"What's that one do?" Rachel pointed at one of a collection of levers, color coded in a collection of oranges, reds, and greens.

She didn't actually touch the machine, but came close enough that the woman sitting in the chair near the machine jumped up to swat her hand away.

"It lets out the cockatiels into their play area," Tatiana told the girl, who nodded and shrugged. "But they are a hassle to get back into their pens without bribing them with treats, so don't touch that!"

Again, Rachel shrugged and continued to walk around the room. Her Counterpart, Tatiana Elyssa, sighed in relief as her younger charge abandoned the control panel for the birds' cages. Instead, Rachel walked slowly past the rows of pens made into the wall.

The majority of the room was concrete with several wide windows, but one wall was covered in cages. Inside of each cage was a collection of birds somewhere between one and about ten.

A grey parrot with a bright red tail was sitting on a perch in the first cage. It studied Rachel through the mesh in front of it, before apparently getting bored and facing its back to her. A collection of multicolored parakeets were in the next section, chirping fervently. Rachel glared at them, but they continued to be incessantly loud and obnoxious. So, she just moved to the next cage.

There were two multicolored parrots that looked straight from a pirate's shoulder, a crow (or was it a raven? Rachel wasn't sure), and a cockatiel that was far more interested in its food than in Rachel. A few minutes passed of Rachel trying to gain the attention of a bird with no desire to play with her. Finally, Tatiana put away her bag which she had told Rachel the birds loved to chew at. Then she grabbed her ring of keys and stepped over to where Rachel was standing.

"I'll bring Sunshine out for you, if you want. Contrary to his name, he's not our nicest bird, but he'll talk to you," Tatiana told Rachel.The younger girl leaned against the cage excitedly. Her Counterpart unlatched the door and reached in to bring out one of the parrots. "Hello, Sunshine! How are you today?"

"Treat," the bird croaked. Tatiana frowned at the parrot, who simply held one claw out expectantly.

"If I give you a treat, will you talk to us?" Tatiana asked.

The bird only answered, "Treat."

The bird trainer got out a small cookie and gave it to Sunshine after she convinced the parrot to give a small "please". Rachel was glad that her Counterpart gave in to Sunshine's demands, because he soon after began speaking more, even if only in hope of another treat.

After almost two months with her Counterpart, Tatiana had only brought Rachel with to the birds once. They visited the monkeys and apes almost every day. And that was great, Rachel decided. It had been a blast for the first week or so.

Now, however, Rachel was far more interested in the birds. Well, she had been all along. Birds were the most interesting thing to Rachel. Teaching apes basic sign language was neat, but crows were super smart, too. And they could fly!

Rachel knew that the trip was almost over if she couldn't get the time expanded. It was probably a bit overdue that she headed back home, actually. She was looking forward to seeing her mom and dad. Video calls were great, but Rachel missed her parents (and even her older sister).

"Knock knock," Tatiana said to Sunshine. The bird ignored her and continued to preen its tail feathers.

"Knock knock, Sunshine." The parrot didn't so much as pause what it was doing as Tatiana spoke to it. "Rachel, I'm going to put Sunshine back in his cage for a minute and grab something from the storage room. I'll be right back."

The woman did as she said she would and locked the grouchy parrot up. Rachel looked in at each of the other birds as she waited for Tatiana.

"Hello, birdies," Rachel sang at the collection of parakeets. She was about to try to imitate their chirps by whistling when she heard a chorus of voices.

"Hello! Hello! Hello!" the birds chirped back, flitting their wings excitedly. Rachel smiled, wishing that Tatiana would bring them out to talk instead. Sunshine might be larger, but he was not one for socializing.

Tatiana came back into the room a minute after the birds started speaking, chattering wildly. Rachel groaned as her mentor went to unlocked the door to Sunshine's cage once again.

"What? I thought you loved the birds." Tatiana looked over to Rachel in astoundment. Her surprise was reasonable. Rachel had begged her repeatedly, after all, to take her to the birds' area.

Rachel shook her head. "I do, I do. But do you think you could take out some of the little ones to talk to? Instead?" She pointed to the parakeet cage.

"I can take out one of the parakeets if you really want me to," Tatiana said. "And you can talk to them all you want. The thing is that those birds aren't going to say a single word back to you."

