February 12th, 1982 - Podmore Zoo
Porphyria Dempsey / Elias Grimstone

This second pregnancy was already taking a toll on her body and Eva was loathe to admit it, but she wasn't quite as fit as she had been with her last one. She had dropped most of the weight between them, her active lifestyle keeping her busy, but stationary life had made her a little soft. Not traveling was certainly a huge change and it showed. Eva wasn't complaining of course, she loved her life, loved sleeping in her own bed, next to her husband and waking up to her beautiful baby and life, but she did miss it sometimes.

Fortunately between their own working farm and the zoo itself, Eva was kept busy and that kept her moving and her mind off other things. She was due to switch with Beau on baby duty soon however, and so she made her way out of the aviary, with Bastien and Lucy on her heels. Bastien took off like a shot, which usually meant Amelia was nearby, but as Eva waddled behind him, Lucy happily keeping pace with her, it was not her fellow magizoologist that Bastien found harassing.

"Porphyria," Eva greeted with a laugh as Bastien tried to snuggle into her friend's skirts. "I would have left him locked up if I'd know you were around," Her diricawl had an unnatural fondness for Phyri, even now that she was human again and no longer a wren. "I may never get him to leave you alone now." It was always an effort.

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babystamp ~18 weeks

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   Porphyria Dempsey

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“Oh, no trouble,” Porphyria responded, in the deadpan tone she had always used for the diricawl, a tone for which Bastien still seemed stupidly and irrevocably fond. “I’m more than a match for him in this state, after all.” At the moment the bird was making an impromptu nest for himself between her feet; Phyri toyed with her skirt hems just to irritate him, but remained where she was – for all the misguided advances she had suffered in her time, Bastien the diricawl was the only one for whom she could say she still had a soft spot, the big daft thing. “But you are very lucky she lets you roam free,” she declared seriously to him.

But Phyri was here to spend time with the birds, after all – from the distance of a couple of years (and an anthology much inspired by that era), all of Porphyria’s annoyance at the Pictish curse had long since drained away. Nowadays, she rather missed the sensation of being a bird. At last, however, she lifted her eyes from the creature to the magizoologist. “And how are you?” She asked, eyeing Eva. Amelia had said she was pregnant again – but that would have been obvious otherwise, just looking at her.

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

Though Eva knew Bastien could be a pest, she did rather get the feeling that Phyri was some soft of fond of him. He was making his best attempts to show his affection, which was at least, easier than when he used to try and eat everyone's shoelaces. She watched with a chuckle as Bastien made his way straight for Phyri's hems. "Hey now, be a gentleman, it's not nice to get in a lady's skirts." It was exactly how one ended up in her current situation.

"Oh you know, exhausted, but quite content to be at work," She chuckled. Her condition was obvious by now and she knew that both her father and husband were going to start giving her a hard time about being at work so much, but she had found a nice balance between home and the zoo, so she rather thought they could both stuff it. "And yourself? Been busy these days?" Eva hadn't the foggiest what it was Phyri did with her time, their gap in class a baffling sort of experience, but still, they managed to be friends easily enough. Of course having Amelia in common helped. Truthfully Eva enjoyed Phyri's general demeanor as well, so there was that.

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“Better him than any of the gentlemen I meet in society,” Phyri said dryly, with a snort. Speaking of getting into people’s skirts – “Yes, I suppose I ought to congratulate you,” she added lightly, though couldn’t bring herself to gush about it: she simply could not envy Eavan Miller one bit. Childbearing and motherhood seemed a monstrous endeavour, and one she would be most content to personally forgo, much the same as she would marriage.

(There was something delightfully gruesome and ghastly about the process of giving birth, though – enough of her friends were wives and mothers to have allowed her to glean plenty, and her own mother had always been very open about the gore – but Porphyria censored herself before she started down that path with a currently-pregnant-woman.)

“Yes, you could say that,” she said instead, with an airy smile; though busy, to her, was always more in thought and word than in anything else. Besides, she could work and work and still not lose herself in it enough to be satisfied with it. “I’ve been looking for inspiration, actually. I was hoping,” Phyri paused to nudge Bastien momentarily out from her feet before she tripped up on him, “you might introduce me to more of your friends from the aviary.” Feathered friends, that was.

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

Well there was that. Bastien was harmless, at least where Phyri was concerned, as besotted as he was by the brunette. "Thank you," Was all Eva went for as she knew Porphyria was not interested in the details of pregnancy.

