"What's your monkey's name, by the way?" asked Shimmer as said monkey hopped over onto Marla's back with the Nocturne. In response the Nocturne made a mechanical beeping sound.
"Uhh... I'm sorry, but we can't pronounce that. Is it alright if we just call him Beep?"
The Nocturne nodded. "Yeh - Beep!"
Suddenly the Nocturne lifted his head and looked to one side of the group. He started humming in an odd pattern, excitedly.
"Is that... Coatl?" Leftrin asked.
"...Yeah," Shimmer responded. "Should we check out what he's looking at?"
"Why not?" Marla said, turning toward the bushes as the Nocturne pretended to steer her by her head fins.
Shimmer nosed under the bush. "Whoa!"
"What?"
Shimmer drew her head out, with what looked like a bedraggled clump of feathers dangling by its nape from her mouth. "Another Plague hatchling!" she announced, her words muffled. She set the bundle down and a small head poked out.
"Friend!" the Nocturne immediately called.
"Of
course these two bright little Plaguelings know each other," Leftrin muttered under her breath. Out loud, she said to the Coatl, "Do
you have a name?"
The hatchling thought for a moment, hummed something, then said, "Uh... Flame?"
"Flame it is. Welcome to the group, Flame." Marla said. Shimmer dipped a wing and Flame crawled up onto her back.
As they walked back, Flame and the Nocturne chick were humming back and forth to each other. "Say, you've got a pretty good voice for that," Marla observed. "Why don't we call you Octave?"
The Nocturne paused for a moment. "Octave," he said in Marla's voice. "Ah-tiv", he tried with his own voice. "Yeh!" he said excitedly. "Ah-tiv!"
As they trekked through one of the burned sections of forest, Flame suddenly started humming toward something else. A Rambra leaped out of the trees and came right up to Shimmer. The others got ready to attack it. "NO!" Flame yelled. "Other friend. Stripes."
"Stripes?" Marla muttered, but backed off. The Rambra followed them as they finally got back to the clearing.
TWO FAMILIARS IN A ROW WHAT IS HAPPENING
And today I get the breed with an even longer cooldown! Yay!
The second-cheapest Coatl is so cuute but rules say I have to go with the cheapest... which is this... very bright... thing. OK then.
Also I love giving Nocturnes music names