The adventure continues…on another mountain in the mysterious world of native birds!

One – Maple

Warm molten-gold light spilled through every crack in the leaves. Delicate chirps echoed through the wood, wrapping around the enormous conifers and spiralling through the vines. The gentle sound of rushing water led to a wide, shallow stream, splitting directly between two large native Rimu trunks. The water was glass-clear, rushing over pebbles and watering the velvety moss and tree-roots that held the moist forest floor together. 

Ethereal ponamu-coloured birds, adorned each with unique, chainless necklaces, sat perched on the gingko branches and diving through the leaves. 

Nothing in the forest was as opal-white as the Tui tribe’s dazzling furballs, right on their long, arched necks. Nothing in the forest was as strange of a green as their luminescent olive-black plumage, peculiarly streaked by ultramarine blues and small, furry brown feathers.

The Tui tribe was a perfect example of ethereality. 

For two colours that would’ve otherwise clashed on any other insect, burnt orange swirls and stripes mixed with black happened to be a vibrant contrast to the dark greens of the forest. Monarch Butterflies, adorned with ethereal white spots along their delicate scallop-shaped wings, seemed almost otherworldly as they drifted from blossom to blossom. 

If I got to choose what insect I would be, it would be a butterfly, Princess Mapleleaf thought happily, watching the fragile insect flutter to another pale yellow kowhai blossom.

She adjusted her claws on the branch she’d settled on (after much dithering, mind you) and spread her own enormous ponamu-coloured wings. They were much larger and more clompy-looking, she decided after a comparative observation. Not very dainty or frail. But then again, she didn’t fly from one little petal to the other. She was forced into long, annoying flying lessons with her mentor, Froglegs.

She sniggered. He did sort of have frog legs, and he did bounce more than he flew. Feeling a little bit remorseful for insulting the mentor her mother – the Tui queen – was paying, she resolved to change the subject and instead think about orange wings.

“Maple!” 

The Tui princess didn’t even try to smother a dramatic sigh. She arched her head around, hoping she looked regal and ‘princessy’, but later, after yet another observation, she decided she looked like a cockroach with its head on backwards.

Her big sister, beautiful and graceful, landed smugly on the end of her branch. 

Ostara was the prettiest bird in the royal court. If only she had a personality to match, Maple thought sourly. Out of her three sisters, Ostara was the grumpiest and the most sarcastic. 

“What are you doing? Daydreaming again?” the elegant bird jeered, plucking a kowhai blossom off one of the side-growing branches, and promptly sucking the nectar out of the petals. She even managed to do that regally. 

“I’m comparing myself to a butterfly,” Mapleleaf responded icily. “Butterflies are, in my opinion, the prettiest insect alive.”

“They stink,” Ostara grunted, pleased with the insulted glare her younger sister gave her. “I just ate a butterfly before.”

“Have you come here to insult me?” the little princess snapped, stomping a foot on the rough kowhai bark.

“I did not think, with the amount of brain you have in your head, that you would be able to come to a conclusion with such absolute accuracy!!” her sister smirked nastily.

Maple lifted her claw and smushed it down on her sisters’. “Shoo. No one wants to talk to an overgrown beetle.”

Ostara scowled and spread her wings, diving into the native greenery, calling over her shoulder, “by the way, butterflies taste really nice! Crunchy, bitter, bony and squirmy a-” until her voice faded into the leaves.

 If she had a long enough tongue, Maple would’ve stuck it out at her. She’d seen wingless-twolegs sticking their tongues out at each other on the forest tracks, and although it made no sense to her, she would’ve done it anyway. The twoleg on the receiving end of the tongue-sticker-outerer usually looked offended and flapped their arms and gasped, and she sniggered, imagining her sister’s fiercely insulted expression.

Sisters were always so mean. And sarcastic. 

Well, actually, no that wasn’t correct. 

Ostaras were always so unbearably mean, and sarcastic.

She chuckled, amused with that, and glanced around for the monarch butterfly. A little bit saddened by the fact that it had vanished into the waves of green, she nestled into her claws and began arranging her feathers. 

Dinner would be soon, in the Royal Dining Box, and she wanted to look respectable, like a delicate, beautiful butterfly, and NOT like a cockroach with its head on backwards.

A smaller Tui, more blueish than green, landed on the branch parallel to hers. Blue was her other older sister. She liked sleeping lots, and actually, sleeping more.

Once, Queen Whitefluff had panicked because her daughter had slept five-light skies and six dark-skies, and thought the bird was dead. But Blue emerged the following morning from her nest like the usual moany and yawny Blue she was.

“Dinner’s ready,” she said, yawning again and stretching her wings so they brushed the blossoms and branches above.

Mapleleaf nodded, and adjusted her claws, spreading her own beautiful ponamu wings, and checked over her shoulder. “Are you coming or not?” she huffed impatiently, catching the evening breeze and dipping into the forest.

Blue muttered something, yawned again (which was seriously annoying) and flew after her little sister.

Chirps spiralled through the leaves of the forest. Beautiful birds with scintillating feathers shades of green hopped into their ornately-woven nests high up in the branches by the sun. Tui sprung up onto branches of cherry trees (a weed, mind you) sprouting through the native plantlife, and pecked at the petals. 

