Chapter Fourteen: The Communication Problem
Not for the first time, Duck wished she had the human voice to ask questions. What's your name? Where are you going? Are you looking for something? Did you see the sky today? That's awfully weird, isn't it? What's up with that?
But she did not have a human voice; she was just a duck. And she had learned through harsh experience that most humans would not heed her, no matter how hard she tried to make herself understood. There were a few, like Fakir, that could glean meaning from the frantic quacking and flapping of wings, but most simply ignored her.
This boy, she thought, might be different than most humans. Perhaps she could communicate with this particular boy.
Despite his alarming mix of human and vulpine features, he didn't look especially dangerous. And she recalled that whenever she had encountered humanoid animals in the past, they had generally been perfectly capable of communicating with the humans around them.
And since she was a humanoid animal, or at least an animal that had been a human girl at one point, that same rule ought to apply to her, right? But when Duck opened her mouth to speak, all that came out was a suitably duckish "Quack!"
The boy whirled in alarm; Duck clamped her wings firmly over her mouth, thoroughly horrified. The boy's expression, somewhere midway between fear and determination, softened as his gaze fell upon Duck.
"Did you follow me from the village? You should go back. It's safe there." He paused. "Safer, anyway."
Duck pouted at him. She didn't want to go back to the village. She wanted to go back to the Higurashi Shrine, where Fakir was waiting for her.
Too bad she couldn't just say so.
Note: This chapter is based on fanfic_bakeoff's September 2011 Secret Ingredient: Observe.