Hope is the Thing With Feathers

Chapter 2

"I'm going to show everyone my new pink bow today," Celeste said. She held her brother's wing as they walked through the crowded city streets. Now seven years old, Celeste had begun school a few years prior, which meant now, even at school, Blathers could not escape his sister. She greeted him whenever she got the chance, and she often brought her friends to see him at recess, where she begged him to play, often forcing him to leave his game of chess that he was usually winning.

"She merely looks up to you," Blathers' mother had explained, but Celeste always seemed to follow Blathers like a shadow, both inside and outside their house.

As they arrived at the school gates, Blathers walked Celeste to her new classroom and gave her a pat on the back.

"Well, have fun in there," he said, to which Celeste replied by giving him a large hug. A chorus of aws erupted from the nearby parents dropping off their own children. Blathers awkwardly shoved her off and headed to his own classroom, where he was greeted by his friends.

"I've heard good things about you, Blathers," his new teacher, a wise old chameleon, told him when he approached Blathers' desk. "I hope you do well in school this year."

"I will!" Blathers promised. He was practically the top of his class, with his friends following close behind. Though the other students liked to shun Blathers and his friends as the nerds of the class, it never bothered Blathers much. School wasn't so much a way for him to socialize, but a way to prepare him for his future academic field.

The school day was long, especially when all Blathers could think about was his new magazine, but as soon as he and Celeste came home in the afternoon, he locked himself in his room and gently ran his feathers along the slick, untouched, and unwrinkled pages of the new issue of Archaeologists Monthly. 

With each flip of a page, there was much to explore. Expeditions for rare gemstones, the discovery of new fossils, and even a rare sighting of a thought-to-be-extinct ancient fish. Blathers traced a few feathers over the archaeologists at work in the picture, imagining that could be him someday, working under the heat in mountainous terrain as he uncovered never-before-seen antiquities.

He finished the magazine far too fast, and with a sigh, he set it down on his bedside table and laid on his back, his wings folded neatly over his brown and white belly. If he shut his eyes, he could imagine himself thirty years from now, in a large, exquisite mansion that he'd converted into a part-time museum where he would show off his marvelous discoveries. Celeste could sell tickets, he supposed in his daydream, while his parents could stand from afar and tell visitors all about the wonderful things their son had discovered out on the field.

"Chicks! Dinner!" Blathers heard his mother yell, breaking him out of his trance. The daydream was gone too soon.

Sighing, Blathers dragged his feet to the dinner table, where his father was already happily gobbling down a feast after a long day of work at the office. Blathers pulled out his chair, watching Celeste follow, her pink bow still bobbing around in her hair. He didn't understand why she kept it on even when she was at home.

"How was your guys' first day of school?" Fuzzle asked excitedly as she passed the food around.

"It was great," Celeste stated, beginning to devolve into a second-by-second recap of her first day. Blathers knew she was near the end when she began to bring homework up. "Teacher says we have to go outside and count the stars in the sky," she stated. "And then we have to draw them down on a piece of paper."

Child's work, Blathers thought to himself, feeling glad he wasn't her age anymore. Instead, he was working on more sophisticated assignments, like writing a paragraph.

"Oh! You could go up to the rooftop to do that! It would be perfect. Though I admit, there aren't as many stars as there used to be," Fuzzle stated. Blathers' felt his mother's stare before he even turned to look at her. "What about you, Blathers?"

"Fine. I think I'll get good grades again this year."

"You always do!" his mother happily exclaimed.

"What are you learning about this year?" his father asked.

"Nothing I really want to learn about. I wish we could just learn about archaeology, or some earth science, at least, rather than this boring anatomy stuff."

"That's what college is for," Orbit muttered.

"Well, when I go to college, that's what I'll major in. So then, in a few years, I can go out and explore the world!" Blathers declared triumphantly, his fork held high in hand.

"You know, when Aunt Petunia came and visited the other day, she remarked that you'd make a very good teacher, Blathers, you being so smart and all. Maybe that's an option you could think about," Fuzzle suggested.

"You'd sure be able to find a job easier," Orbit grumbled.

A teacher? Blathers didn't care for that idea at all, even if the topic had come up more than once by his parents and relatives. Just because he was smart didn't mean he wanted to dumb down his knowledge to teach younger students. He thought he'd pull out his feathers before choosing that career.

"No. I'm going to be an archaeologist," he said triumphantly.

"Well, I suppose it's still many years away before you have to make a decision like that," Fuzzle stated. "But whatever it is you choose to do, you shouldn't let that smart brain go to waste."

"Hey, Mama. I want to be a princess," Celeste added into the conversation.

"A very fine one you'd make!" Orbit exclaimed.

Blathers grumbled and continued eating, wishing he could fast-forward to the future already, when he'd left his academics behind, when he'd stopped reading those magazines, because he was now featured in them and out exploring every inch of the world.