I apologize that it has taken me almost 5 years to give an update to the story that had my heart all that time ago. A lot has happened since then and I have changed immeasurably as a person, the growth and change has been incredible and this year has mostly been taken up by my enlistment into the army. I hope that this new chapter can bring a smile to the faces of those who I abandoned, and hung out to dry by not producing another chapter in even remotely a timely manner. I hope to release more chapters this year and to bring smiles to all of your faces, and to tell wonderful stories about the characters we all love.

As they flew along… The two lovebirds flew over the fertile canopied forests of Rio de Janeiro, flying two abreast now as they flew with the wind at their backs. Blu had been very careful to map their route precisely, and the only path that made sense to him was to fly right through the state of Minas Gerais, which Blu had never actually been to despite spending three years in Brazil up to now. He simply never found the time, and racking his brain about it now he tried very hard to recall if they'd ever visited when the kids had been growing up.

After flying past a particularly hilly section of forest and turning sideways to brush his wing-tip against a leafy tropical canopy, he opened his beak to squawk at his mate.

"Jewel…" Blu said.

Jewel turned her head mid-flight, and the wind caught those few feathers of hers that always stood up in the back and for a moment, framed as she was, the sky in front of her and the sun on their backs… Jewel seemed like a perfect angel to her husband, haloed in clouds with silver linings that brought visions of angelic paintings and sculptures he once poured over the history of. But how could he tell her just how beautiful she was in this moment? You look like a Michaelangelo! He imagined himself saying, she wouldn't get it…

"Yes, Blu?" Jewel asked, her eyes locking with his as they flew along, neck and neck. He often spent hours of his time wondering how she ever ended up with him in the first place. He only hoped she thought he looked half as good as she did in this very moment.

Pushing aside his personal thoughts, the now slightly nervous macaw smiled stupidly as her beauty struck him like a beam of blinding light, sailing through the sky as they were now.

"H-have we… have weeeeeeeeeeee…" He trailed off, his voice becoming a mere squeak as his cerulean cheeks turned far more red than blue.

Jewel gave him a perplexed look, staring at him from behind an arched brow without a clue what his problem was.

Blu cleared his throat and swallowed some air, hoping to kill the butterflies in his stomach.

"I'm sorry, you just… you're so beautiful, I can't believe it sometimes!" He said, raising his voice back to a normal level, he flew under her, and appeared on her right side. She cried out with an "Oh!" As she felt him graze her belly with his wing-tips and let out a giggle as she caught on to just what his problem might be.

"Oh, I see! You're all kinds of choked up over little old me, lover-boy?" She couldn't help but smile and blush formed faintly on her cheeks as her husband fawned over her. He flew loops around her, grazing her with a wing-tip every time before eventually he flew right up underneath her, flying upside down just to press right on her and give her a kiss mid-flight. A brief kiss, as any pilot would tell you that displaying affection mid-flight is a particularly grueling task even under the best of circumstances.

She giggled uncontrollably as she became his object of affection and the two began to loop around one another in a wide circle, creating a cylinder in the air, revolving around an invisible line in the middle of their aerial circle.

"Blu!" Jewel said, calling out to him in the middle of a loop around him, she giggled after she said his name, butterflies in her stomach now from the carefree almost child-like whimsy he had roped her into, and she fell in love with him all over again, and she was quite convinced she would fall in love with him every day over and over again, as though they were meeting for the first time very single morning.

Blu called back out to her with a wide smile on his beak. "Yes, my Michaelangelo?" He said, not even caring she wouldn't understand.

"First of all…" Jewel began, stifling a giggle into her shoulder as she flapped her wings, something shiny on the jungle floor catching her eye before she realized it was just someone's watch… "Who is Michael-angle-Oh?" She said, a smug grin on her face as she waited for the inevitably stuttered response of the one she knew so well.

"A-an artist!" He said.

"Second of all… what were you going to ask me earlier?" She said, cocking her head to the side as the two of them stopped their revolving aeronautical tricks and began to side by side again, looking each other in the eye with wide enthusiastic smiles on their faces.

"Oh! Y-yeah! Right! Uh… uhm… I think…" He said, stammering out some filler words as he racked his brain for the question he had long abandoned in favor of enjoying the skies with his lover. "I was going to… ask you… uhhh… H-have we ever been to Minas Gerais? I feel like I haven't but…"

Jewel cut him off with a laugh. "Yes! For the kids birthday! Remember? You insisted that we go see the Ouro Preto heritage center! It was quite interesting… well, you said it was but I almost fell asleep in that dusty old museum! Ha! What was it… Casa Dos Contos, I think…" She paused to brush up against him and pressed her cheek into his, pushing him to the right as she hammered home her point. "And you don't even remember!" She said, rolling her eyes and pulling away from him now, looping under him to appear on his right. "Some museum, huh?" She said, another giggle escaping her.

Blu was down right embarrassed, how could he forget something like that? Surely it was going to be a one time thing. He blushed deeply and began to stammer out a reply. "W-well hey, how am I supposed to remember everything about Brazil? There's so much! There's so much… cultured… really really… interesting history there… Portugal has a lot of really interesting footprints here." He said, peering off into the horizon, where the green canopies met the blue foggy sky some hundreds of miles away and disappeared.

"Right, right… the cultured history you forgot!" She said, and snorted dismissively at him. "It's okay though… why did you bring it up? Wanna visit there again? It is on our way… I think…" She said, putting a pensive claw to her chin and tapping away as she squinted ahead trying to visualize the maps Blu had poured over the day prior.

"Sure! Why not? M-maybe we'll find a Spix's Macaw right away and then we'll just call it a romantic getaway, huh? Just… you and me?" He said, his turn to press his cheek up against hers now and to try to hammer home his point. She pulled away with a laugh and spun away, pulling her wings in to her body and diving downwards through the air, spinning a few times before opening her wingspan back up and catching the air, now a good few dozen feet below him, Blu dove down after her to catch up with his rapidly descending lover, and flew to her side. As he joined her at her side, she rubbed her beak against his and nipped at a loose feather the wind had been threatening to blow away for the past few minutes.

"Sure… why not?" She said.