Title: Leaf by Leaf
Fandom: Haikyuu!!
Rating: G
Length: 4k
Content notes: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Birds, Magic, Plants
Author notes: This is an AU where everyone is a bird, and they use magic. Ushijima’s a white eagle, Tendou’s a moluccan cockatoo, Reon's a peregrine falcon, Semi's a bali myna, and Shirabu's a lovebird. Since this is a magical au, i’m using that as an allowance to pretend ushi and tendou are the same size, and to change their diets.
I know 4k is a lot for a fic written in a few short days, but I really love birds so this flew by in no time.
Summary: Birdsong is a serious ancient magic.


Ushijima kept low to the ground as he pulled a small wooden cart of supplies outside. His talons kicked up dust and left a trail behind him in the dirt, his feet scuttling along the floor. He owned a farm-garden on the edge of his small town. Almost every local bird came to him for their herbs and produce, and he managed to provide for them all and sustain himself every year.

He took a watering can from the cart and set to watering the plants again. One sector of his pea crop was almost ready for harvest. He only needed a few days more for them. Soil maintenance consumed a lot of time, but that was to be expected, after all these years of experience. Ushijima knew the ins and outs of magic to till the soil and nourish roots properly.

After a few hours of work, Ushijima stood back. The shoots of crops all looked crisp with a fresh shine of water rejuvenating them. The effects of his labor were already shining faintly in the leaves, mending small nicks and bug bites, unfurling the stems to a greater height, and sending flowers to bloom.

Ushijima approached a cluster of pea shoots and helped himself to a small meal. The daily effort always left him hungry and tired. Eating his own food gave him the feeling of immediate nourishment, the same way sipping from water satisfied his throat. He gathered his talons on the ground near the base of the shoots and nibbled.

Once he finished, he flew up to the high branches of his favorite tree and perched to take a nap. The soft breeze rustled the autumn leaves of the tree branches, and stirred his feathers with the subdued pleasantness of a neck scratch, settling his wings close to his body. He closed his eyes and fell asleep to the wind.

Someone's presence disturbed the farmgarden. Ushijima woke up. The presence of anyone could've woken him up, but this was someone he didn't recognize in the background of noise he called home. And everyone knew to announce themselves with their own greeting; Ushijima appreciated moments of salutatory music.

He leapt off the branch and alighted next to the unfamiliar cockatoo. "Can I help you?"

The bird blurred into a ball of feathers and flew backward. "What? What? Don't scare me!"

"I'm not trying to--"

The bird hissed. Despite the hiss, he didn't shrink away or display any signal of attack, and the note of intent in his voice wasn't serious. He ended it quickly and shook himself, his feathers fluffing for a moment.

"Someone sent me here saying you're the one to buy food from. Hey, I'm Tendou Satori, and I'm moving in nearby!" Tendou nodded, his crest of feathers shooting up for a moment. "I'm gonna run out of food soon. Tomorrow, maybe. Can I buy some stuff?"

Ushijima regarded him with a stare. "I apologize, but I was in the middle of a nap. I'm tired from work, and I need to catch some rest."

"Okay! I'll be back!" Tendou took off into the sky.

Ushijima slipped into a brief motionlessness. His wings drooped to resolve the tension in his shoulders. The flight back up wasn't very long, but his exhaustion placed it further away in his relative view.

~

"Welcome back!" Tendou exclaimed in greeting as he approached the edge of Ushijima's farmgarden.

Ushijima raised his head from a cluster of flowers. "Why are you welcoming me in my own home?"

"Oh, I thought you said that."

"Said what?"

"Welcome back."

"You said that," Ushijima said.

"Anyway, I'm back. Are you back, too?"

Ushijima stepped away from the flowers. "Yes, I'm back. What would you like to buy?"

Tendou hummed. "Hrm. Now that I think about it...where're your fruit trees?"

Ushijima gestured up with his beak. "They're spread around here."

Tendou glanced around. "Which ones?"

"All of them."

"What do you mean, all of them?"

"All of the trees here are mine. I periodically tend to them," Ushijima said matter-of-factly.

Tendou squinted. "What? You can't own all these trees."

"I grew them and sung them to their maximum height. I water them. They're mine to protect."