Blue and Maple landed on a balustrade, wrapped in native jasmine vines with the fragrance of vanilla and honey. Kowhai blossoms were delicately tied to the strade, and behind it was a pastel-pink box. 

The Tui suspected wingless-twolegs had painted it before hanging it up in the forest.

In the branches around the Dining Nest were the royal quarters – throne nests, sleeping nests, fruit nests and so on. 

Fluttering her feathers, Mapleleaf followed her sister through the little wooden arch and into the Dining Nest.

In the center of the Dining Nest sat a long, Rimu table, with squat wooden stools for the birds to sit on. Six large native buttercup leaves were placed on the table-log, adorned in nectar, flowers and bugs.

Maple eyed the sixth leaf, which didn’t have any flowers or Tui-fruit, instead a giant slimy fish. 

The stream running through the village did have eels and little tadpoles, and she swore she had seen some little fish basking in the shallows of it, but no fish that big. That fish was enormous, and looked freshly-caught too. 

Blue flinched beside her. The blobby oval-shaped animal stank. 

Ostara was already sitting at her stool to the left of her mother, waiting not-so-patiently for dinner to start, and Willow, Maple’s younger sister, sat at the end, closest to the arch. 

Queen Whitefluff addressed her daughters with a tiny nod of approval and smiled, although she wasn’t really a smiley type of bird, so it ended up looking like a scowl.

But Blue and Mapleleaf were used to that. They took their stools and began neatly arranging their nectar on their leaves.

Maple opened her beak to tell her mother about the Monarch butterfly, but instantly snapped it shut.

Sitting on the spare stool beside her mother was a bird. Its figure was short and squat, and his or her feathers were the strangest colours! Ultramarine blues, mustards and whites, and even faint greys splashed across its tiny body. It had large, beady eyes – so large, in fact, that they looked as though they might fall out of its head. Its beak was enormous and chunky, and ridiculously proportioned to the rest of its body. The thing that made Maple squirm on her stool the most was the HUMUNGOUS SMILE this bird possessed. Its smile was so ridiculously large she felt as though it was drawn onto its beak. She wanted to peel it off and replace it with one the length of a mowed grasstem.

“Maple, Blue, this is Queen Bluefish,” Queen Whitefluff said cordially. “Bluefish, would you like to introduce yourself?”

“Certainly!” the little Kotare squeaked brightly, beaming. “Hello, charming princesses! My name is Bluefish, as you no doubt know, and I am a Kotare – Kingfisher. I’m the Kotare queen and protect my tribe’s mountain, Te Tapui. I have two princesses, Catfish, though she prefers to be called Cat, – horrendous name in my opinion – and Pufferfish, which insists upon being called her full name, because apparently Puffer is ‘undignified’ and ‘Fish’ sounds lowly and poor. Honestly, such opinionated chicks!”

Queen Whitefluff chuckled. “Maple’s full name is Mapleleaf, but it’s easier to say Maple.”

Maple wanted to shrink into the floor and never speak again. 

“Girls, you’re excused,” their mother announced finally, after all the nectar and fish had been eaten.

Thank goodness, Maple thought tiredly. I’ve learnt more about Pufferfish and Catfish than I know about my own tribe. HONESTLY.

Queen Bluefish wasn’t a bad sort, she resolved later. Just very…talkative…and odd-looking.

“Bluefish and I will be in the Throne Nest speaking of confidential matters I’d prefer you girls not to hear.” There was a ring of coldness in Whitefluff’s voice. “You are not permitted past the wingless-twoleg track.”

Ostara griped about something under her breath and promptly spread her wings, soaring elegantly out the window. 

Her mother stared icily after her. Deciding she’d rather not get on her mum’s wrong feather, she waddled out of the arch, trying very hard not to look like a cockroach with its head on backwards.

Willow followed her, before soaring up to her nest in the trees. 

When she glanced back for Blue, she could already hear her sisters’ loud irritating snores from the nest above. 

Shut up, you bothersome bird, she thought grumpily. There’s no hope of me falling asleep with THAT ringing in the background.

Tired and cross, Maple found a branch under the shade of a thick Rimu tree, and began cleaning her feathers. 

A monarch butterfly fluttered past. Intrigued, she followed after it, her own wings shimmering in the gold evening light.

I wonder how butterflies sleep, she thought, as the forest gradually faded darker. Below her, the undergrowth was a mixture of blurry shadows.

The Monarch butterfly dipped down and vanished into the ferns. Maple didn’t notice, though, because something else had snatched her attention.

White poles. They looked like garden stakes from the wingless-twoleg backyards in the village below the mountain.

Of course, she’d never been to the village before, but birds older than two were allowed to visit, so long as they didn’t disrupt anything the wingless-twolegs did.

The twoleg tracks are close, but not this close, she thought suspiciously, landing cautiously on the loop on top of the white stick. The thing that stuck them here must’ve tramped far from the track. SUSPICIOUS.

Tied to the loop was a bright violet band. 

SUSPICIOUS, she thought distrustfully again, spreading her wings that curiously looked obsidian-black in the shadows, and flew back to the village.

It was almost dark-sky, and Queen Whitefluff would be very grumpy if she wasn’t in her nest by the time the moon set the forest aglow.

Curled up in her nest, the white poles were put in a different flower of her mind, and she dreamt of fat fish flopping in her nest, smiling HUGE HORRIBLE SMILES.