The Bird Witch Project
Chapter Notes
Since my pal, Slugger35 is scheduled for a tough day, here's an extra chapter for all of
you!
See the end of the chapter for more notes
As sometimes happens on weekends, the girls fall asleep in our big bed. No one minds because our
time together is precious. Besides, it isn't as though the girls will let Sam or I sleep in, regardless of
where they lay their heads.
One of the few good things about Ruby being fourteen and a half -and seriously when did that
happen- is that she is old enough to do what she pleases in the kitchen. And that usually means
breakfast and a bit longer to sleep for her adults. Even better, she keeps Lily occupied with some of
the simpler tasks; including a knack for all of my fancy coffee paraphernalia. With her big sister
watching out, I don't worry over much.
The scent of coffee rouses me first, which is also the norm. For someone who sleeps with all the
ease of a tropical storm, Sam is remarkably difficult to wake up. Shrugging into a t-shirt and shorts,
I shuffle out of the master bedroom and leave the door open. Sometimes the growing scent of
coffee and breakfast will awaken the living dead and sometimes I have to send in Lily.
"Morning, loves," I greet the kids and get a pouncing hug from my baby and a grin from Ruby
where she's watching over a sizzling pan.
"G'morning, Mama," Lily says cheerfully and in her wicked grin I see myself and my family so
powerfully. "Can I go jump on Mom?"
Chuckling, I squeeze her until she squirms and kiss her night-black hair. "Since I smell bacon, let's
give her a short window to drag herself in."
The girls giggle naughtily as I do my best groan-and-shuffle towards the coffee. Sam makes a
better zombie than I, but I do my best. Fortified with the brew and a touch of honey, I clean up the
inevitable mess and park my butt at the counter to keep Ruby company. She's always been an
independent child in wanting to do things herself. Unless she's in danger, the family knows to leave
her to her own devices until asked for help.
Lily finishes setting the table and gives me a pitifully desperate expression that I can't help but grin
at.
"Go get her!"
Like an overactive puppy released from the leash, Lily is off like a shot. A moment later there is a
high-pitched squeal, a cheesy monster-movie roar and much laughter. With some moaning and
groaning from Sam and plenty of giggling from Lily, they join us, the smallest among us tossed
over the shoulder of the tallest. Sam is barely awake and moving at zombie-shuffle, only one eye
currently activated and even that one is at major squint.
"Seriously, I gotta find some more reliable staff on weekends. I'm damn sick of getting dragged
down there because some-" I'm glad when her brain boots up enough to clearly edit whatever she
was going to say "-flake decides to bail. Ah, Ruby, you are a wiz in the kitchen, and you found the
squash. Excellent! I've been wondering what to do with it all."
"Not my fault it looked so gorgeous at the farmer's market," I sass primly and earn the smiles I'm
after.
Over perfectly fluffy scrambled eggs tossed with pan-fried summer squash, tomatoes and bacon,
we four chat and catch up as we always do. Lily still has no love for math, which still horrifies
Sam, but the school tutors seem to be doing a good job in getting the basics into her head. From a
very young age, I suspected my wild spark to be the artistic sort, which is fascinating to me. Maybe
she gets it from her father's side. As I put it on paper to absolve him of any responsibility for his
daughter barring a medical emergency, I can't exactly casually ask.
Speaking of Lily, she seems a little run down, poking at the scraps on her plate and leaning hard on
a balled fist.
"Baby?"
The gentle inquiry gets a slow blink, and I smile tenderly.
"I miss snuggling with you."
That's good enough for Lily and she immediately comes to me to climb into my lap and lean in
hard.
Not so grown up after all.
While Sam and Ruby clean up, I pet Lily and hum softly. When the table and kitchen are spotless, I
speak up again, rousing Lily from a boneless half-doze. "I think we need a quiet day, loves. We can
watch a movie, or maybe finish that YouTube playlist?"
In this case, my internet crush is nowhere in my mind, all my attention on my sleepy daughter, who
smiles. "There's more fun stuff about the dinosaurs, Mama."
"Sold!"
After a break for teeth and toilet, we gather at the couch to dawdle away the morning. Sam wedges
herself into the corner of the chaise part of the enormous sectional I not-so-secretly hate, but love
the group cuddles it inspires, and I snuggle into her in the sloppiest manner I can manage. That lets
Lily lie on/against me, her toes tucked under Ruby's thigh, ostensibly safe from tickling.