Tendou settled into the dirt and sat down close to his feet, humming again with contemplation.

On closer inspection, every single tree had fruit or blossoms of some kind. Tendou couldn't find a particular pattern to them, but all trees of one kind grouped together in vague orders. Apple and peach trees could still be seen in between each other, and at that, Tendou gave up looking at them.

“Anyway, I’ll take some fruits and veggies, please.” Tendou gave his specific order of produce, and Ushijima nodded and accepted payment.

"I'll deliver them later."

“So how do you feed everyone? You don’t have a huge amount of land,” Tendou said.

“Like I said, I use song magic to grow them. When everything grows quickly I don’t need to use a lot of space.” Ushijima turned and flew up to his home built up in the trees, retreating to stow the payment and retrieve a few herbs. Tendou followed him to the branches out front, and when Ushijima flew out, he startled and dropped everything.

“Oh, oops. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Tendou clacked his beak. "Actually, I guess we're even. So what’re those for?" He pointed with his foot at the fallen herbs.

Ushijima hopped off to glide down to them, and Tendou trailed after him again, drifting as he talked.

“I think I’d like some of those, too. I make charms and things. Want me to make you one? I can’t sing but I’m good at everything else,” Tendou said. Ushijima inclined his head in to listen, but he didn’t say a word until they landed.

“I can make some of my own, but thank you for the offer.” Ushijima dug in the dirt with one foot until he scratched out a small indent, and then he placed the herbs inside and patted dirt back over it.

“But can you make what I make? I can make really nice ones. …By the way what’re you doing?"

“I have to bury them for a little while for something I’m making.” Ushijima scratched a symbol of a leaf over the spot. “You said you make charms?"

“Yeah. But my specialty's ordinary spellmaking." Tendou lifted his foot and summoned a small ball of water under it, drawing out moisture from the air.

"I see. Well, I'll come to you for my spellmaking needs, then," Ushijima said.

Tendou laughed.

~

Tendou came to visit the next day and watched Ushijima tend to the plants.

"Why aren't you singing?" Tendou asked.

"Too much is bad for them." Ushijima delicately circled his claw around a lettuce stem. "You can listen another day."

"Cool." Tendou lowered his head to inspect the lettuce, tilting to twist around it. "Do you believe in those old stories and folk tales about how dragons are our ancestors?"

"I do. Why do you ask?"

Tendou pulled back and fluffed his feathers to take a seat and face Ushijima. "Well, that's where magic comes from, right? And in magic history, after dragons, there were birds with song magic, and then some other things, but the point is that song is old, almost as old as fire. I don't think I've ever met someone that uses it. Where'd you learn it?"

"My father taught me.” Ushijima reached down, plucked an insect that was chewing on a lettuce plant, and ate it.

“Oh, so it was passed down through your family? Interesting.” Tendou pointed at another plant. “I see a bug on that one."

“Thanks.” Ushijima pulled another one off.

“Keeping that magic close must be great. It’s like being a step closer to dragons. That’s what I was thinking.” Tendou extended his foot and gestured. “Can you use fire, too?"

“No."

“Have you ever tried?"

“Never learned. I only know song and plant magic."

“You should definitely give it a try!"

Ushijima’s beak tightened with a small brief grinding sound. “Don’t use that. You’ll set the whole forest on fire."

“Alright then. What about water?” Tendou summoned another ball of water, this time floating it around and swishing it into different shapes.

Ushijima shook his head. “I’m fine with what I have."

“Suit yourself.” Tendou released the water, and it splashed over a few plants. He waved with a wing and then segued into flapping and flying away.

When Tendou returned to his house in the trees, he pushed aside his messy belongings, unsorted from the unfinished business of moving and unpacking, and dug through his charm supplies.

Growing up, Tendou used to think that charm making was a magical and mystical process. Not magical in the energetic sense, but in the mystery of it and being unable to understand it. Tendou still thought it had magical whimsy; he knew how to do it, but it sometimes made no sense to him, and he couldn’t explain why they worked the way they did. Combining ingredients for a healing charm and an invisibility charm, for example, made a charm of molecular instability, letting the holder move through walls. It took a special kind of intuition to handle this delicate speciality.

