5 Fethar

The sad four had dedicated an entire night to the drafting, revising, and overall fine tuning of a very shoddy plan. By the time they were somewhat close to wrapping up, the darkness that had permeated the green foliage seemingly not too long ago had already begun to be replaced by smatterings of sunlight.

Polly was at the point where she couldn't tell if she was in a dream or not; everything seemed hazy. Yet the sleep deprivation had no apparent effect on the birds. From dark to dusk they chattered away, sometimes in their own jargon, sometimes in the standard language. However, to Polly, even Mimglish had begun to sound like gibberish.

"Okay, so this is what we've come up with so far," chirped Wiki. "You'll leave the Triy claiming you'd been held hostage by us, and make sure to let The Dictator know that it was us you were captured by. Hopefully then she'll want you to lead her to us, and you'll follow the route that you'll memorize that will be on a map we're going to come up with later to bring her here. We'll have one of the basic traps where she steps on a twig that causes her to get caught in a net, and from there we'll help you off the island. Of course you can take whatever we have to offer as your bounty, as long as you don't go too overboard, you feel?"

"Could you repeat that?" yawned Polly.

"Speak with your chest, fledge. Your Mimglish is accented enough, you can't expect us to understand you when you mumble," squawked SAT.

"I asked if you could repeat what you said," returned Polly, once more mid yawn. She had the strangest hunch that she would fall asleep as they repeated it, but she couldn't find it in herself to care.

"I think she needs a break you guys. Those normies from Sea Island 7 aren't like us you know," interjected Ed before SAT could begin.

"What? how did you know I'm from Sea Island 7?" asked Polly. As dull as her mind had become, it was still functioning enough to pick up when things were being said about her, especially when those things were private information she hadn't quite revealed.

"You have that look and that atrocious way of butchering words," said Ed. "I remember, and this was back in the day before The Dictator came, mind you, we once had a normie from Sea Island 7 and they had that had that same swinging hair, and look in their eye like they would much rather be doing something wholly unproductive, like taking a nap. Also, I could've sworn that normie was still speaking whatever the native language of Sea Island 7 is when they arrived, because for the first few minutes when they were asking about spices, I had no idea what they were saying. It was terrible."

"Hmmm," replied Polly. Now that the conversation wasn't 100% about her, she wasn't 100% interested.

"You know, Ed, you're right," stated SAT. "If I didn't know better I would've thought we were talking to a tree. Take a nap fledge. We can finish things when you wake up."

Only understanding that she had been given permission to sleep, Polly dragged herself to one of the pillows and promptly crashed. She slept like a limp sack of potatoes until the sun had reached its apex and was looking hard at the world below it.

When she rose, the room was void of feathered life. Polly lifted her face from her chosen pillow and was aghast to feel its lines etched into her face. Despite being unable to find the birds and being a whole sea away from home, Polly was not at the point of panicking.

She stood, brushed a few nonexistent specks of dust off her pants, and made her way to the table they had been planning at. On it was a note written in the worst penmanship she had yet to come across, including her own, that read: We have gone to set up the trap. If we don't return by the time the Greens turn from that nasty shade of neon to a darker green, then you'll know we have been captured. In that case whatever happens next is completely up to you, but please do your best to apprehend The Dictator for all our sakes.

The Greens, which Polly assumed meant the hideous excuses for trees, were still the same garish hue they had been from when she had first stepped on the island, so she figured there was not much for her to do but wait. Polly attempted to return to sleep, but she hadn't done anything tiring enough to need more rest. So she meandered about the room, observing all the pillows and mentally critiquing their designs. Even after that, which she could've sworn took over an hour, the Greens had not lost their vibrancy.

By now Polly was growing restless. A forbidden thought entered her mind. Should she risk exploring? She considered the pros and cons. On one hand, the kiwis had never said she was confined to the room. On the other hand, they blindfolded her on her way in and she had a feeling she wasn't supposed to be able to see while they led her around.

Polly turned to the brown door. She wondered if the material was imported, because unless the Greens were brown below their outer bark, it couldn't have been made from wood native to the island. Some minutes later, and Polly crumbled to the edgy rule breaking rebel inside of her that she had tried to suppress.

She cracked open the door, the thought of there being booby traps only crossing her mind after she had crossed the opening. Fortunately for her, there were none and she was able to float about to her heart's content. Her first stop was the kitchen.

The food hub was located a short walk from the meeting room, and Polly didn't know whether to be thrilled or not to see a platter of grilled cheese sandwiches piled higher than a sequoia. Her mind told her that the food was obviously meant to be saved for later, but her heart screamed the food was meant for eating. She turned away from the golden crispy goods with tears in her eyes and soldiered on. At moments like these, Polly wondered how something so right could feel so wrong.

From there she ventured to a room which turned out to be a library. How and why there was a library in a massive underground labyrinth with a grand population of three confused her, but she didn't have the brainpower to question it. Befitting of a three person rebellion, the room brimmed with texts.

