| The
warm morning sun grew into a hot noon day sun causing a drop of sweat
to trickle down from Fern’s face as she skipped through the park.
“Really?
They thought that pigeons were the replacement for chickens,” Fern
laughed at the idea after the fairy inside had explained that a lot of
fairies which had been once been mediators between the human and spirit
world had chosen pigeons to replace chickens as their messengers in
order to help her understand augury, the art of determining what’s
happening in the spirit world based on the movement of birds.
“They
living among people inside the cities, and people feed them,” Gnōwos
explained. Like most of the spirits inside of Fern, Gnōwos hadn’t had a
name until Fern had given him one, a name which meant wise in
Proto-Indo-European. Gnōwos looked especially old and scary, having
aided warrior priests and shamans during times of war on the Steppes
for thousands of years. However as the world had changed he’d shifted
to helping farmers, but the grove of trees he’d lived in to do that had
eventually been cut down so he’d moved on. His constant experience
helping people with real world problems had made him perhaps the most
sensible and down to earth of the spirits that she’d managed to get to
speak to her.
“You
have to understand,” Gnōwos continued, “when people stopped having
chickens in urban areas the fairies needed somewhere to go.”
“But pigeons?”Fern furrowed her brow in confusion.
“Spirits
are good at adapting, and in many ways pigeons served the same purpose,
their nature matched that of the fairies close enough and they moved
around humans so people could pick up messages through them. Of course
nearly everyone has forgotten how to read the movements of pigeons and
birds to understand what the fairies are trying to communicate, but
they still try.
“Wait, I thought that fairies weren’t supposed to communicate with humans anymore?” Fern asked uncertainly.
“We
are not, but some of us do so anyways,” Gnōwos told her. “It’s
difficult for those who try to rule over us to control all of us so
they ignore small things.”
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