Tendou gathered his supplies and chose a place on the floor to make himself comfortable again. A bug-repellent charm could be very simple, but Tendou wanted much more than that. If it could last a long time, then Ushijima would keep it longer.

After he finished, he returned to Ushijima’s field and presented it to him.

“I think this might be useful for you,” Tendou said as he gave it to Ushijima.

Ushijima placed it on the floor and turned it over with his foot. “What is this?"

“It’s a bug-repellent charm!” Tendou sat high and proud. “Now you don’t have to waste time chasing them. And it's a pretty charm, too! It's blue, really blue. Blueberry-blue."

“Oh.” Ushijima peered down at it. “How does it work?"

“This charm is extra special. It’ll disorient bugs and trick them into moving into a circle drawn nearby. That way, if you still need the bugs, they’ll be there.” Tendou toted a small bag of rocks to a clearing past the edge of the field with Ushijima in tow.

“What are these for?” Ushijima asked as Tendou dumped the contents out and chose one with his beak.

Tendou put it on the floor. “Some pebbles and iron pieces for the circle. Even if I could just draw it, the wind and rain would destroy that, so rocks it is.” Tendou arranged them and stepped back.

“Thank you, but you didn’t have to do that. In fact, I should’ve given you a housewarming gift for moving in and becoming my new neighbor,” Ushijima said.

“Nah I don’t need anything."

“I insist.” Ushijima cocked his head in thought. “How about magic lessons? I can teach you song and plant magic."

Tendou perked up. “If you say it’s okay, then!"

“I can teach you later this week. I’ll be sure to have the plants ready for singing by then,” Ushijima said. He turned and headed back to the thick of the fields. Tendou flew away.

~

After a few days of settling in and unpacking, Tendou could finally prepare spells and open a shop. Charms were an easy business, and he could make generic ones in advance and sell them quickly. Spellmaking was the true blackhole of Tendou’s time. He enjoyed making spells, but up to a limit, sinking into frustration and artblock after that.

This was his current situation. His first customer, Reon, had commissioned him to make a spell to summon snow sprites for a freezer box, and he had little experience in summoning. So far he could only summon water and dust sprites into a box. The small balls of energy floated in his box, hovering in place and drifting up and down in slight self-contained drafts.

Part of the problem was that Tendou didn’t fully understand sprites to the competency that he needed. They had small eyes, but he didn’t know if they were sentient with intent, like a bird or any other animal, or if they lived without a nervous system like an amoeba, or if it was closer to a virus.

Tendou dropped his work and flew to greet Ushijima in the fields. “Hey, Wakatoshi!” he called from far away as he swooped down.

Ushijima raised his head. “Tendou. Are you here for your first lesson? I was just about to sing to the plants."

“Uh. I came to ask you about sprites."

“Why?” Ushijima tilted his head. "I don't know much about them. Do they need singing too?"

"No. Damn." Tendou lowered his head to the side and scratched it with his foot. "I have to buy some books and look into it then."

"Are you busy, then?"

"No, nope!" Tendou shot up. "I'm ready!"

Ushijima inched closer to a plant and faced it. "Do you already know how to sing? Most birds can sing, but song magic is a little different."

"I think so." Tendou opened his beak, and once he took a huge breath, he rumbled a long warbling screech. His voice drifted from piercing to mumbling with the incoherence of a wave hitting a rock.

Ushijima tapped a wing on Tendou's shoulder. "Please stop. You're horrible."

Tendou's voice died as he cut himself off with a choked sound. "I am?"

"Yes. You have to know how to sing before attempting song magic." Ushijima closed his eyes. "I can just teach you how to use plant magic."

"Still good. Where do I start?"

Ushijima led him to a small tree in a patch of grass away from the fields. "This tree is still very young. Singing to them makes them grow faster, but plant magic can do other things for them. Flowers can be forced to open or close. Plants already have their own defenses, some of them inherent and some temporary by self-produced chemicals. Plant magic can act on both. Today I'm going to teach you how to make leaves thicker."

Tendou slouched forward a little. "Make them...thicker..."

