Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom

Bird conservation was one of the most important things ever. Fluttershy understood that instinctively, on the level of her mark. Because she believed that ponies had been meant as the custodians of the natural world. Quite a bit of the collective magic was certainly pointing in that general direction and if you had that sort of power, then you clearly had an obligation to use it responsibly.

And yes, there were probably those who would say that the first pony obligation had to be towards other ponies, but there were only four -- six? -- how was anypony working out the math there? -- pony species and they were all at least theoretically sapient. Possessing sapience meant that when a true crisis arose, there was a chance that somepony might think of a way to not die. (Realistically, that was probably going to be Twilight.) By contrast, there were potentially thousands --

-- could there be that many? So much of the planet was unexplored, and that made the mere thought exciting! --

-- thousands of bird species in the world -- but to lose even one meant a little light of life had gone out forever. And the pegasus certainly understood that there were thousands -- tens of thousands! Possibly hundreds of thousands! -- of other, non-feathered species out there. Very few of which could truly think and just about all of whom needed love, understanding, and protection -- but birds were a little different.

Fluttershy recognized that when it came to avians, some species kept trying to extinct themselves.

She regularly dealt with Equestria's fully-native Green-Crested Warblers, and those were known to naturalists everywhere as an bird so relentlessly stupid that it didn't actually fly: it was just that ignorant as to how gravity worked. You needed special efforts to keep Warblers alive and if she caught one eating, she politely reminded it to remember about the swallowing part.

But it was all built into her duties within the endless cycle. She was proud to play her part --

-- all right: so there were times when Fluttershy felt that her part was being called upon somewhat more often than was strictly necessary. Because ponies were connected to the natural world, and so there were mares and stallions whose marks allowed them to speak with most of it -- in segments. Those who could translate the growls of great cats often accompanied exploration teams in the name of a little extra warning, the ones tied to lizards tended to wind up in warm climates, and of course zoos were always hiring. There were enough specialist communication marks to keep everything moving in a more-or-less steady forward gallop -- but if one of those ponies wasn't available and a generalist could try to fill in for a while...

it just felt like far too many zoos, conservation societies, and protective organizations saw her as their primary backup. That was most of it.

A significant remainder came from having all of everypony else's problem children just turn up at the cottage. Without prior notice, warning, or anything approaching an advance arrangement. Just a pony with a carrier cart, perhaps shivering and sweating somewhat as they waited for Fluttershy to sign the paper which said she now had temporary custody and legally, whatever happened next was probably her fault. As if she would just automatically take them in every last time! Because she was obviously such a pushover --

-- no. She -- helped. She always wanted to help. And they usually remembered to tell her about how crucial she was, how she just had that way with creatures...

(The warning still would have been nice.)

Besides, it let her meet new animals!

(Any degree of warning.)

And wasn't that the most special thing?

(Any.)

Most of what she remembered about the deliverypony from the dropoff visit was the trembling. The stallion existed as something which was trying to harmonize with the universe, mostly through trying to figure out the specific vibratory rate of all local matter and then making his body match. He never entirely stopped shivering, and failed to do so while lacking any final commitment on rate and direction. When added to his natural hues, it gave him the look of a saffron harvest which had been caught in a dust devil -- or of somepony who was more than a little frightened.

It was a fairly small cart. (She took a lot of deliveries, and so had frequent basis for comparison. However, because traffic to the cottage could be fairly intense during the day, most of the big dropoffs were made at night.) The cage in the cargo area wasn't particularly big, nor was it all that reinforced. The side bars were too thick for her to make out the contents from a distance, but the scent...

Fluttershy maintained her position on the cottage's front stoop, standing within the opened door's frame. Several animals peered out around the edges, curious about the new scents, the potential intruder, and whether anypony had brought a treat. The regular deliveryponies for the cottage route nearly all eventually started bringing treats, largely because when you needed an emergency distraction, it helped to fling something.