"Inspiration? In the aviary? Whatever are you writing about?" Just as Phyri could not truly understand Eva's life, Eva could not quite wrap her head around how it was that her friend spent her time. Still, though as opposite as they could be, Eva was not one to turn down the opportunity to share her birds with anyone. Not to mention she rather enjoyed having friends with different interests, it kept things well, interesting.

Despite her questioning, Eva turned back toward the aviary and gestured for Phyri to join her. Certainly Beau would understand her delay.

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“Oh, who can ever say with poetry?” Phyri tossed out glibly, with a wave of her hand to encompass life, truth, everything. Poetry was a muddier water than most forms of literary endeavour, and no shallow pool. One never quite knew what might be fished up from its deepest fathoms until the words were written. (And sometimes one still did not know, even then.)

Perhaps she could go on a fishing trip with her father tomorrow. That might turn up the muse. For now, though – Porphyria threw herself into step with Eavan Miller, thankful that Bastien was getting underfoot to slow her down else she might have found herself markedly impatient at a pregnant woman’s pace, or lack thereof. “But yes, the aviary,” she said with a sigh, and then glanced sidelong at the redhead, wondering whether she would understand or merely think her unhinged. “Every so often, I miss being a bird.”

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

Eva really had no frame of reference about poetry or its creation, she would have to take Phyri's word on that. She supposed that inspiration could strike just about anywhere though. Fortunately it was a quick walk, even as slow as she waddled, back to the aviary. Bastien quickly made his way in as Eva unlocked the door, no doubt hurrying off to get something from his nest to show off to Phyri as diricawls liked to do with a potential... mate.

Once through the outside door, Eva locked it again behind them. It was technically closed for the day, after all. "Welcome to my home away from home." She chuckled, opening the inside door wide enough for Phyri to pass. It housed several large trees, thanks to an expansion charm on the roof. It was broken up into smaller parts, keeping the predatory birds away from the smaller ones, but the more harmless ones all lived in the main part. "I've a phoenix hiding somewhere, a slew of snidgets and diricawls, a couple owls being rehabilitated. Some smaller exotic breeds in their own spaces." Eva gestured widely at the room at large, leaving Phyri to wander freely. Of course that was when Bastien returned with his present for her, a half-dead bloom of some sort that he'd pilfered from the zoo's garden, looking quite proud of himself as he presented it to her.

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“A phoenix,” Phyri hummed, already musing on the possibility of some verses there – there was much metaphor to made of the mythology of a phoenix. “You’ll have to let me know when –” it’s next regenerating, she was about to finish; but here was Bastien back, peering up at her with a wilting flower in his beak.

“Merlin,” Phyri sighed instead. “Men never do take a hint, do they?” Rolling her eyes, she nevertheless leant down to take the bloom Bastien had dropped, cooing at him in a tone of some affection. “Do they, you feathery nitwit?”

She was encouraging him a little, anyway, because she felt a pang of sympathy for him – a bird, and he couldn’t even fly. It must be quite disheartening to be surrounded by owls and snidgets (and the occasional wren) and be stuck with waddling. Poor, poor diricawls. That said, their disapparating trick was fairly clever. “And what’s Bastien’s story?” she asked – clearly he had finagled some preferential treatment, wandering with Eva wherever she went. She grinned. “How did he first woo you?”

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   Eavan Miller

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

Eva had been about to tell Phyri the phoenix's next regeneration would be soon, the reason she hadn't let him go yet was due to the closeness of the event. After fixing it's wing, she noticed he was getting weaker and so had wanted to keep him around until after, they were terribly vulnerable during the whole process.

However, Bastien and his present interrupted their conversation and Eva couldn't help but to smile at the interaction. For all Phyri protested the attention, she did seem to enjoy it just a little. "Oh," The question wasn't one she got often, but she did enjoy telling the story. "I lived in Australia for most of my childhood. We returned to the States just before I was due to start Ilvermorny. My parents were studying the creatures down there, a long assignment. Bastien was injured as a baby when he was cornered by a wild dog. Da patched him up just fine, but his flock had moved on and so he became my responsibility. He was a bit of a runt too, so we decided to keep him." Eva remembered the tiny fluffy diricawl without quite so much sass, fondly.

"As you can see, when he likes somebody they are really quite stuck with him. He's much more independent these days." She chuckled, watching him wiggle under Phyri's skirts again.

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   Porphyria Dempsey

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“I see,” Phyri echoed, at the story. She had travelled a little, herself, but still, Australia and America felt like worlds away, alien landscapes – and Bastien’s story was a perilous adventure indeed. “A runt and a stray!” she exclaimed, sympathy and fondness getting the best of her: a tragic orphan of a bird, indeed. No wonder he had attached himself to Eva for all these years, if he was to be alone in the world otherwise.