With a quick series of clicks and swipes, Ruby has restarted the 'I Think We Have Dinosaurs'
playlist and skipped to the end of the first video where Alex storms away from the huge egg. As
the usual final screen comes up, Lucy can be heard yelling, "Hey, we can make some money off
them if we can catch them!" Just like yesterday, I laugh along with the rest of Team Lanvers.
After a beat, the video entitled, 'Hunting amidst the Christmas trees,' opens to a lovely day and a
sporty Subaru that is passingly familiar whips into a bootlegger's reverse that leaves it perfectly
parallel to the low porch fence of the saloon. Team Lanvers converges on the car, applauding and
catcalling, to which Sara hops out of the driver's seat to bow dramatically.
"Thank you, thank you. Donations or worshipful adoration are acceptable."
Shaking her head, Ava climbed from the other side, a smile on her face. "Don't listen to the ego.
She's been practicing that move for a week."
"Aves! Dishonor on you! Dishonor on your cow!"
"Randomly quoting Disney at me won't save you, hot stuff."
The POV becomes the drone, lifting up to show the gang of them headed into the clubhouse,
before panning around to show the gorgeous countryside.
"I love these shots," I sigh happily. "It's such a beautiful place."
My girls murmur in agreement as the scene changes to indoors, Brainy hovering near one of the
doors, the mongrels clustered around the kitchen island, wracked with hilarity. Shaking her head,
Ava breaks away from the crowd and gestures for him to follow her.
"Brainy, c'mere. Are you still filming? Good. Okay, I'm not normally the type to grab the spotlight,
but those three are on a tear, and I'm pretty sure they're trying to make Kara laugh hard enough to
wet herself, so we'll just leave them to that, hmm? It'll be awhile before they calm down and there's
so much to see since we were here in February!"
Her enthusiasm is contagious and Brainy agrees, "there is indeed. May I suggest first visiting the
barn to ascertain if the kittens or their mother is about? Your quiet should facilitate that."
"Excellent suggestion! Lead the way."
There's no sighting of the kittens, but Mama B pokes her nose out, gold eyes gleaming in the
dimness of the barn, and her babies can be heard just at the edge of the camera's microphone.
"Awww, I wanted to see the kittens," Lily pouts even as Ava has nearly the identical reaction
onscreen. It's adorable and I hug her tight for a moment.
Ava gets the nickel tour, which the editor gives us the abbreviated highlights of. It's nice to be
reminded of things we the audience have seen, the chickens and bees and little houses that keep our
team safe and snug from the elements.
Eventually, the mongrels sheepishly come looking for their missing members, finding them once
more at the perimeter of the cat corral, hoping for a glimpse of kittens. Falling silent, they follow
suit, waiting for the still-nervous mama cat to leave the nest.
"Sorry we got wild again," Sara apologizes lowly as she tucks herself under an offered arm, and
clings close. Ava just gives her a quick kiss caught at the edge of Brainy's shot and her voice is
pure adoration.
"Sara, if I minded your insane friends, we would have broken up years ago."
Speaking of insane friends…
The scene cuts to a shaky black and white vision of high grass and trees. Like the most terrible of
documentaries, the camera tracks about jerkily, and I can't help but wonder if Brainy was having
some sort of seizure at the time. A pair of figures flash by and the camera jerks over to spot Alex
and Lucy crouched in the grass. I can't stop the giggle at the streaks of black makeup on their faces
as though they are commandos. Through binoculars, they observe -the camera shakily following
their eye line- the nest.
Abruptly, the scene changes to a plain screen where letters begin to scroll as though being typed
out. 'The target has been observed. No sentinels apparent.'
'…Yet.'
Like the title below the video box, the screen is suddenly full of classic horror movie font
screaming, 'The Bird Witch Project'.
Back to the action, the scene is deep darkness and the overexposed look of low-light cameras.
Every bit as jerky and jarring as the opening sequence, the forest and grass moves like a boat on
stormy seas.
"Glad I'm not prone to motion sickness," I mutter and my girls all snicker.
Suddenly the view is wrenched to the side, to focus on wide eyes beneath a beanie hat, that I think
is their friend, Sara. When she speaks, her voice is hushed and quivering with unconvincing terror.
"They're all around us. God, what have we done?"
A blur of motion in the trees is a little scary, but it's hard to take it seriously when Alex's little scoff
of laughter underscores Lucy's cheesy squeal of mock-distress.