Normal late afternoon in autumn. Weather schedule has it a little warm. (Later, she would consider that the stallion had potentially made a very specific effort to turn up while Sun was still raised.) And all of the animals visible in this area are on the small side. No major predators, and Harry isn't even within scent. So when it comes to temperature, he doesn't have any reason to shiver like this, same for the audience, and for what he's been hauling...

She took another breath. The faint odors produced by a healthy uropygial gland swirled in her snout.

Wen she considered what he was supposedly hauling, the stallion's fear didn't make any sense. And it was her making that decision. The irony was almost palatable.

"...bird," Fluttershy carefully said. "Just one bird."

"Yes," the shivering stallion eventually delivered, mostly in vibrato. "But I can't tell you that much about it."

"...you can't," had been layered with extra caution in self-defense, and the effort was doomed to fail.

"I'm just an intern," the stallion helplessly declared. "I've been with the Conservation Society for a week. They mostly have me galloping around a lot. Today, they told me to gallop this bird to Ponyville. And not a lot else."

"...did they include the briefing pamphlet?" Fluttershy asked.

"Oh, yes!" her visitor exhaled. "I loaded that up myself when I took the cart!"

Which was essential: there was always a chance that she would be asked to look after a truly new species, and that meant she needed any information available. "...so what can you tell me? Personally, before I see what was written?"

He frowned with concentration. Some of the lesser fur strands around his mouth briefly stilled.

"It's a male," he finally said. "From a very long way off. It was being shipped back to Equestria, as part of a small group. At least a pair, I think. But there were some health concerns, and the others got held up for a few days. This one went ahead and arrived early. The mare who was supposed to accompany the whole group -- she stayed with the rest, and she's the expert. Her mark is sort of like yours, from what they told me. But for birds. So the Society is just asking you to watch over this one for a few days, until she catches up. A few days at the most. From what we know. Then I'll make the pickup, and she'll take it from there." Hopefully, "Usual deal for kennel service payments? I brought a contract. Nearly standard. There's just one new part..."

"...a male," Fluttershy tried, because it felt like the sort of word which almost had to lead into more information.

"...yes..." the vibrating stallion oscillated at her.

Fluttershy turned the single syllable over in her head a few times. Looked down from the little staircase at the repository of shaking silence, and briefly marveled at how strange it felt to be the aggressor in the conversation.

"...a male what?" didn't seem like very much to ask for.

"I really don't know much..." came across as oddly -- desperate.

She missed most of it in the sudden surge of strictly-internal frustration. There's a briefing pamphlet, because there always is. One which you apparently didn't glance at, when the responsibility for this part of the transport was yours. And you said a very long way off --

-- which meant this could be someone new, and her excitement rose. To be among the first in an entire nation who would meet a new kind of friend...

I don't know what this is.

But it was new. She would still be among the first. If she started taking notes early -- well, of course the mare who was on the way needed to receive full initial credit for any published papers, but Fluttershy was always happy to get her name in somewhere among the footnotes...

"...you know it's a bird," said her growing anticipation. "A normal bird? No magic?"

He hesitated.

"Nothing it does could be considered magical," the stallion finally decided.

"...nothing?"

"I'm sure somepony tried to counter..."

Her ears strained. "...sorry?"

Silence.

"...so why isn't it staying at the zoo?" Fluttershy finally asked, because you could only watch a terrified stallion silently vibrate for so long before wondering why there wasn't more of a hum in the air. "Or at Audu's sanctuary?" Because there was a noble who felt that the most noble cause was keeping birds alive, she was right outside Canterlot and even without a communication mark on the hips of the hostess, Ms. Bontemps' valley-bordering estate was the avian primary backup destination of choice. Fluttershy was more of a generalist --

"It's -- disruptive," the stallion half-frantically tried. "They've never had a bird like this." Far too hastily, "It isn't a threat to anything there! Or here! It's -- harmless. Technically..." And nearly rallied. "Furthest thing from a predator ever! But the expert has to personally arrange things once she arrives, and without her..."

Disruptive.
Harmless.
Two words which should not be trying to work together.