"Yes. It's simple." Ushijima scratched a rough circle through the grass into the dirt, winding around the tree. "It's harder to concentrate magic at the roots, but it's more time consuming to do it one leaf at a time, so you should start by practicing magic at the roots," he explained. "Draw your mind to the roots and think about them as if you're there and exploring them, and climb up the trunk, but don't release magic until the middle of the trunk where the branches begin."

Tendou squeezed his eyes shut for a few minutes. Nothing happened.

"Don't let your magic exceed this circle, or it won't affect the plant at all," Ushijima advised.

"This is hard and boring." Tendou opened his eyes, stretched out his wings, and flopped them with a groan. "This is starting to sound easier than my sprite work."

"Your what?"

"My spellmaking work I was doing before this..." Tendou flapped his wings in an idle second, and then gathered them back to his sides. "Can I try one leaf at a time?"

"No," Ushijima said. "That's lazy and wrong."

"You're the one that brought it up."

"It was a warning." Ushijima hummed. "Let's try it a different way." He began another explanation, and together they spent a couple hours learning to change leaf shapes.

~

Through lessons spread across a few weeks, Tendou had learned to make leaves thicker, dehydrate them, add a rubbery protective layer to them, disguise them with slight color changes, and rearrange branches. At the same time, he had managed to complete Reon's commission, and he was free without any outstanding commissions, just selling magical items here and there.

"You've improved well in a short amount of time," Ushijima said.

Tendou's beak twitched against a slant of a smile. "I'm a natural at magic, after all."

"That's good to hear." Ushijima chuckled.

It didn't reach the mirth of laughter, but it was still warm and deep. Tendou's stomach tickled with a light butterfly-nervous drop.

"Since you've been concerned about the basics being boring, today I want to show you something more complex," Ushijima said. He guided them to the same small tree that Ushijima had shown him for their first lesson.

"You really like this tree, huh?" Tendou asked.

"Yes. It's one of my favorites, even though it's not very old." Ushijima raised a wing to bring Tendou in closer to the tree. "Plants have different levels of sensation than us. Their communication is very simple and restrained, like the defense chemicals I told you about before, while some use networks of fungi. If you're careful and considerate, it's possible to pick up on vague clusters of energetic intents that we can interpret as basic thoughts."

"Oh, so you mean, read their minds? That's amazing." Tendou shuffled in place as his feathers puffed excitedly with his restless wings. "What do I have to do?"

"Start the same process as leaf thickening. Begin at the roots, and work your way up the trunk," Ushijima explained.

Tendou closed his eyes.

"Stop moving," Ushijima said.

"Sorry." Tendou leaned a bit forward and stilled, willing himself to listen.

A small pinprick of slow warmth entered his head. Tendou squawked and fumbled backwards a few steps.

"Did it catch you by surprise?" Ushijima asked, his voice near a laugh again.

"Obviously! I'm listening to a plant!" Tendou grumbled, but he made sure to exaggerate to the point of showing that he wasn't upset.

"Being able to listen to a plant does help in singing to them. Maybe it's best for you to learn plant magic first after all."

Tendou looked back at the tree. "You know, you never did show me your singing. We stopped that day before I could hear you."

"You're right. Want me to sing right now? This tree could use some singing."

"Really?! Right now?" Tendou hopped closer. "Yeah, sing!"

Ushijima cleared his throat. "You have a lot of enthusiasm." He turned his head away.

"Oh no. I didn't mean to put any pressure on you." Tendou waved his wings. "Please sing! No matter what you do it'll still be better than my screeching. Sing to your favorite disciple."

Ushijima angled himself further away, facing toward the tree as he opened his beak. His voice carried out rich and deep, more pleasant than a laugh, and Tendou didn't even remember to pay attention to the words. There weren't any instruments to accompany him and assist in the background; instead his own voice seemed to do it, as if there was an echo without any time delay, amplifying on itself and providing harmony.

"Oh, so that's why you have to know how to sing first," Tendou mused.

As he sang, the tree moved upward with creaks of its growing bark. The branches extended and burst forth more leaves, and several more branches grew from the top and middle of the thickening trunk. When the growing slowed, the song dipped into a lower valley, fading until the tree stopped completely.

Tendou crowed. "That was incredible!"

"Thank you."

