"Gilda, what are you doing up there?"

"Fixin' the roof."

"Gilda... the roof didn't need to be fixed."

"Sure it did! We broke it this morning!"

"Oh... wait... what?!"

The olive colored chocobo looked down from the roof of the farmhouse and offered the human below a sheepish expression. "Ehm... we broke the roof this morning while you weren't home and now I'm tryin' to fix it? You weren't supposed to be home this early okay?"

The human huffed and shook her head, her hands on her hips and her expression showing irritation with the situation at hand. This flustered young woman was Maeven Kiribon, the owner of the farm and usually the one who kept things under control.

Usually was clearly the keypoint in the situation, especially when she had to make trips to the nearby town in order to get supplies. Normally it would have been her farm partner - a red mage by the name of Kennedy Blayke - who went on the town trips due to his generally more social nature, but as luck would have it he had to be away on a visit with his relatives for their annual family reunion. This left Maeven with everything. Everything. And now it was 11 o'clock in the morning, and the resident flier was on the roof trying to cover up for only who knew what. "Do I even WANT to know what you did, Gilda?"

"Um..." The pause was about as awkward as the chocobo on the roof seemed to be. "... No? But I can safely say it wasn't me who did it! I definitely did not put the hole in the roof! Nuh-uh!"

Maeven frowned and crossed her arms, a foot lightly tapping on the ground as she gave the supposed-to-be-oldest chocobo of the farm a rather bored and unimpressed stare. "That really doesn't help you argue your case you know." She shook her head and sighed as she turned to head for the nearby shed. "Get down from there; I'll fix the roof." That, however, was when Maeven noticed something was missing. Something she rather needed in order to actually get onto the roof in the first place.

"Where the heck is the ladder?"

Gilda cringed a little and tried to flatten herself - to little effect - on the roof. "Uh... I-I think Chipper had it, boss."

"Chipper." Maeven repeated, turning to give the green bird a rather questioning look. "Why in the world would Chipper have the ladder?"

"To make a tent!"

Because that was obvious, apparently.

Maeven groaned and rubbed her face. "For the love of... okay... where'd he take the ladder, Gilda?"

"Out to the field. Dunno what he's up to but I doubt he'll break it. I mean come on, it's Chipper; what's the worst thing he's ever done?"

Now that was an interesting question, and Maeven could already think of several options. It was bad enough that the chocobos on her farm naturally seemed inclined to strange and unusual quirks, but every now and then there were the extra special cases where a person just had to shake their head and deal with it. Chipper was one of these cases, and was one of the very select few birds on the farm who could wield magic.

Yes. Magic.

It had surprised Maeven too when the first mojo-powered bird - a gentle and softspoken chocobo named Ruffles due to her very fluffy nature - hatched, and things had only gotten weirder from that point on. Sure, Ruffles was generally the safest one of the magically inclined 'uber chickens', to use Kennedy's wording for it, but even still there was nothing quite as mind boggling as seeing a rose pink chocobo running around healing anyone who got so much as a scuffed toe.

Chipper, on the other hand, was a very different basket of eggs. Sure he was sweet and kind and incredibly helpful when given the chance, but he wasn't a little healer like Ruffles was. No... no he got to be good at fire magic. Very good at fire magic. So good that he lit himself on fire shortly after hatching and just about burnt down the farmhouse. He felt horrible about it to this day, but there was always the fact that the house was nearly destroyed by oversized poultry. Maeven was still having trouble wrapping her head around that one.

Idly she turned from the shed and set off for the pasture, hoping beyond hope that the ladder would be in better shape than the roof apparently was. Thankfully when she got there, everything seemed to more or less be okay. A couple stray hay bales had been moved out into the grass and were sitting around what she could only assume was the ladder with a blanket thrown over it for shade, but that seemed to be the worst of it. As she drew closer, Maeven could hear Chipper's voice talking happily to someone, and as she focused on it, she couldn't help but smile. It sounded like he was reading a story to someone, quite possibly some of the new chocolings that'd hatched recently. Chipper was as fond of books as he was playing with his friends, so finding him reading a book to someone was far from surprising.