She was about to say something. Pushing a little, with the surprising strength which could sometimes arise from the heart of her talent. Doing whatever was necessary to take care of the natural world. But that initial surge of rising determination was temporarily lost in the stallion's followup push of decibels.

"It's in heat!"

Fluttershy blinked.

"...in heat," she repeated.

"Yes," the stallion quickly said. "And it needs to stay in heat." More hastily, as if he was trying to get it all out before some horrified part of his brain could recognize that he was talking about heat with a pretty mare, "There's a special kind of berry, from something called a rimu tree. You've got a good supply. Make sure it eats some every day, with every meal."

"...I can do that." But what about the berry made it important, and could she get substitutes --

"Oh," the stallion abruptly interrupted. "And the bird is called a kākāpō. I just remembered that." The vibration subtly increased. "Does that... help?"

But she was too busy thinking to fully recognize the sudden note of fear.

Kākāpō...

Potentially thousands of bird species in the world. (It was always going to be a thrilling thought.) Nopony could realistically be familiar with all of them. And she searched her memory, she tried to come up with anything connected to the term, but it was like trying to pull up pure water from the bottom of a swamp --

-- and then her brain delivered two vital words.

critically endangered

The mare's lone visible blue-green eye slowly closed with pain.

Thousands of species. None could ever be replaced. All she knew of this one was the name, and solely because it had appeared on a list of those whom ponies were trying to save.

She remembered that they were at risk, and not the why of it. That obscure.

She was being asked to host a bird who was likely among the last of his kind. To keep him in heat, because he'd clearly been sent to Equestria as part of a designated reproduction group. A vital member of an effort to save a helpless species. The females couldn't be that far behind...

Her duties were vital.

Slowly, unstoppably, shapely yellow shoulders and hips squared.

"...may I see him?"

The stallion vibrated out a nod. Fluttershy took one hoofstep forward, let her wings flare to their full span, and came in over the cart. The side bars were too thick for a good view, but things were considerably thinner over the top --

-- the bird just barely registered the sounds being produced by active wings, sleepily looked up, and Fluttershy hopelessly fell in love.

So much of the face was a round disc of green and yellow feathers, with speckles of darker spotting. And for those who didn't know enough to keep looking, the first thought might have been owl -- but the ponies who understood would quickly spot both the shape and placement of the eyes: too small, much more on the sides of the head than at the front. Nowhere close to being a predator. The main similarity to an owl was that the eyes were nearly all pupil. An aquamarine ring designated the iris, but nearly every other part of the orbs was actively trying to drink in light. Her first expert guess was that the bird was mostly nocturnal, and this would turn out to be accurate.

The facial disc suggested an owl. But the shape of the beak, the eyes, that little crest of the head...

Parrot.

A distant branch from a familiar tree, which had grown over strange shores. Because this was the strangest parrot she'd ever seen.

The feathering was beautiful. It also didn't work. Because the parrot had a basic shape, and it was 'round'. It was a ball moving on surprisingly-powerful legs, and it almost had to be the legs because the wings seemed to be completely out of proportion. They could spread normally, but there wasn't enough wing to actually do anything, and the muscles across the sternum were severely weakened: for that matter, the bone anchor of the keel itself had shrunken --

"...he can't fly," Fluttershy softly observed. "And it's not a birth defect, is it?"

She registered the stallion's head shake as a change in the vibration of the air. "I -- guess not? I don't think any of them can."

I can hardly fly, and he'll spend his entire life without knowing what it's like...

Fluttershy wondered if she should land. If she was making him feel bad --

-- then again, she wasn't sure she was making him feel much of anything.

The kākāpō was very unusual for a parrot. (Flightless! She hadn't known any parrots qualified.) For starters, it was heavy: that roundness had brought it to about a tenth of a bale in mass. The feet were normal enough, she supposed: the usual two talons going forward on each foot, to match two heading back. And they stood out on color contrast, because there were a lot of white scraps within a shallow depression which had been scraped into the dirt on the floor of the cage. Maybe he was the sort of male who liked to do some of his own nesting..

