Tales of a Peculiar Pirate

5. Fethar

The sad four had dedicated an entire night to the drafting, revising, and overall fine tuning of a very shoddy plan. By the time they were somewhat close to wrapping up, the darkness that had permeated the green foliage seemingly not too long ago had already begun to be replaced by smatterings of sunlight.

Polly was at the point where she couldn't tell if she was in a dream or not; everything seemed hazy. Yet the sleep deprivation had no apparent effect on the birds. From dark to dusk they chattered away, sometimes in their own jargon, sometimes in the standard language. However, to Polly, even Mimglish had begun to sound like gibberish.

"Okay, so this is what we've come up with so far," chirped Wiki. "You'll leave the Triy claiming you'd been held hostage by us, and make sure to let The Dictator know that it was us you were captured by. Hopefully then she'll want you to lead her to us, and you'll follow the route that you'll memorize that will be on a map we're going to come up with later to bring her here. We'll have one of the basic traps where she steps on a twig that causes her to get caught in a net, and from there we'll help you off the island. Of course you can take whatever we have to offer as your bounty, as long as you don't go too overboard, you feel?"

"Could you repeat that?" yawned Polly.

"Speak with your chest, fledge. Your Mimglish is accented enough, you can't expect us to understand you when you mumble," squawked SAT.

"I asked if you could repeat what you said," returned Polly, once more mid yawn. She had the strangest hunch that she would fall asleep as they repeated it, but she couldn't find it in herself to care.

"I think she needs a break you guys. Those normies from Sea Island 7 aren't like us you know," interjected Ed before SAT could begin.

"What? how did you know I'm from Sea Island 7?" asked Polly. As dull as her mind had become, it was still functioning enough to pick up when things were being said about her, especially when those things were private information she hadn't quite revealed.

"You have that look and that atrocious way of butchering words," said Ed. "I remember, and this was back in the day before The Dictator came, mind you, we once had a normie from Sea Island 7 and they had that had that same swinging hair, and look in their eye like they would much rather be doing something wholly unproductive, like taking a nap. Also, I could've sworn that normie was still speaking whatever the native language of Sea Island 7 is when they arrived, because for the first few minutes when they were asking about spices, I had no idea what they were saying. It was terrible."

"Hmmm," replied Polly. Now that the conversation wasn't 100% about her, she wasn't 100% interested.

"You know, Ed, you're right," stated SAT. "If I didn't know better I would've thought we were talking to a tree. Take a nap fledge. We can finish things when you wake up."

Only understanding that she had been given permission to sleep, Polly dragged herself to one of the pillows and promptly crashed. She slept like a limp sack of potatoes until the sun had reached its apex and was looking hard at the world below it.

When she rose, the room was void of feathered life. Polly lifted her face from her chosen pillow and was aghast to feel its lines etched into her face. Despite being unable to find the birds and being a whole sea away from home, Polly was not at the point of panicking.

She stood, brushed a few nonexistent specks of dust off her pants, and made her way to the table they had been planning at. On it was a note written in the worst penmanship she had yet to come across, including her own, that read: We have gone to set up the trap. If we don't return by the time the Greens turn from that nasty shade of neon to a darker green, then you'll know we have been captured. In that case whatever happens next is completely up to you, but please do your best to apprehend The Dictator for all our sakes.