"And so the adamantoise and the cactuar were best friends from that day on, and the cactuar never forgot the lesson he learned about knowing when being careful was better than being fast. The end."

"That was gweat Unca Chippew!"

"Again! Read it again!"

The reader laughed quietly as he could be heard closing the book. "I gotta put this away before Maeven gets home. Don't want her thinking we got it all dirty out here; you know the rule about taking the new books outside."

"Aww..."

Maeven couldn't help but laugh at this, making her presence known as she leaned around the edge of the ladder-tent and peered inside. Sure enough, there sat a sunny yellow chocobo with a book sitting on his legs, and two fluffy little chocolings cuddled up beside him, likely so they could see the pictures in the book while he was reading it. "So, I see Gilda's not the only one who got herself into mischief." The woman remarked to the trio, an eyebrow raised and an amused smile on her face.

"Kweh!"

Chipper had a habit of squawking whenever he was surprised, and this was no different. Blue eyes wide with surprise, he started blithering rather rapidly. "we didn't get the book dirty, honest! Kept is super clean and everything!"

"Yeah!" One of the chocolings piped in. "Kept it clean an' not dirty!"

"So I see." Maeven responded, moving over and carefully taking the book so she could put it away. "You lot wouldn't happen to know why Gilda's on the roof, would you?"

The three birds all looked at each other, the chocolings bursting into giggles and Chipper getting an awkward-yet-amused look on his feathery face. "Well, she and Niknak got into a debate over who could throw rocks the furthest, and Niknak said he bet she couldn't throw a rock over the house. So they kinda took turns throwing rocks over the house, but it escalated into them just competing to see who could get the most rocks on the roof, then it turned into seeing who could get the biggest rock onto the roof, and... ehm... well, at least they didn't break any windows?"

Maeven's expression was blank for several moments before she eventually just sighed and shook her head. This wouldn't be the first time that Gilda and Niknak competed over who was better at something than the other. Sure, the pair were friends and it was normal for them to have a friendly rivalry with each other, but sometimes they got out of hand and things went missing or got misplaced.

Or put holes in the farmhouse roof.

"You... uh... you aren't mad at Gilda, are you?" Chipper asked after a moment, during which time the two chocolings had gotten up and scurried off to go play. "She didn't mean to break the roof."

"I'm... not mad, no. Just really questioning whether or not she's actually sane." Maeven replied, glancing around before just sitting down in the 'tent' with Chipper. "And whether or not my house is full of rocks or not."

"Probably is." The yellow bird replied with an awkward shrug. "They had a lot of rocks up there... did you want help cleaning it up?"

The woman thought on it a bit before shrugging and shaking her head, leaning back against a hay bale and closing her eyes before giving a response. "Nah. I got an idea."

"Oh? What's that?"

Maeven grinned. "I'm gonna bet that Gilda and Niknak can't beat each other in seeing who can take the most rocks out of the house. I figure it'd be a good way to get the job done without putting too much effort into it."

Chipper blinked. "What if they break something else?"

"Eh, too many questions for now. I can always fix it later." She opened an eye and smiled at him. "Besides, we've got a tent to be lazy in and I'm all for it. Got any other books out here?"

If a chocobo's face could light up, Chipper's most certainly did, and he happily pulled a book out of a nearby bag, a satchel that Maeven knew for a fact had held every book in her library at least once thanks to Chipper's love of reading. "This one? Please?"

Maeven couldn't help but laugh as she accepted the book. It was Chipper's favorite book, and there was no need to try and guess what he wanted her to do with it. "Alright, last time though okay?"

"You always say that." He said with a warble of amusement.

"And you never listen." She teased back as she opened the book, scanning the pages briefly before smiilng and starting to read. So what if there was a hole in the roof and rocks in the house? It was beautiful out still and the day was still young. It was just another wonderful, albeit wacky, day on the farm. And in spite of the crazy antics that were sure to continue...

Maeven knew that she wouldn't want it any other way.