Circles in the Dirt
Green Sanidine

-

There was a rectangular cage filled with birds on the steps of the house of Leon Loire's house. The birds were bright colors, but the house itself was plain. It was a dark, muted blue and a certain shade of white that was probably on its way to turning gray. Yuna wasn't surprised at the starkness of the color scheme, but she didn't know he kept birds.

She stared curiously at the brightest red canary and smiled when it sang at her, a bright little warbling trill, then continued past the uncomfortably spartan surroundings and rang the doorbell with one hand. The other arm was engulfed in the stiff, heavy folds of Leon's jacket. For some reason it made her uneasy that the black sleeves trailed almost all the way down to her knees.

She also felt strange coming here, when she didn't know Leon personally. But the address had been sewn into the jacket, probably as a well-thought-out precaution, so she had an excuse after finding it sprawled carelessly over a park bench.

An unintelligible voice answered her. Yuna cringed. "Er... I'm Yuna. I'm here to return something of... Officer Loire's..."

The door wrenched open to reveal a somewhat shorter than average person with a deep-barreled chest. To her dismay, his voice wasn't that much clearer up close, but gradually she could make out words and phrases that sounded like "Making sure you were an actual girl," "You don't know how many sickos come here raring for Leon's head," and "Come in."

He was wearing a sailor's suit, crisply cut and fitted. It was blue and white, primarily. Whether this denoted he was actually a sailor, Yuna didn't know, but if it did, then it would certainly explain why Leon Loire lived with him. A police officer and a sailor.

"Is he here right now?" Yuna asked, trailing behind him meekly and taking a seat in the kitchen. She set the black jacket on her lap. It was not very warm.

"What? No." Gabble... "But he'll probably be here before five."

Yuna checked her watch self-consciously. It was four forty-seven. But some cheerful burbling and squawking from the corner of the kitchen made her look up. There were six more birds in a cage, only parakeets instead of canaries, and a lot of them were green. The sailor caught her gaze and smiled.

"They're mine. I keep them around for the talk." One of them made a sound like a police siren and he cackled. He sounded an awful lot like his birds when he laughed.

"Um..." Yuna didn't know what to say to that. "Who are you again?"

"Oh, hell, I'm sorry. I forgot. My name's Donald." He stood up abruptly and began fiddling with the arrangement of mirrors and bobbles in the cage, bright colored things with bells on them. When his voice was lower and mumbling he sounded even more like a bird. Possibly a duck. Yuna squirmed uncomfortably as he took hold of a green one and placed it on his shoulder. "Do you want anything to drink, Yuna?"

"Just water, please," Yuna whispered.

"Aye, water for the lady."

"Aye!" the parakeet mimicked.

Yuna smiled at that. "Did you teach them?"

"Sure I did." The sailor efficiently filled a glass of water and set it in front of her briskly, without spilling a drop. "They're dumb as doorknobs, though, so I just recorded myself saying something and played it right next to the cage. This one knows sea chanties. Don't you, Mr. Cotton?"

"Wind in the sails," the bird replied, very softly.

Donald brushed the soft feathered chest to get him on his hand, then held him out to Yuna, who allowed the bird to sit on her wrist. "Here, listen. We're devils and black sheep and really bad eggs...!"

An expectant pause came up as Yuna began stroking the wings. Mr. Cotton merely began preening himself and Donald scowled.

"And really bad eggs!"

A faint twitter. "Drink up me hearties, yo ho!"

At that point the door opened forcefully. Yuna was further distracted as the bird began climbing up her arm, methodically grabbing her sleeve with its beak and occasionally pinching the skin beneath it as well.

"Donald," came a somewhat familiar voice accusingly. "You left the door open. Yuna!"

"Ow!" Yuna said. Mr. Cotton was now perched on her shoulder and pulling on strands of her hair--affectionately, it seemed. It prickled more than hurt, but she'd said it mostly out of reflex. She didn't want to know what would happen if he pulled on her earring.

Donald picked up Mr. Cotton in one hand--"That's enough pulling of the poor girl's hair, Mr. Cotton. It's back to the cage for you!"--and deposited the bird back in the cage unceremoniously. There was a slight uproar of chaos as feathers fluttered everywhere, which gradually settled down as Leon looked faintly curious at the sight of Yuna.

"She came a few minutes ago, Leon. Said she wanted to return something." The sailor grabbed a jar of birdseed and started walking. "Anyway, I will go and feed your pet, Leon, since I have no idea if you care enough to do it regularly or not."

"I do," Leon said defensively. He sat down across the table from Yuna and she pulled the folded, fur-lined jacket out from under her side.

There was a slightly awkward silence as Donald left and Leon seemed confused.

"This is yours... um... Officer." There was too much black on it to be anyone else's, besides maybe Lulu, and she wouldn't wear a man's jacket. "You left it on a bench at the park..."

"Oh, that." The policeman unrolled it carelessly, then draped it across the back of a chair. Another pause. "Thanks. I was wondering where it went. I kind of figured it would be you who returned it to me."

"You're welcome."

Conversations with Leon tended to be on the awkward side for both of them, since neither was especially chatty and Leon was incredibly intimidating. Particularly in full uniform with a gun, which was nearly always how Yuna saw him as he was her high school's mandatory security officer. She could not explain the vague sense of unease that contributed greatly to the uncomfortable conversations, except that Leon always seemed mildly irritated for no apparent reason, and she tended to stay away from people like that out of fear for her life.

"..." Yuna cleared her throat and managed to say, with a minimum of shake in her voice, "I'm going to go now... sir."

His grayish blue eyes flicked back to her. "Oh. Okay."

He stood up and showed her to the door.

"Goodbye, Yuna."

"Goodbye...!"

The door closed and Yuna doubled over abruptly, breathing rather too hard for her taste. She hoped Leon wasn't still close enough to hear her faint panic attack and realized, with a pang of regret, that he had actually been quite polite for someone who scared her so much. She wondered what would happen if she told this to Rikku.