This becomes a theme, the gang of them flicking in and out of the trees in the deep darkness,
providing a running commentary like the whole thing were some cheesy horror flick.
If not for the laughter and the jokes and the beeping out of cussing, it would actually be a little
terrifying. That damn movie scared the shit out of me as a kid…
It was stupid. And dangerous. And had them laughing so hard they were almost crying
with it.
Centered around -of course- Alex, Lucy and Sara.
There might have been a couple six-packs of a really delicious microbrew straight
from Seattle involved as well. So, tipsy on barely-under-legal-strength pilsner and
excited to find out what they could about the damn dinosaur birds, they'd raced out to
the rural blackness of a half-moon night to goof off.
Brainy would forever regret making a comment about homaging the 'Blair Witch
Project' with the efforts of perhaps capturing the ostrich. Particularly while the idiots
weren't sober. He loved them like the family he'd always wanted, but honestly, they
were a little insane. Even Kara had forgotten caution. Only Nia hung back with him,
justly wary of the night, and all was right with the world.
"I guess I'd better go watch Lucy's back," Nia sighed and smiled at him, robbing
Brainy of his characteristic intelligence. "Will you be alright?"
He quickly regretted his wordless nod, the night as close as being buried alive, sounds
echoing about the old tree farm.
Then a monster movie roar shattered the night and Brainy felt that primitive-brain
terror soak his entire body in alarm chemicals.
"What the fuck was that?" Lucy whispered loudly behind him, making Brainy jump
violently enough to drop the camera. "Sorry, buddy." The apology came with her
scooping up the camera to deposit it in his hands.
Clicking on her flashlight made them both wince, but the light was welcome. Pointing
the thing straight up, Lucy bellowed into the night, "reconvene, troops! I think we've
done enough monster hunting. Chop, chop!"
It was rare that Lucy used her lawyer voice with her pack and rarer still the particular
whip crack of tone that belied her past in an Army uniform. No one disobeyed the
order and quickly straggled in.
"You said you had ostrich," Ava hissed accusingly at Alex. "Not lions!"
"I heard that same sound earlier. It's got to be a male. Fucker's way scarier in the
dark."
They were all a little jumpy on the long walk back to the clubhouse.
The poor babies look unnerved and a bottle I recognize as Disaronno comes out to be splashed over
ice or into glasses of Coke. The seven of them sit around the still half-unfinished kitchen and drink
for a moment before Sara speaks up.
"So why the -beep- are you doing this, anyway?"
It's a legitimate question and one that has certainly passed through my mind.
"Because they're cool," Ruby chuckles under her breath and Lily giggles.
Alex sits forward to eye her oldest friend closely. "Did you know there are websites selling edible
ostrich eggs for anywhere between forty-five to ninety bucks?"
That makes both Sara and Ava -not to mention myself- blink in surprise.
"Yeah, that was pretty much our reaction too. Double that for fertile ones. And the -beep-ing things
eat the same -beep- the chickens do, just a lot of it. Crazy right? A four pound clucker or a four
hundred pound terror bird all eating chicken scratch and bugs. It's nuts. Oh, and the meat is
supposed to be really good, not to mention lean. And it's red meat, more like beef. So, if we can
catch them without anyone getting hurt, it's worth the hassle."
That seems a bit… ominous.
So, the next vid starts up, called 'A Comedy Of Errors'. It's fitting, as the team espouses ever wilder
ideas to corral the giant birds. Taking the little UTV out and parking it discretely next to one of the
green warehouses finally gets some footage of the ostriches, wary amidst the overgrown Christmas
trees. Alex's chasing them with said UTV while Brainy whimpers for mercy just shows how fast
the flock of four is and results in some film that makes the night hunt look stable by comparison.
"There's a hole in the fence back here," Alex notes while Brainy rights the camera. "Okay, I think I
have an idea."
"Here we go," Lily comments and snuggles even more into my loose embrace, wiggling with
excitement.
With Alex's voice talking over footage of bits and pieces of the events, she carries us along on the
journey.
"Okay, so I had Nia and Google Maps find me the main buildings of the adjacent properties to ours
and sent out delegations to each. So we now have permission to build a trap that will temporarily
be on their lands, not ours. No one wants these things running loose."
The drone shows the gap in an already dilapidated fence, the grass grown high in the ignored
corner where multiple properties come together.