"No, really, I mean it -- I can tell what you meant by needing to know how to sing first. It's like you're already a tree, and that echoey quality of your voice that sounds like other voices -- those are branches."

Ushijima shifted on his feet. "That's such a grand compliment." He looked side to side, flicking his wings as he deliberated.

"I should get back to work, but thanks for the song!" Tendou bowed his head for a second and then took off flying. The quick exit allowed him to be by himself, his eyes crinkling like a grin.

~

"Today I'll show you how to speak with a plant," Ushijima said. "It has some similarities with listening to them. Do you remember how to do that?"

"How could I forget. That was weird." Tendou squinted. "How does this work? Talking to a plant? Do I have to talk out loud?"

"No. They can't understand language, and won't respond to it. I don't think they can perceive sounds, either. You have to interact with their energy."

Ushijima guided him through the process again, and Tendou squirmed and grimaced when he brushed against the unfamiliar feeling in his head. Still, he insisted on working through it, and Ushijima decided to join him in listening. The added pressure of his conscience there with the plant made it outright uncomfortable.

Halfway through, Tendou noticed Ushijima had stopped doing anything.

"Wakatoshi? Hello?" Tendou nudged him with his beak. "You okay in there?"

Ushijima stared ahead, standing on his feet without moving. Despite appearing calm and composed, he was stiff, and the silence was awkward.

"Wakatoshi." Tendou waved a wing in front of his face. He paused it in front of his eyes, and Ushijima leaned to the side, the sun falling on him again. The movement was mechanical, giving Tendou the sense that this was somehow not Ushijima.

"Uh... This is probably bad." Tendou alternated his feet on the floor to walk in place, scratching the dirt as he did.

Tendou had met and befriended plenty of birds that lived nearby. Reon and Shirabu kept a book shop, and Semi was an apothecary that treated all the local birds. Naturally, when Tendou became worried about Ushijima, he approached them for advice. If anyone knew why Ushijima had suddenly stopped talking, two book lovers and a medical specialist would know.

He gestured at Ushijima and then in the direction of the book shop. "C'mon, let's go."

Ushijima didn't move. Tendou walked around behind him and tried pushing him, but instead of walking, Ushijima fell onto his stomach.

"Okay. Fine. Stay there. Don't move." Tendou motioned at him to keep lying down. Ushijima closed his eyes.

Tendou turned and walked away, but as soon as he disappeared into the trees, his view of Ushijima obscured, he burst into a flurry and flew at the book shop.

"Kenjirou! Reon!" he screeched. "Something's up with Wakatoshi!"

Shirabu poked his head out of a window. "'Up'?"

"He's acting funny. I don't know what happened."

Shirabu sighed, drooping with reluctance. "Go get Semi. I'll tell Reon."

"Thanks!" Tendou flew toward Semi's apothecary shop, and from a few meters away, he could hear Semi yell at him.

"I can hear you shrieking at Shirabu."

Tendou landed on a branch outside the shop, and he bowed to catch his breath. "It's important, Eita."

"I know, something's wrong with Wakatoshi. I heard you. Don't be so loud next time."

"You yelled at me on the way over. You're just as bad," Tendou defended.

Semi slipped out and turned the "closed" sign over on the door. "Where is he, by the way?"

"He's out near the fields next to the small maple tree."

"You know where he is that specifically?" Semi asked.

"This is a very weird situation," Tendou said. He led everyone to Ushijima, and they alighted on the grass and gathered around to observe him.

Ushijima was still on his stomach. His eyes remained closed, and his regular breathing told them he wasn't asleep. Birds don't normally lie on their stomachs, so the posture was awkward, with his tail feathers halfway up in the air but drooping, and his feet limp along the grass.

"He's just lying in the sun..." Reon trailed off.

"I know what kinds of lessons he gives you, so I can already tell what happened." Shirabu groaned. "You messed up somehow. Look at him. Reon's right, he's just lying out in the sun. You clearly swapped his body with the tree."

Semi burst out cackling. Shirabu gave a sharp jab to his side. "This isn't funny."

"But how does someone mess something up that badly?" Semi continued to laugh.

Tendou huffed. "Ha, ha. Very funny. So anyway, what do I do now?"