Not that there was anything wrong with being alone in the world, of course – although Porphyria had never felt very alone, with all her family so fervent a presence in her life, and all the endless people she knew, within society and without. “Well, I can’t say I blame him,” she admitted, lifting a foot to ever-so-gently nudge him teasingly with her toe, “I do much the same thing.” When she liked somebody, they truly were stuck with her – hence her longstanding friendship with Amelia, in spite of all class differences; hence her inviting herself to Eavan Miller’s realm in the zoo without a care.

“It’s a pity he can’t speak,” Phyri mused lightly – almost joking, but not quite. Even in the body of a wren, she hadn’t been able to communicate properly with native birds. But she was rather interested in what must be going on in Bastien’s diricawl brain now. “I’d like to get in his head.”

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

Bastien, despite his... lack of manners, was quite capable of winning over hearts if needed. Eva rather thought her father might even have the slightest of soft spots for the bird, even if she knew full well Beau did not.

Finding herself the nearest seat, Eva sunk down with a little difficulty, hands bracing against the bench for support. She really wasn't that far along, but she already felt like a bit of a whale. Apparently the second one was a doozy. Rubbing her hands over her aching back, she sighed softly.

"I have often thought the same," Eva chuckled at wondering what Bastien was thinking. "Mostly I would like to know what his obsession with shoe laces is." And perhaps why he was so stubborn, but that was not critical. "Also the trick behind disappearing and reappearing." Akin to apparating, she assumed, but the curiosity was there.

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Though Eavan had sat, Phyri kept wandering, Bastien close at her heels and getting in the way whenever she stepped around small tree stumps and piles of leaves and debris for the aviary birds. There was a a small pool of water nearby; she wove carefully over to it, briefly peering up at a bird perching up on the branch at her shoulder.

It shuffled up along the branch when she startled it by laughing at the remark about shoelaces. “What does he do with them?” Phyri asked, greatly amused. “Try to eat them? Attack them? Make a nest out of them?” Everything she could think of was entertaining enough. “Or does he just want to steal them for his collection?” She stuck out her boot towards Bastien again, enticingly.

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

"You know I'm not really sure," Eva admitted as she leaned back to stretch her back out a little. "He's not usually successful in getting the laces, but they have gone missing from shoes that are not being worn in the past. He must have a horde somewhere, like dragons in fairy tales." Chuckling as Bastien gained interest in the offered shoe boot, Eva almost warned Phyri, but also assumed she had done so on purpose.

"Do you have a collection Bastien?" She asked of the bird in a tone that suggested that was probably the answer. She had never seen it, but he wasn't with her all of the time and he basically had free reign of the zoo and the farm and everywhere in between. Who knew what he got up to. "You can borrow him to observe if you like." Eva teased, mostly kidding.

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Like a feathery, daft-looking, not remotely dangerous dragon from a fairy tale indeed. A mountain of shoelaces instead of a pile of treasure. Porphyria was delighted by the thought. “Oh, I’m sure he has a horde of secrets, too.” He might wander off to anywhere, after all.

She let the diricawl attack her shoe some more. “I might try and follow him around, give him a taste of his own medicine,” she joked. Actually achieving that would be harder, if he disappeared in a poof; she wondered whether it worked the same way as apparating, that if she had hold of him it would function like side-along.

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

Eva laughed at the thought of Phyri following Bastien around instead of the other way around. "By all means, please let me know what you find out though. I have him for two whole decades he still remains largely a mystery." The only thing she was certain of was that he got along better with her father than anyone else, he was not a fan of Beau and he tolerated Nola, but scooted as soon as she even looked like she was going to touch him.

"His secrets have secrets. I'm pretty sure." She chuckled again. "I do wonder what you would find." Eva certainly couldn't follow him around anymore, nor did she really have the time to do it even if she could, but she was curious. "Lucy might be easier, she's less temperamental." Bastien wasn't the only diricawl she had after all, there was a small flock of them running around an enclosure in the zoo.

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His secrets have secrets. A real enigma, that one was. Phyri tilted her head in acknowledgement at the prospect of an easier target to begin with if she did end up going on a wild diricawl chase. “Perhaps you’re right,” she agreed with a grin, and skipped out of Bastien’s way again purely to annoy him.

“Anyway,” Porphyria declared, reverting back to their original discussion before Bastien had demanded her attention, “tell me more about this phoenix of yours.”

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a sublime set by Lady! <3