But the legs were more muscular because they had to do all of the work, she'd just realized that the face had whiskers because a bird who spent all of its time on the ground was going to have concerns about getting through small spaces and possibly evolve feelers to solve the problem...

Ultimately, it was about the eyes.

There were those little rings of color, all around the edges of the great voids. And to look into those eyes was to see -- well, an equine snout. In extremely distorted reflection.

Fluttershy looked into those eyes. She smiled at the bird, allowed her talent to project warmth and reassurance, and waited to see recognition looking back.
Then it was waiting for basic curiosity.
...fear would have at least been a reaction...
...all right, but just about everything blinked eventually. That hadn't counted.

Sun was going to be lowered soon.

Carefully, she landed in the cart. Waited for the springs to stop rocking, then looked down into the cage. Her talent rose, and her body tucked in on itself somewhat, from neck to tail. Scrunching inwards, becoming a little bit rounder. Her cheeks puffed out.

"Hello."

The bird stared at her.

...okay: it could be like that sometimes, especially at the beginning. Just about every species had the foundations of language -- in that if an animal could vocalize, then specific sounds were going to mean something. 'Food here' was a common expression, although some liked to keep it to themselves. 'Run!' was just about universal. But there wasn't much complexity to that kind of communication: there almost couldn't be. It could take some time of being within range of Fluttershy's talent before more advanced concepts began to arise in animal minds.

"...hello?"

Admittedly, this one appeared to be having a few issues with the concept of communication...

The flightless parrot slowly blinked at her. Aquamarine looked past her eyes, nearly focused on the long fall of her mane, and then came back to her face.

He yawned.

Right. Nocturnal. He would be more active after dark. All she had to do in order to make a truly unique friend was -- wait. It was just that...

Birds tended to have a sort of default look, which varied by species. Eagles possessed two: 'I am going to kill that' and 'I am probably too freaked out to kill anything, but I'm gonna try'. Pigeons had a baseline of 'Huh?' and it was a rare seagull who would move off 'MINE!' in their sleep.

Something about the kākāpō's sleepy eyes suggested a waking coma. One which lacked the creativity required for dream.

It was absolutely adorable.

The bird looked at her head again. (A male parrot was a tom, overlapping with cats. She didn't know if kākāpō had any gender titles of their own, and was hoping it was in the pamphlet.) Looked away again, and yawned for the second time.

"...I can sign now," the mare offered --

"-- hat," the stallion just barely said.

Yellow ears rotated, sieved through atmosphere to collect sound. The pegasus, who was fully accustomed to the efforts involved in hearing herself, decided to try for a fresh offering.

"...sorry?"

To her best (and slightly inaccurate) guess, the next words were "It's a -- trust hat. Trust. It's around here somewhere. That's part of this contract. They told me to make sure you signed. You have to wear it whenever you're around the bird. ...just... just in... just in case he..."

And stopped talking. Completely, utterly and, if not for the fact that the worst luck of his life would see him dispatched into the disaster of the pickup, just about permanently.

She might have noticed the fear. She was good with fear. But she was thinking.

Something the explorer discovered? Maybe some branches woven into a nest shape, using trees from his home, I wear it on my head, and he comes to it when he trusts me. Settles in...

Well, it would hardly be the worst thing a bird had ever done with her hair. It took some stern talks to keep the dollops out. Those working on nesting prep had to settle for shed portions of mane and tail, because Fluttershy could become very frustrated with those who tried to collect donations ahead of schedule. And that wasn't all. Because some birds were more intelligent than others -- but some were much, much less. And in any relationship -- any new friendship -- each party had to learn about the other. Set boundaries. That was work.

It was also a labor of love.

You could never have enough birds in the world. Unless you were dealing with geese, and then you already had too many.

The caretaker smiled.

"...you can take out the paperwork now. I'm ready to sign..."

The stallion's neck twisted back towards his saddlebags with ill-advised speed.

Fluttershy didn't let him leave until she'd finished treating the muscle pull.