"This is your problem. Figure it out, spellmaker," Shirabu said.

Reon ducked closer to Shirabu. "Isn't that a little harsh?"

"Why won't you help?" Tendou asked.

"We're not spellmakers. We couldn't help if we tried." Shirabu turned to Reon. "Let's go. We've already been gone a while."

Semi had calmed down, and he let out a heavy breath in recovery. "Yeah. I'm with them. I can give you supplies, but I can't undo what you did."

"If spellmaking's your job, then you should be able to do it. Make a spell and undo it." Shirabu then muttered, "A spellmaker's probably the only one who'd mess up and accidentally do a body swap, anyway."

The three of them returned to their shops, leaving Tendou staring down at not-Ushijima. Tendou sucked in a breath.

"It's a good thing he taught me how to talk to plants." Tendou reached out his foot to touch him. "Are you okay, maple-kun? You have to go back."

Tendou sat down in the grass, fluffing himself as if he was sitting in a nest. He lowered his head and forced himself to plunge into the metaphysical realm again.

The same uncomfortable warmth appeared, and Tendou nudged it aside gently to clear space in his mind for spells. In a sense, spells had their own incomprehensible meanings like plants' "thoughts" do. Describing a spell in a few words would reduce it to just those words, so Tendou didn't like being textbook about it. Ushijima hadn't been by-the-book with the plants, either; he either showed Tendou something, or made him do something with a brief explanation, he never spent a lot of time lecturing. Tendou thought it was fitting.

He wove a thread of energy to start. By now he could recognize a plant when he heard one, so he rearranged Ushijima and the tree's energies with a spell to unroot them from their bodies. Then he made a teleportation spell on the spot, a metaphysical spell sensitive to only energetic intents, and after a few more similarly specific spells, he withdrew.

Ushijima opened his eyes. "Being a tree was pleasant but worrying. Thank you for saving me."

Tendou fumbled as Ushijima got to his feet and shook himself to relieve himself of dust. "I'm so sorry, Wakatoshi, I have no idea what happened. I think it was my fault. Kenjirou thought so. Are you alright?"

"It's okay, Tendou, nothing happened." Ushijima wriggled back and forth. "I appear fine, too."

Tendou's wings hung forward as he relaxed. "Good, good. But what was that? What happened?"

"I'm not sure. If spellmaking had been instigated during it somehow, then anything could've happened. That would explain it."

Tendou shuffled his wings and hunched them. "I'm sorry," he said sheepishly. "I must've gotten carried away..."

"Maybe that was too complicated. I'll show you something else another day." Ushijima patted Tendou's back. "You should go home."

"Fine, I will. Take care of yourself Wakatoshi." Tendou headed home to work on commissions.

~

Several plant magic lessons later, Ushijima appeared at Tendou's house. "Do you mind if I come in?"

"No c'mon in!" Tendou flitted to stuff belongings around and tuck them away. In a flash he was at the door. "What're you here for?"

"I was browsing Reon and Shirabu's shop when I found this book and thought about you." Ushijima removed a book from the bag secured around his body, and he placed it on the floor in front of Tendou.

Tendou crouched to inspect it, and he nosed his beak into the book to open it by the cover. "It's a book of song magic."

"Yes. Something in there caught my eye." Ushijima used his foot to turn the pages. "Here." He rested his talons at the top of the page, curling his toes around the edge of the book.

"'Song of Calmfire,'" Tendou read out loud. "What's that?"

"It's a song that can control fire when fire gets out of control, especially from the use of other magics. It's also involved in rites used to prevent volcanic eruptions."

When Tendou glanced up at him, he noticed Ushijima staring with a deep meaningful pause. "I thought you said you didn't want anything to do with fire."

"I would like to be able to use this song in cases of emergency." Ushijima leaned forward. "Will you help me master this?"

"Ooh. Of course. What do you have in mind? I can go ahead and teach you fire magic, you know..."

Ushijima gave him a flat look. "I just need you to be able to perform fire magic."

"Right. But if you ever change your mind, I'll gladly teach you."

"...I'll think about it for someday in the future," Ushijima said after deliberation and a few moments of watching Tendou's face.

"That's what I like to hear."