blue canary in the outlet by the light switch

[burntvideocassette]

Who: (Blue) Jay Merrick + You
Where: Media club + the woods behind the gym
When: August 3rd to 6th
Rating: PG (May change)
Summary: This half-plucked blue jay may not be the greatest student, but he's got interests beyond the classroom.
The Story:

Media Club:

Wherever he ends up getting into college, Jay's going to major in film. That's basically a given, though it's not because because he's a brilliant filmmaker. He likes movies, sure, and he likes learning the minutiae that go into making them. It's not exactly a passion, but it's something, and it's adjacent to his other interests.

There isn't a major in paranormal research, though--he checked--so his best chance at college prep is within the school's media club.

They're showing off their personal projects this week. Jay's got a sharpie-marked DVD under his wing. Anybody like amateur documentaries?

The Woods:

The game's already over, and the lights on the athletic field have been turned off. Nobody in their right mind would still be here this late on a school night, no matter how many questions they had for their AP physics teacher.

Jay's heard rumors, though, stories about people in the classrooms adjacent the woods seeing a too-tall silhouette between the trees. Some people say it's just a malformed tree trunk. Others say it's a human. Still others say it looks more like a water-bird, like some kind of crane, though it's taller than any crane they've ever met. Paler, too, with bleach-white feathers standing out against the leaves.

Whatever it is, Jay intends to get it on film.

Comments

Woods

[ssmisery]

[On this particular excursion, we will give Jay this much credit: the bird he's come across is a wader, though she's nowhere near tall enough to be even an ordinary crane. This cute little sandpiper is a semi-recent transfer student, and therefore has as much business being out here as he does, really. Woodlands are public property. There's nothing suspicious about that. If anything is wrong with this picture, in fact, it's the part about barging in on someone who was trying to spend some time alone.

So, anyway, Jay finds this girl out in the woods in the middle of the night with a shovel, staring at him in the dark like HE'S the asshole.]

Don't you knock?

[burntvideocassette]

[What the actual long-legged hell.]

[Jay doesn't take off screaming, but he does the next worst thing; he freezes in place, instinct puffing his feathers up like the world's scraggliest pinecone.]

[A shovel? Is she burying something?]

[Wait, shit, is he next?]

Don't...? [It takes him a full ten seconds for her words to sink in.] Wait, there's no...there's no door.

[Great going. That'll definitely keep you from being filleted alive.]

[At least if he gets killed, the proof will be on camera.]

[ssmisery]

There are trees, aren't there? You can knock on wood.

[Whatever that even means, on the bright side, she still sounds annoyed on the level of "you interrupted my book" rather than the level of "time to eliminate a witness". Then again, it's not like calm people can't be dangerous, or terrifying. But at least she's bothering to talk at all, right?]

[burntvideocassette]

[Is that a...pun?]

[Did the strange girl standing around in the middle of the woods with a goddamn shovel just make a pun?]

S...sorry, what--?

[Words, Jay. Think about them before you open your beak.]

[When he finally manages to string together a coherent sentence, it's a little more forceful than he intends.]

What're you doing out here?

[ssmisery]

[The sad thing is that we may never know whether she made that pun on purpose or had a genuine misunderstanding. This line of inquiry doesn't get a response quite as immediately. Lapis shifts the shovel in her wings, which probably doesn't have to be a threatening gesture, people shift position all the time, before answering with a touch more strain under her indignation.]

What're YOU doing out here?

[burntvideocassette]

[Jay steps back, feathers ruffled.]

Getting...

[Getting footage of that thing he and some of his classmates saw out the window, but he can't exactly say that.]

[Especially if that thing turns out to have been her.]

Getting some, uh, some b-roll. For a project. But that's not--What, are you burying something?

[ssmisery]

Who says I'm burying evidence?

[Nobody said that. There's dirt on the shovel, too, although whether that's actually discernible is a question for the exact appointment of Jay's equipment and the exact capabilities of uplifted diurnal bird eyes. Speaking of which.]

And what kind of project can you possibly have out here? There's nothing to see!

[burntvideocassette]

Who--?

[Jay gestures mutely at her. Who says? Really?]

There's not nothing, I mean, there's...

[Again, Jay holds out a wing, to indicate the scene in front of him.]

[ssmisery]

[Her dark little eyes narrow, which maybe isn't the best idea when visibility is already poor, but whatever.]

I'm not your project.

