#and the little foot scritches and the fluffing feathers and rhrthrhrhjhfbtsjhergbjshegbshjebgjhsgbkjahtrfbLYHAJYjkbaewjfbrajwhefbvvajwhevtg

[wr3nns]

Instantly became the bubbliest person on this side of the moon. The grin on my face was SO grin. So very smiley. Fanning myself and kicking my feet this is ADORABLE.

I FOUND IT GUYS I SPENT HALF AN HOUR LOOKING FOR THIS VIDEO AND ITS HERE

[keelywolfe]

Drabble: Cooped Up (baon)

Summary: Having your leg in a cast can make for a foul (fowl?) mood.

Tags:  Spicyhoney, Established Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Chickens!

Notes:  Anytime I'm down, I seem to lean on a chicken drabble to cheer me up. Hopefully it works for Edge, too.

Part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

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Read it on AO3

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Read it here!

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“After spending the entire week scolding me to stay on the sofa, now suddenly you want me mobile?” Edge carefully maneuvered through the sliding glass door on his crutches out to the back porch. The entire patio was shoveled free of snow, not a single patch of ice lingering to slip him up.

Stretch only looked at him with the purest mock indignance he could muster as he closed the door behind them. “scolding? ‘scuse me, i think what you meant to say was i’ve been gently but firmly encouraging you to follow the doctor’s orders.”

“I see,” Edge settled into one of the cleared off chairs with a grunt, “it only becomes scolding when I’m the one who does it.”

“now you’ve got it, thanks for coming to my tedtalk.”

Edge allowed Stretch to fuss over him, setting his crutches to the side and carefully propping his foot on a low footstool brought out from their living room.

Normally that sort of coddling would aggravate him, but Edge’s irritation at the fretting ended when it dawned on him that Stretch likely needed this. He was the one injured, true, but Stretch hardly came through the event unscathed. Humoring him a little cost Edge nothing but perhaps a little stubborn pride and if he couldn’t spare that for the one he loved, then perhaps he needed to reorganize his priorities.

It made it much easier to allow Stretch to help even though his foot wasn’t paining him much at all. The residual healing magic was doing its work and while Toriel might still want to offer uncomfortable gratitude over saving her child, Edge considered any debt well and truly paid. He’d seen the damage beforehand and there was little doubt that if she hadn’t begun healing him almost immediately, he would have lost the leg.

That was an observation he planned to keep to himself.

His current lack of pain gave him hope that his checkup would allow for them to replace this bulky plaster cast with a walking one and after that perhaps he’d be getting to work on his new normal, which the doctor was certain would only be a little scarring and not so much as a limp to hold him back. Time would tell, there was no point in borrowing any trouble.

“And why are we out here?” With the gray skies overhead, it was hardly a welcoming day.

“‘cause you’re going bug fuck inside,” Stretch said frankly. He tucked his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “i can see it in your eye lights. thought maybe a change of scenery would help. out here we can at least sit with the ladies a while.”

The ladies in question were at the coop door already and growing louder by the minute. They didn’t spend as much time outside in the winter as they did summertime, mostly because Stretch wasn’t able to sit with them as long in the cold. But the day was a balmy enough one for the season and he could see from here that all of them were fluffed up and ready to spend a little time in the chill.

“okay, okay, calm down,” Stretch laughed. “He can’t exactly run away.” He shortcutted over to open the coop gate and three chickens came galloping out towards him. Edge was already braced for a lapful of feathery adoration when suddenly their mad dash slowed, then stopped, all three hens milling around in confusion.

“that’s new,” Stretch frowned. He walked over to where they’d stopped and crouched down, running a hand down Noodle’s back. “what’s up, guys, normally he can’t keep you away.”

But none of them came closer and Edge was struck with an incongruous twinge of hurt; the chickens had adored him from the beginning, what could possibly—?

Nugget resumed the approach first, creeping warily closer. The moment she was in range, she began pecking furiously at Edge’s cast, attacking it with all the ferocity her tiny body could muster.

“huh,” Stretch’s mouth twisted wryly, “guess your new leg apparel has them on edge.”

“Hilarious,” Edge said dryly. He reached down and clicked his tongue softly. It seemed Nugget’s wariness wasn’t a match for her obsessive affection. She hopped easily into Edge’s lap, crooning softly as he stroked her.

That was enough for the other two. Noodle was next to scramble up, giving the cast a beady-eyed look before hopping into his lap, which left Dumpling on the ground, cackling her distress at not being able to join the others.

“sorry, chickie, his lap has a two bird limit.” Stretch sat and patted his own lap and Dumpling grudgingly went to him, her sulking vanishing as Stretch gave her gentle scritches.

Edge gentle stroked their glossy feathers while both tried to crowd in closer, demanding an equal share of petting. He couldn’t keep from smiling faintly at their antics. The day was grayish and cold, their breath steaming in the chilly air, but Stretch was right.

A change of scenery did make for a better mood.

-finis-

[maheeia]

stay with me

A gentle breeze and the sunlight flooding through the leaves of familiar trees was all Mona needed to ease her mind.

The bard was ever the excitable one— that was nothing to be questioned. Anyone who’d ever met her for longer than 5 minutes was able to tell as much. She was restless, constantly moving, ready to go at the drop of a hat. But most people weren’t privy to one of the few things in the realm that did slow her down-- writing music.