Some were ancient manuscripts that looked seconds away from turning to dust, some were gilded with enough gold to make Midas feel like a worthless trash bag, and some looked as if they could be, and Polly wasn't a hundred percent sure about it, memos. She flipped through a few of the texts, but they were written in Chicken Scratch, an elective that Polly had opted not to take in favor of Cursive, so reading them was a no go.

Other rooms that the puttering pirate chanced upon included a sewing room, where she assumed the pillows were made, a room lined wall to wall with beds, a few completely empty rooms, and one room that had the beginnings of a kiwi painted on the wall with a collection of art supplies scattered on the floor.

Concluding her explorations, the modern Magellan returned to the room, and was at last able to see the change in the Greens' hue from painful to look at to somewhat bearable. Their trunks had darkened to an almost emerald green, which Polly hadn't quite noticed the other day. She chalked her lack of observational skills up to the fact she was underground and too busy to look out the measly window.

The silence that echoed with the absence of the kiwis was Polly's call to action. Quite unsure of what to do, she left the room and began searching for the hideout’s exit. Despite having just taken a self-guided tour of the Triy, Polly had no clue which path led to the tunnel that brought them down.

She attempted retracing her steps from the very beginning, and was able to get herself to a hallway with a tile path that could have been the area she originally landed in. Polly looked up, hoping a crack in the ceiling or maybe a gaping hole would betray some information. Unfortunately, she was the only one feeling betrayed when she looked up only to see a smooth and (for some reason) polished surface.

It was about now that she wished for the guidance only a pirate hat could give. Her thoughts drifted back to the hat she had worn for but a moment, but had given her insight far beyond her years. As any self respecting person would do, she had returned it to Captain Pepe shortly after their battle to reclaim The Birbalinda. There was a smidgen of hope within her that the captain would offer it to her, but the look in his eyes when he took it back told her he was far too attached to it for that to ever happen.

She continued her meandering, half looking up and half watching the ground so she wouldn't trip over air and give herself an embarrassing memory to relieve in the dark of the night. Somehow, perhaps it was planned by fate, Polly found herself back in the room with the beginnings of a kiwi on one of its walls. Polly's fourth wall instincts told her the room just had to be plot relevant, otherwise she wouldn't have noticed it in such detail and would have just breezed in and out of it just like all the other places she stopped by.

She observed the kiwi even more closely than she had before, feeling that it was what gave the room its significance. With the faint outline of a frown on her face, she trailed her fingers along the image's plumage in thought. And lo behold, a lone feather somehow materialized and drifted down from the painting.

Polly picked it up moments before it landed atop a brush caked in residue paint. It was a mite longer than the average bird feather, or at least compared to all the birds Polly had seen before which in all honesty wasn't very many. The shaft was a vivid gold which the pirate was quite sure ordinary shafts were not.

A key? Polly wondered. She hadn't seen anything that looked like it could be unlocked. Polly being the lazy lass she was didn't quite feel like holding on to her discovery as she walked because that was an excessive use of hand muscles, so she tucked it behind her ear and prayed it would stay.

The moment it was in her hair, Polly knew what it was. It was a hat, just in the form of a feather. Now that she thought about it, she supposed that really anything that could go on a head could be a hat. It just had to be the right thing, and by the power of plot, Polly had found the right thing.

"Pleasure to meet you," said the feather in a voice quite posh for something that had just come out of a wall. "I'm Fethar, and who might you be?"

"Folks call me Polly," replied Polly. Had Captain Trixx's hat talked? Suddenly she couldn't remember.

"Ah, child, when a hat speaks is completely arbitrary. For example, I speak to you now for I feel you'll need some of my assistance soon, which I would be more than happy to give as long as you're not one of those uppity sorts who think themselves way up there. The hat that you're thinking of probably was too tired to speak. Hats do get tired, believe it or not, as guiding does require energy."

"Valid," replied Polly. "Do ya know how to get out of this place. I've got a feeling some kiwis I know are in a jam."

"Kiwis? Perhaps you mean strawberries? I simply can't imagine spreading kiwi jam on my morning toast."

"By Jove, I do mean kiwis, but not those kiwis."

"Ah well, do forgive me. Anywho, I believe your way out is through the ceiling."

"I did figure it had to be up there considering that I came here from above ground. Where exactly in the ceiling is the exit?"

Fethar twitched, and moved around akin to a needle in a compass being spun around.

"Perhaps there?" Fethar suggested while pointing straight up.

Polly was not one to doubt the advice given to her by others, as the ideas she had were often not very good. She craned her neck back, expecting to see some sort of hole or crack or really anything, but it was the same flawless material the hallway ceilings boasted. Unfortunately, as Fethar was nested in the side of her head, she could not raise her brows judgmentally at it.

"They do say that what was meant to be will come to pass," muttered Fethar with a twitch that could be interpreted as a shrug. "Perhaps jump?"

Polly was truly flattered that Fethar assumed she had the muscle to jump through a ceiling. However, she had nothing to counter the outlandish idea, so she jumped. Her abilities astounded even herself, as she found herself shooting straight up like a basketball heading for a hoop. She blasted right on through the ceiling, and tumbled onto a quite familiar tile path.