Title: Nap Time
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 1300 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Continuing the nonsense of Quiet Time which is a few challenges back XD In my head, Peep looks rather like a barn owl attempting to be a very small griffin, except still mostly baby-fluff rather than adult plumage.
Summary: A week and a half since he’d first been bewildered into helping Clef with the feathered puff-balls that the Guru still insisted were all called ‘Peep’, and Ferio was hiding.

oOo

A week and a half since he’d first been bewildered into helping Clef with the feathered puff-balls that the Guru still insisted were all called ‘Peep’, and Ferio was hiding.

Not from Clef, either. Though, as he seemed to think it hilarious that his fluffy friends had decided scaring Ferio out of his skin was the best fun ever, Ferio wasn’t exactly looking to hang out with him right now anyway. Plus he kept finding stuff for Ferio to do. All he wanted to do was catch up on his sleep! Not traipse out to a dozen half-finished villages where everyone was so happy that they’d survived and absolutely no one would admit they were sad that they’d lost their homes, their families, or the whole happy facade would come crashing down on them all-

Ferio banged his head on a branch until he stopped being so morbid. Rebuilding was all well and good, but he needed a break now and then, that was all.

He had scaled his way up into the strident green top of one of the uinka trees in the castle gardens, shielded from below by the coiling puragu vine growing up the trunk and into the canopy. There was fruit growing ripe on both the tree and the vines, and he settled back into the curve where a huge branch split out from the trunk, hooking one foot securely under the vines in case he did manage to have a nightmare and fall off. It hadn’t happened yet, and the Spirits alone knew how many trees he’d slept in during the long weeks in the Forest of Silence…

The gardens were warm, by design; the fruit was being coaxed into ripening as early as possible, and Ferio drowsed off easily enough. But he couldn’t stay that way, firstly because every time he managed to get to sleep he had a dream weird enough to wake him right back up again, and secondly because the moment he actually did fall all the way under he woke up when something landed on his head. Ferio opened his eyes, and squawked loudly enough his throat hurt at the huge dark eyes and wicked back-curved beak that were about half an inch from his nose.

Peep opened his beak wide and shrieked back at him, shrill enough Ferio’s ears rang with it, and clung on tighter to Ferio’s head with all four sets of wickedly-sharp claws.

Heart racing, Ferio grabbed the tree before he actually could tip out of it, and Peep’s round pale face vanished as he turned circles on top of Ferio’s head, and this was exactly why he’d been hiding. The fluff-balls were twice the size they had been, large enough for Clef to have told Ferio which of them were presenting as male, which as female and which as both-neither. Peep was currently going male, which apparently entailed longer ear-tufts on his head but a stubbier kind of tail, which was currently poking one of Ferio’s ears.

“Ah,” came a voice from the foot of the tree. “There you are.”

Ferio glared down at Clef, who just raised an eyebrow at him, lips twitching as Peep scolded Ferio in a series of shrill ‘peep’s for daring to move his head. “Why is this creature in my hair? Again?”

“Well, he likes you!”

“I don’t want him to like me! I don’t want him to find me!”

“…Ferio, are you hiding up a tree from a creature with wings?”

“I didn’t think they were using them yet!” Ferio yelled back, trying and failing to untangle Peep from his hair. “They’ve still not got real feathers!”

But there were real pinions flaring down in front of his face then, long and smooth, deep golden brown with mottled markings in both darker and lighter shades. There was still a fuzz of tawny down dangling about the top of them, but those were real wings. Peep’s chirruping noise right then was smug through and through, as he wriggled Ferio’s hair into a messy nest and settled down.

“The power of a heart that believes can give you wings!” Clef called out, and Ferio was going to find the largest puragu fruit and drop it on his head. “Also, claws. For climbing trees.”

Ferio could hear the laugh in Clef’s voice, even if he could see nothing but feathers. He made a rude gesture in the Guru’s direction, which only made him actually start laughing. “I have noticed the claws! I am very aware of the claws, and especially how they’re currently wrapped about my head! All four sets!”

“Well, I guess you’re stuck there for a while! I’ll send Ascot over with some food if you’re not at dinner, he might be able to talk Peep out of your hair.”

“Or you could do it, now, Clef- Clef-”

Footsteps moved away from the trees and off out of the gardens, Clef calling a farewell and leaving him there. Peep folded his wings away just in time for Ferio to watch Clef abandoning him, and then there was a feathered tail stuck across his face as Peep turned round in a circle trying to get comfortable.

“Oi, no butts in my face, you.” Ferio stuck a hand up and nudged Peep around again, for which his finger was nibbled on, probably affectionately if you were a creature made of fluff and occasional sharp bits. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable somewhere else? Anywhere, pretty much?” Peep preened Ferio’s hair for a moment, considering, then clambered down - which, claws, ow - to flop over Ferio’s chest, tail in Ferio’s face again and front claws getting very close to his waist. “Yeah, no, how about the other way around, fluffy menace?”

Ferio could have picked Peep up and dumped him on a branch (which he knew perfectly well Clef knew he could have done, that wasn’t the point). But it all seemed like too much effort, when he’d only be found again in a few hours, and his perch was still warm and comfortable. Plus, Peep was already starting up a quiet raspy purr by the time Ferio turned him about, and this time when he dropped off it was to sleep properly and peacefully.

He woke several hours later to a tail in his face (of course) and a far quieter laugh, opened his eyes to find Ascot clambering onto the branch beside him, helped by one of his feathered friends, whose deep churring conversation with Peep had probably actually woken him up. “I don’t want to know what they’re talking about, do I,” he said, knuckling sleep from his eyes and sitting more upright against the tree.

Ascot just smiled, face flushed a little, and waved a box at him. “I brought you food?”

Ferio eyed the box. “I’m not sure I can eat all of it, if that thing’s full…”

“I haven’t eaten, neither has your friend - hello, peepiest peep.” Ascot reached over to scratch Peep about the ears, which started up that creaky purr again. “If you don’t mind? I could go away-”

“Nah, stay. We’ll have a picnic in a tree, it’s been a while since I’ve done that. But if Clef comes back to find us you have to distract him while I find a puragu to drop on his head, okay?”

Ascot snorted, and settled onto the next branch across, opening up the box and extracting Peep neatly from Ferio’s lap before either of them got clawed to pieces in the creature’s rush to get to the food. “Why puragu? Uinka splat better.”

“I’m intrigued. Tell me more of this wisdom!”

It was a good meal. Even if Ferio was laughing so hard by the end of it that he completely forgot any plans to drop things on people - there was always another day for that. If they planned it right, they could even test which fruit did splatter best, and that was certainly a worthy goal.