"You're a cutie, chatterbird. If I thought I could catch you I'd put a string around your leg. It'd be very fashionable and I'd know which one you were later."

He coos.

Rhea crumples up the cracker wrapper. "Soooo tempted to be a litterbug, they need to put more trash cans in this park," she sighs, "but probably some little birdy would choke on it looking for more crackers and then I would feel bad and also dead birds attract flies and flies are not at all cute and feathery. Tomorrow's menu is day-old bagels," she adds.

Volunteering to throw out her trash for her would not be appropriate pigeonly behaviour, he's pretty sure. Even though he is immensely cute. Trouble wanders in aimless circles instead, keeping close to Rhea, because his pigeon brain thinks that hanging around where there has just been food is an awesome idea. And, really, he can't argue with it.

Rhea walks aaaaall the way to a trash can, and throws out the cracker wrapper, and heads out of the park.

She doesn't seem to be on the lookout for pigeon stalkers. She has a mile and a half walk home, which she spends humming, kicking small rocks, picking at a ragged spot on her pants pocket, and stopping for an ice cream cone from a passing truck, which she pays for entirely in dimes. She lives in a small apartment building; Trouble will not have a problem learning the code to get in the gate, if he wants it, though flying over would also be pretty easy.

She shows up a little later on this day, with day-old bagels in sesame and pumpernickel, methodically shredding them as she approaches her bench. "Hey, guys, the auditions for Les Miserables are a few blocks west, all I have is bread," she says when she sits down and starts scattering. "Bread and my charming conversation, but we all know what you're really here for, right? So guys, what is the consensus among pigeons about how long teenage girls should be allowed to spend on the phone, because an hour is not a lot of time if you have, you know, friends."

Trouble coos sympathetically and pecks up some fragments of bagel.

"So my dad made me hang up on Lauren. Midsentence. I was wrapping up, but two minutes isn't a lot of warning. And I wasn't allowed to call her this morning so I bet she's mad at me."

Rhea's dad sounds like kind of a dick! Trouble eats bagel parts and listens.

"Which'd be one thing if he was ever like 'Rhea, you have a job now, chip in for the phone bill' but he never even asked me, just thinks it's bad for me to spend so much time on the phone. He completely approves of me walking to the park and conversing with birds, that's fine, that's getting fresh air, but actual socializing with humans is going to turn me into a pumpkin because there's electronics involved?"

Coo coo. Not cool, Rhea's dad.

"And I don't think Mom cares as much but she's all, present a united front, so that's the rule even when he's out at work. He's better about it during the school year at least because then I could be calling about homework or something."

What a pair of assholes. Trouble eats some more bagel crumbs.

"But they said for my birthday we can go to Disneyland, so that's good! I can't fly like you guys, see, so I have to settle for roller coasters."

Trouble coos. Smugly.

"I like Six Flags better actually, more intense coasters, but Disneyland's more a special occasion thing. They kind of put the theme in theme park awfully intensely. Mouse ears everywhere. Dad calls you guys flying mice. I wonder if you'd get along with mice if you met mice? You could be all enemy-of-my-enemy with cats, anyway."

Trouble wonders what being a mouse is like. If he sees one, he can find out! Maybe he'll hunt one down as a kitty. That sounds like a good use of his time.

"I'm so gripey with you guys sometimes, you'd think nothing neat went on in my life," Rhea sighs. "It's easier to find people to talk about the nice stuff with. But who wants to hear me whining that Dad doesn't let me talk on the phone or that I wish I had a little brother or that I took a paintball to the forehead yesterday and it kind of really hurt? You don't care as long as I show up with food, I can respect that kind of arrangement. Bagel bits for everybody."

Speaking of which, nom nom.

"I can't actually stay too long today," sighs Rhea, "I picked today to go to the library and get my summer reading books, the only reason I'm here in the first place was because here's on the way to the library. When you guys finish the bagels that's it for today, maybe tomorrow too."

Trouble coos.

Rhea is quiet while she shreds the rest of the bagel, and then says, "Hmm," and then lunges from the bench, arms outstretched for an attempt at pigeon-catching.