AN: Thank you to all who've reviewed so far. I really do appreciate it, especially considering I feel as if I'm gipping you by introducing an original character. So...yeah. Thanks for reading!
The blazing afternoon sun was beginning to wane when the girl finally found a secluded place to sit. She had made sure to walk away from Robbie's billboard, as she suspected that he wouldn't want her to look for a name near home. Something in her felt that she didn't want to find a name there either: she might end up with a name like 'Gadget' or 'Cog'. That would be no better than being named Robbiebot.
She had avoided Lazytown, however. Something about those people made her feel odd, and she didn't like the sensation. They looked at her in a way that no one else had before, either. Echoing Robbie when he was truly perplexed, she sighed. No breath escaped her lips, but it seemed to be the thing to do under these circumstances.
And so she had ended up in one of the many grassy fields that surrounded little Lazytown. Pressure sensors made her aware of the feeling of grass stems pushing against her crossed legs, and of the gentle breeze that played with her hair. Her internal fan hummed as her processor tried to keep up with the influx of new information.
In hindsight, she realised that it might have been useful to have installed an encyclopaedia. She knew about grass and sun and wind, but she didn't know what that noise was that surrounded her, or what that brown animal was that poked its head up from the earth.
She did know what the big blue object was that hovered in the skies above Lazytown. Robbie had told her once. Its shadow briefly enveloped her, and temporarily free from the glare of the sun, she could see that something jutted down from beneath it. She sharpened the focus on her vision, and realised that the blue man--Sportacus, she recalled--was watching her with a telescope.
The girl quickly shifted her gaze to the ground. Why was everyone so interested in her, all of a sudden? She had usually constrained her visits outdoors to the evening, when most people were inside, but she had work to do at all times of the day. It was frustrating that she had to be limited by other people, and so in defiance, she had started to wander out during the day. Now it was backfiring on her.
If briefly occurred to her that she had never worried about the reactions of anyone but Robbie, but it was too complicated a thought. Her driver shifted it to a stray file where she could process it later.
Something clattered down beside her, followed by a gentle -fump- of someone landing on the grassy loam. The girl ducked her head and slumped her shoulders, trying to look as small as possible. She hoped he wouldn't steal her. Robbie would be angry with her for getting lost.
"Hello again," said a familiar voice. Despite her best efforts, she could still see him, if only the tips of his navy boots. She tried to ignore him.
"You are more reclusive than Robbie Rotten, and that's saying something." When she still didn't respond, he sat down beside her.
Time passed. They sat together in comfortable silence, listening to the sounds of life that waxed and waned around them.
It was one of these sounds that piqued her curiousity. She wasn't sure when she became curious about things, but it wasn't a bad feeling, and her harddrive wasn't nearly full yet. Something noisy came to rest on her knee, and peered up at her with bright black eyes.
She had to repeat her question twice before Sportacus was certain that she had spoken at all. When he glanced over at her, he saw that she had stretched out her hand ever so gently so that her visitor could peer at her fingers.
"It's a bird. A wren, I think," he replied. "We have them where I am from." He watched with surprise as the little bird hopped up onto her finger, and allowed the girl to raise it to her face.
"What's its name?" she asked, her grey eyes fixed on the tiny creature. Its chest thrummed with quick breaths, and its head moved back and forth, constantly casting about for...something. She wasn't sure what.
Sportacus thought for a moment about her question. She had phrased it differently than before. "It doesn't have a name," he responded finally. "It's just a wren."
"It doesn't have a name either," the girl said softly. She lowered her finger to the ground, and the bird hopped off to peck at the crushed grass that surrounded them.
Sportacus had never heard anyone sound so sad. He wished he knew what to do, but this was more Stephanie's domain, and he was generally happy to leave her to it. He was still speechless when the girl looked up at him. She was smiling, if only faintly.
"My name is Wren," she said.
The odd pair spent the rest of the evening together. Wren learned about snakes, mice and ground squirrels, and of farms, wheat and windmills. She also learned that the noises she was hearing were birds and crickets and singing frogs.
Sportacus was happy to answer her questions. He refrained from asking anything about herself, and that seemed to make her happy in return. She had a childlike wonder about her, and truly looked as if she was absorbing everything he said. She was even smiling more now, though she barely moved more than was necessary to look at or point to the next thing she wanted to learn about. Then again, he couldn't remember the last time he had sat still for so long either.
The sun was perched on the horizon when Sportacus called a halt to their conversation. Wren watched as he called for his ladder and climbed back up to his aircraft. Then, with nothing else to do, she headed home.
Robbie was napping when she got there, so she set about tidying up. Having worked through the worst of it this morning, there was relatively little to do. She washed the dishes, cleaned out the microwave, and oiled Robbie's periscope as per the note that he'd left for her. Once finished, she removed the apron of Robbie's that she always used for dirty tasks, and looked around.
Everything was clean and tidy, and Robbie was still asleep, so no new orders would be forthcoming. She knew that she should recharge now that she'd been on for nearly twelve hours, but the worktable that she usually used looked cold and unwelcoming after the hours she spent sitting in the sunny field.
Wren thought for a moment, then grabbed an extension cord. She plugged one end into where she usually recharged, and dragged the remainder over to Robbie's chair.
He didn't rouse when she sat at the foot of his orange chair. A console clicked open on the back of her neck, and with gritted teeth, she stabbed at it with the plug at the other end of the cord.
Power surged through her, and she felt the brief giddiness that always came with being connected directly to a massive source of electricity. Content, she snuggled up against Robbie's leg and let her head rest on his knee as she drifted off to sleep.