"So, we're going to lay down some of the heavy cattle panels and fluff the grass up around them to
hide them. Once we know the birds are back in the tree farm, we'll pull them up and hook them
together, then scare the birds into the pen. Our neighbors are loaning us their UTVs so that we can
block up the hole with them and then see about actually capturing the dinosaurs."
The trap comes together with the rapidity of fast-forward and the gang kicks the grass around to
more natural tufts to hide the tube steel.
"We're also going to park the big tractor across the road on our side of the new bridge, in case they
get brave or panicky. The stream is actually really hard to cross and the water is still pretty high, so
that's as good as a fence. On those goofy legs, I can't imagine them getting far in that deep forest
alongside the old tree farm. So yeah, it's a waiting game now, which is fine, because there's still
plenty to be done around here. In the meantime, we're wiped out and there's nothing to be done
today. Later!"
Worse Than a Wet T-shirt Contest: not entirely family-friendly. May 27
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Rainbow Haven Acres
Published on June 1, 2017
Saturday morning Maggie showed up with the dawn, yawning and happy to see them.
With three sets of extra hands, the chores went fast and they put in some hours getting
the kitchen within shouting distance of complete. Eventually the scent of delicious
things grilling led them out like lemmings to drool pitifully at an amused Nia.
The outdoor kitchen that was much of the ground of the bathhouse was still
incomplete, but the ever adaptable Nia had rigged up a fire pit and a massive steel grid
to cook a truly impressive amount of goodies that the city folk had brought with them;
steaks and burgers and hot dogs and whole corn still in the husks and a rainbow of
vegetables. Maggie had even managed to scare up a pound of frozen ostrich meat,
though it was thawing in the fridge for now.
As she had started doing as summer ripened around them, Kara attacked her sister with
a can of aerosol sunblock, muttering at the territory that needed to be covered.
"I swear, you only strip down to the sports bra when we're filming. When did you
become such an exhibitionist?"
Waving her hands around to dispel the foul-tasting cloud, Alex grinned wickedly and
her voice dripped suggestiveness. "I've got to give the ladies what they want."
Kara slapped her across one sunblock-glistening shoulder while the other mongrels
laughed uproariously. Even Nia hid a giggle behind a raised hand.
"The real gay agenda is homesteading!" Lucy sassed and broke them all up again.
"Damn right," Sam mutters sleepily where she has nestled her head into my shoulder, and I chuckle
lowly through the buzz of my own hormones. A buzz that intensifies when Sam tightens her loose
grip around me, ruffling Lily's hair where her head is on my belly. "You'd be a cute farmer."
Unsure if the teasing tone is meant for me or my daughter, I scoff. "Oh sure, me on a farm with
animals and bugs and god knows what."
The girls giggle in tandem and Sam raises her head to trail smiling kisses over my jawbone. "But
we could find you cute sundresses and maybe a fall wardrobe of flannel."
My glare has no heat and the girls are even more amused at our banter. "Sam, I'm entirely unsure
they even make dresses in flannel."
Their combined laughter is a rush I will never tire of, and I kiss away Sam's. It's a bit of a surprise
when she responds with more ardor than I'm used to with the girls close by. Part of me is ready to
call off the family cuddle and head back to bed for some rather more adult entertainment, but Ruby
is the voice of reason, as it were, when she makes a teenage grossed-out sound. With a splutter of
amusement that breaks the long, slow kiss, I turn my head to give Ruby a dry look.
"Yes, yes, Director Arias, do continue with the entertainment."
"You're just in it for the pretty girls," Ruby sasses and the laughter explodes out of me.
"Sassy."
Me? I don't have a preference for the packaging. Generally, I prefer women because men, no
matter how pretty or interesting a few of them are, need so much work. I don't have the time or,
frankly, inclination, to put in that sort of effort. I saw my father wither from lack of it and my
brother smothered with too much. I've spent my entire life butting heads with entitled men -and the
larger the privilege they come from, the greater the entitlement and the more stunted they are- and
refusing to do their jobs for them.
Shaking off the serious turn of my thoughts, I snuggle back into the family cuddle, more aware of
lover and daughters than the screen. No doubt I'll get sucked back in soon enough. I have been
enjoying these videos enormously, and frankly, they haven't hurt my love life either.
Sam and I have always taken a few side trips into the sexual wilderness around us, both together and apart. Between the two of us, we pretty much have any sort of bait to entice in some entertainment. The bar doesn't hurt either.
But we always come back to one another.