Birds of a Feather
The chicken coop was all atwitter. It was one of their busiest days. And not one of her favorites, if it could be said.
"That's right, girls. Push those eggs out," cried Fiona.
"Fi, do you think we'll make quota?" asked Mary Pat, a worried line showing between her eyes.
"If these eejits know what's good for' em, they will." Gobshites the lot of them.
"Fiona!"
She touched Mary Pat's shoulder. "Ach, and it will be all right now, won't it? We'll make up for the lack."
They squirmed and shifted further down into the soft bedding of the nesting boxes.
"Tis a grand day." She winked. "Being Easter tomorrow and all."
Mary Pat tentatively held out her wing to test the air. "If the weather will hold. Remember last year? That horrible storm battered the coop like a drunken pooka."
Fiona shuddered. A deluge of rain had pelted the windows and weren't they the same windows Himself had put in at extra cost? Well, they were grateful for it when the time came.
"So, Fi…" Mary Pat had a gleam in her eye. "Who do you think will be coming to collect the eggs this fine morning?"
Fiona ticked off the usual suspects in her head. Himself hadn't been out to collect in ages. That left Maria, or one of the kitchen girls, although they would have been here and gone already. "Maybe it will be the fine lass herself, Miss Teresa."
"She does have a soft hand at it, but…."
"Sure, and I know who you'd be wanting to collect your eggs, Mary Pat. That young black-haired fella with the jingly feet."
"Why not at all, not at all!"
Fiona cackled. "Oh, please. I believed you more when you proclaimed the sky was fallin' the other day just to see the young ones run out into the rain."
Mary Pat puffed up. "And you're so different? Always savin' your softest murmurs for the yellow-haired lad. Why, I even saw you go so far as to rub your head against his sleeve the last time."
She nodded. "Ach, tis a terrible thing but the heart wants what it wants." She cocked her head. Footsteps sounded close by. She turned around on her nest, anticipating the back wall being lifted so the eggs could be collected. She wanted to see who it would be this morning. Mary Pat did the same. If it were that rough-handed, chatty, bewhiskered fella, he would earn a pecked hand for his trouble, so he would.
"I hear bells, Fi. It's him!"
And so it was. Couldn't she hear them herself? But wait, there was someone else, too. She listened to the arguing voices.
"Johnny, I thought I was supposed to gather the eggs this morning."
"I got the basket so never mind."
"Give it to me and I'll get the job done."
"Nope. I'll do it."
"If I didn't know you better, brother, I'd say you just want to get out of the house and thereby out of all the Easter preparations."
"And you're here standing beside me."
"Touché."
"What's all the fuss about hiding eggs for the ranch kids anyway?"
"I have no idea. It's not a custom my grandfather ever entertained in Boston."
"So, we both get the eggs? And take our time doing it?"
"We wouldn't want to get in Teresa's way, or God forbid, Maria's, after all."
The wall was slowly lifted and hooked into place.
By all the Holy Saints in Ireland, never a grander scene there was. Himself's own two sons. The yellow-haired one was in dark blue, and sure wasn't it becoming? The black-haired one in pink—or salmon color, as Mary Pat corrected her—and both wearing such bright smiles they made the sun weep with shame.
"You know what you're doing, Scott?"
"Of course, I'm not an idiot."
He didn't, Fiona knew from past experience. He was raised in the Big City and never had to dally with the likes of her before. More's the pity. But he was gentle all the same and a canny boy. If she shifted her weight to one side to give him freer access, who would know?
He slid his large hand sideways underneath her, brushing against her feathers, tentative at first then with more confidence. He pulled out the first egg and gasped.
"Johnny, look at the color and all the speckles. It's…beautiful. Teresa will have to put away her dyeing supplies."
Fiona managed to stifle a chirrup of pleasure. "Am I blushing, Mary Pat?" she whispered.
But her friend was already engaged. One of her eggs was brought forth and the black-haired man whistled low in his throat.
"Scott, see this? It's as blue as a California sky."
Mary Pat sat on her nest with a twinkling eye and a hint of a grin.
Egg after egg was pulled, each garnering more praise than the last, and why shouldn't they? She and Mary Pat were experts after all.
She ratcheted her neck as low as she could go to catch a last glimpse of them as the wall was lowered back in place. "Ach, that was lovely."
"Just so, Fi."
"Sure enough, they weren't the worst of them that collects the eggs," Fiona said wistfully.
"No, indeed. Very proper they were."
"You know what I'm thinking, Mary Pat O'Toole?"
"What are you thinking, Fionnula Nell Malone?"
Fiona looked out the side of her eye at Mary Pat who was sitting in a pool of glazed contentment for hadn't she been stroked down her back by the handsome black-haired lad—several times?
She folded her wing closer to her side to hold in the heat where her own lad's long fingers had lingered like a whisper against her silky feathers. She was such an eejit.
"I'm thinking I love Easter."
The End