[burntvideocassette]

Well--well, maybe not, but--

[He dips his head, but his voice is persistent. He's not convinced.]

[It's not impossible. As much as he'd love to be the guy who produces undeniable proof of the supernatural, it'd be stupid to ignore the possibility that there could be a more straightforward explanation for all this.]

But, I mean, are you out here during the day? Like, during classes?

[That's when the others saw it. That's when he saw it, even if the memory's fuzzy.]

[ssmisery]

What? No. I go to class like everyone else, ask anyone.

[Admittedly, she's new enough, and asocial enough, that the general school populace probably doesn't know her well. But St. Pigeonation's probably gets weird transfer students on like a weekly basis, they're used to it. She exists in class and is still slightly easier to get a 'hello' out of than that one French kid.

Besides, it's not like she goes out burying evidence routinely. Who even has that much evidence in the first place?!]

[burntvideocassette]

[And he definitely will, once this is all over.]

Then what's...?

[He tilts his head, gesturing toward the disturbed dirt, and then the shovel.]

[Maybe this isn't the mystery he went looking for, but it's a mystery nonetheless. Hopefully it isn't the kind of mystery they'll be talking about on the forums once they notice his account's gone dark for a couple weeks. Not exactly the ideal way to become famous on the internet.]

I'm missing all these anybirdies and everybirdies, being a bird is hard

[ssmisery]

[There is a long, awkward pause before she answers.]

...A project.

[She doesn't even try to make the lie sound convincing. It's flat, dry, almost sarcastic; practically a dare to call her out, instead.]

[burntvideocassette]

[It takes a second for Jay to catch what she did there.]

Sure, right.

[He knocks his head into the tip of his wing, in the world's most halfassed facepalm.]

Earth Science?

[ssmisery]

[Dismissively:] Sure, what other kind would it be?

[It is also not clear whether Lapis understood that joke either. She seems to be accepting his face-value acceptance at face value, anyway, and just like that the tension drops a bit, or maybe she just can't be bothered to keep maintaining it. With impressive ease for someone with wings, and maybe for someone without, Lapis hefts the shovel onto her shoulder, and points her beak askew past Jay out into the dark.]

Let's just get out of here already. This place kinda sucks.

[burntvideocassette]

[Is she serious>?]

Wait--wait, can--? Sure, yeah, this place sucks, but can I at least see what's...?

[He gestures to the hole.]

[If it's seriously just a project, then she shouldn't have any problem showing it to him, right?]

there, I got one

[ssmisery]

What would be the point of burying it if I just let anybirdie dig it right back up?

[Like, at least pretend to respect her obvious secrecy, c'mon.]

[burntvideocassette]

Not, like, anybirdie, just, like...one birdie.

[He cranes (har-har) his neck to try and catch a glimpse of whatever it is.]

[ssmisery]

Too bad. You don't even have a shovel.

[burntvideocassette]

[Jay has no concept of boundaries when it comes to a tantalizing mystery.]

I--I mean, I could come back. With a shovel. Or, like, a trowel, at least.

[ssmisery]

You could try.

[She doesn't even sound perturbed about the prospect. Lapis spreads the wing that isn't holding her shovel, fanning it towards Jay's face, not so much in an attempt to block his view as in a sort of herding gesture to start funneling him away. Whether he comes back later or not, she still wants to get them both out of here for right now, apparently.]

[burntvideocassette]

I could, I--

[And then there's a wing in his face, just gently...herding him away from the location of interest.]

[And despite himself, Jay deflates, allowing himself to be herded.]

I could.

[It's muttered, embarrassed. He's facing entirely the wrong direction to start digging up the hole, even if he did have his own shovel.]

[ssmisery]

Yeah, have fun trying to find this exact spot again. Can you even see anything right now? I thought most of you guys didn't do darkness.

[She says as if she finds the darkness personally insulting, or perhaps feels personally betrayed by Jay being out here anyway. Actually, does she know where they're going either?

Spoilers: no she does not. But, like, heading back the way he came has to go somewhere, right?]

[burntvideocassette]

We don't.

[He tilts his head, suddenly as smug as a loser like him can manage to be.]

[With one foot, he taps at the chest cam.]

What we do is infrared night vision.

[ssmisery]

[Okay, buddy, whatever makes you feel good about yourself for a moment. Lapis hesitates again, knocked surprisingly off-balance by that, but shakes her head and remains determined to keep ushering them away.]

Of course. Why wouldn't you.