It was one of her more common hobbies, but one she kept quiet-- partly out of embarrassment, partly because she didn’t really think anyone would care. Only two people have proved her wrong of that so far-- and it was funny, because those two people actually happened to be rather similar.

But she was here to clear her mind, she reminded herself. To get on a mental tangent like that would be detrimental to the goal of her coming all the way out here-- she came here for quiet, for peace. It was the easiest environment for her to work in, so she’d milk the quiet daylight for all she could.

Nimble fingers glided over the strings of her lyre, forming a slow but practiced melody that cut through the quiet of the wood around her. She rested with her back against her chocobo, who was currently resting and listening to the sounds of nature just as she was. They both were used to this-- routine as always, whenever she got sudden inspiration.

Her sudden inspiration today had been a certain sentence she couldn’t get out of her head. So she’d been repeating it, over and over for the past half a bell now-- perhaps hoping she’d find a beat in the words further than she’d already worked out. The words tumbled from her lips slowly, as if she was mindlessly repeating a mantra;

“Stay with me…”

It was simple, but it’d stuck with her. She wasn’t really sure where she’d gotten it from, but it felt familiar-- and she had a feeling that frustration was part of the reason more lyrics wouldn’t come to her. She had a few melodies simply scribbled in her journal that she could apply it to, but she had to find the right one, and to find the right one meant finding the right words. Or… at least a few of them.

Absentmindedly, she stared at the brush of the forest floor, letting her mind wander. Maybe if she just… started to ramble about what was on her mind, then...

“I don’t know where this is gonna go… but in this moment… all I... know…”

For a second, Mona hadn’t even realized that she said anything. But once she registered it, recognition lit up her eyes almost instantly. She sat up quickly from her previous lounging position, startling Marshmallow a bit-- he let out a coo of concern, but quickly let her be once he realized that everything was fine.

“I don’t know where this is gonna go…” she repeated in a whisper, flipping through the pages frantically as she tried to find a specific melody she’d been working on among the various scribbles. Laying her journal open on the ground in front of her, she pulled her abused quill and small pot of ink from her thigh satchel, setting herself up as quickly as possible to scribble the lyrics into a blank spot below the notes.

Once finished, she stared at the mostly blank page thoughtfully, leaning back slowly and retrieving her lyre from the ground beside her. She strummed a few notes from the page, trying to connect the dots she had laid out before her. She was onto something, she felt it-- she just needed to make it… comprehensible.

For the next few bells, various notes from her lyre and sweet lyrics would tumble from her lips, filling the air with the images and ideas from her mind that she couldn’t otherwise convey. Though the creative process was a steady river once it began, she was only able to churn out a few more lines of her song before she grew restless, as she was known to do.

The sun was beginning to set now-- shadows cast over the paper she wrote upon, and the light was fading fast. It was probably for the best that she stopped now; she’d become quite burned out, and knew that if she continued, she wouldn’t like the end product. Reluctantly, she began to pack up her miniature camp in front of that sturdy, reliable tree that she’d come to know so well. In a brief thought, she remarked that it probably knew more of her secrets than she herself did.

Once she stood, Marshmallow got the hint that it was time to go and followed suit, fluffing his feathers dramatically as his owner prepared to leave. She safely packed her lyre back into her bag and made sure her inkwell was closed tight before returning it to its rightful place, feeling her mind slowly drift from the tunnel vision she’d previously been caught in.

A hand reached out to grab her chocobo’s saddle, foot lifting confidently onto the step to hoist herself into place atop his back. She still held her journal, reviewing the lyrics she’d made as she prepared to head off. Softly, under her breath, she sang it back to herself in the fullest form she could, humming between the bits that she hadn’t quite figured out yet.

“Stay with me…” she mumbled softly to herself, rubbing the edge of the page as she did. “Walk with me… hmm-hmm... walk with me…”

Her voice carried as she grew a bit louder, a bit more confident. “I can see you there… with the city lights… hmm hm-hm, bright blue eyes.... I can breathe you in…

“I’m not sure what this is gonna be… but with my eyes closed… all I see… is the skyline… through the window… the moon… above you… and the… streets… below…”

As she continued, she suddenly felt herself grow quieter, voice drifting off into the fading light. Something about the lyrics bothered her, but--... she couldn’t quite figure it out. Slowly, peachy eyes scanned over the page and brows furrowed in confusion as she attempted to spot what felt off. When she finally did, she repeated the lyric quietly under her breath, nearly a whisper.

“Bright… blue… eyes…”

Bright blue eyes.

Bright blue eyes?

Where did that come from?

As the woman raked her thoughts to try and find the source of such a lyric, she flipped the pages and read the other lyrics curiously. It took a few minutes, but eventually, the threads in her mind finally connected, and she found herself with a sudden epiphany. Her eyes widened at the page, lips parting a little in surprise as her gaze raised from the page and instead locked onto the tree behind her chocobo.

Marshmallow let out a “kweh” of protest at his owner for taking so much time to leave, bumping his beak against her head roughly, as if to snap her out of it. However, she simply continued to stare for a while longer, seemingly frozen in place.

“Ohhh… Mallie…” Mona whispered her companion’s nickname softly, continuing her staring contest with the tree as she reached absentmindedly to scritch his head. The longer she thought about it, the more it began to sink in-- she simply shook her head, eyes staring blankly into the bark.

“I’m in big… big fucking trouble.”