great distance, but seemed to grow closer as the buzzing slowly faded away.

"N-No," she stammered, and her voice seemed to echo a bit in her head, even though she was barely whispering. "I just... feel a bit strange"

It was nice not having to support her own weight as much, and the thing that she was leaning against was soft and comfortable. It reminded her of being brooded by a minder and inspired her with a very pleasant feeling of being hidden, safe. The buzzing faded away and the sounds of the world around her came back.

She blinked as if she had been dozing off, and instinctively looked over to see what she was leaning against - meeting Birch's eyes at a much closer distance than she had expected. She blinked again, then carefully leaned back to stand entirely on her own two feet. Once all of her weight was off him, she allowed a ripple of embarrassment to pass through her feathers and tried to do her best to hide it by sending the bard a grateful smile.

"Oh my... thank you... I don't... I really don't know what came over me. I'm so sorry about that... didn't mean to worry you, or anything." She reached down to preen a little, like she always did when she was too embarrassed to think, and saw all the berries that had spilled out onto the branch. "Oh dear! We should probably pick those up!"

Hazel was much calmer now, seeing Roth move a little. Poor thing, with only being around hatchlings and fledglings, most of whom were far too small to even think of eating him, this must have been so alarming. It looked like the poor owner of the martes was having just as bad a time of it though...oh wait, now she seemed alright.

"Indeed, funny that his name would be the same." She patted the martes, hopping from him to settle at Liam's side again, putting her own wing over his atop Roth. "A pleasure to meet you Raine, regardless of the circumstances."

Chase decided to return to the banquet. He vaguely remembered hearing a worried female’s voice showing some concern about her missing parus. It couldn’t be the parus that Hazel had bumped into… no, this parus was with her owner until the bard crashed in. He wondered if he could help the search for the companion. The pain on is right wing was perfectible endurable so either he was getting used to it or the wing was getting better by itself. He dropped gently on the exact same spot he had previously been and looked at huge number of Sentinels surrounding the food display. It would take some time a whole lot of ”excuse me”s to get anywhere near the middle. He hasn’t that hungry anymore.

Stretching his elegant wings and ruffling his feathers, the silvery-white sentinel let out a small sigh of pleasure. Having enjoyed the Brigadier's story in the company of close relatives -- and he considered it a privilege to hear such words straight from the Brigadier himself -- he decided it was time to join the festivities. This was what he wanted after all. Quitting the Rangers was a hard choice. He enjoyed his life as a ranger; the freedom, the travel, the thrill. Even with all its perks, he missed being with other sentinels. It was probably for the best that he’d become a watcher just before the Longest Night and thought of it as a great opportunity to meet new sentinels after his time in seclusion.

After excusing himself, he flapped his wings and glided gingerly towards the crowd, performing a spectacular, yet totally unnecessary, double-spiral before he landed. There was quite commotion near the banquet just moments before and the sentinels were lively with chatter. Silverwing greeted everyone he met with a hoot as he made his way to the food, determined to get his share -- so determined in fact, that he didn’t notice an outstretched wing, lined with snowy-white feathers, and ran straight into it.