Rachel frowned. She looked over to the parakeets and studied them curiously. "What do you mean?"

"Parakeets don't talk, Rachel. They can't. Don't have the vocal chords to do it," Tatiana said as she brought out a green and yellow bird about four or five inches from head to tail.

Instead of saying something back, Rachel just accepted the small creature when her Counterpart offered it for her to hold. That didn't mean Rachel didn't want to contradict her mentor at least a little bit, for she was fairly sure of what she had heard. But then again... The more she looked back on it, the more certain Rachel was that she had misheard. The birds had just been chirping and she misinterpreted as talking.

It was like that thing where people want to see faces everywhere, Rachel decided. Her older sister Saffron had done a report on that for a psychology course. Rachel had been volunteered by her parents as the stand-in audience for Saffron to practice to. It had been annoying at the time, but now Rachel knew enough to doubt even what she had been nearly certain she had heard. Either way, the noises from the parakeets had been some sort of greeting, even if not in actual words she could understand.

The parakeet who Rachel held was very friendly. All of the birds there at the zoo were (at least compared to others of its breed) with perhaps the exception of Sunshine. They were trained animals, after all, and were used in children's shows and brought in to hospitals for ill patients. Tatiana and a few other trainers worked with different birds and other animals around the zoo to keep them friendly and docile.

Tatiana had informed Rachel that she did not know the name of the specific parakeet she was holding. This was due to the difficulty in telling all of the members of the aviary apart. Still, Rachel insisted that meant she needed to give the bird a name. She decided to call him Fizz.

"Why?"

"Because."

"Yes, alright, but why, Rachel?"

"Why not?"

Tatiana fed the large, black bird (which Rachel learned was, in fact, a raven that was only in their aviary because he was recovering from illness). She gave him a few bites of something that looked like meat. "Neville doesn't talk much either," Tatiana told the younger girl.

More than once, Tatiana tried to convince Rachel to talk to some of the other birds. The only problems that Rachel could see with that were—

only two of the birds were trained to talk at all,

one of those birds was Sunshine,

the other was the brand new grey parrot, Grey, and has a total vocabulary of "hello" and "goodbye", and finally

Fizz was chilling happily on Rachel's shoulder.

These all came together with the conclusion that Rachel was quite content with an energetic parakeet to play with. Fizz clawed across the back of her neck and shoulders to move about. However, he did not once try to jump down and escape. Instead, he listened while Rachel talked. And while Rachel talked, Tatiana did her work looking after the rest of the aviation facility.

"I wish I could have a pet. A bird." Rachel held up her left hand for Fizz to crawl onto. "Especially you, Fizz. The only birds near my house are pigeons, and they're boring and never come near me."

Fizz just jumped from Rachel's hand back to her shoulder. He didn't say anything.

"But Tatiana says that you aren't smart either. I was sure you and your friends were talking, but she says you couldn't be!" Rachel exclaimed, sighing.

Great. Now she was reconciling having thought she heard birds talking by what? Talking to a bird! That definitely was both normal and made her seem like she knew what was going on. Absolutely positively just... Great.

"Rude." Rachel nodded. Yeah, it was rude. Honestly. Tatiana wouldn't even consider that the birds had said something.

Wait. Rachel turned her head slowly to look at the creature on her shoulder. Was she still crazy? Probably. But a better question was: Did Fizz just say something? "Fizz?"

"Mmhmm?" The parakeet still sounded like a whistle, but Rachel could hear other words. The words that he meant. It was less like Fizz knew English and more like... more like Rachel knew how to speak bird. But that was impossible.

Rachel could hear a cage door being latched in the next room. She knew they would have to leave soon. Tatiana had said they still needed to check in on the primates enclosure, and it was almost closing time. Still, she didn't want to leave behind her new avian friend.

The bird was not even Tatiana's to give to Rachel if she wanted to. On top of that, no pets were allowed in the city apartments. That meant that Fizz was to stay in the zoo.

"Rachel are you finishing up?" Tatiana called over from the other room. Rachel sighed and ran a finger lightly down Fizz's feathers. "I'm join to feed Beagle and then put... Fizz? That's what you called him, right? Well, I'll put him back with his friends."

Rachel sat down on the concrete floor as she waited for her Counterpart to come back. Beagle was the zoo's Galapagos finch, named after the boat Darwin had traveled on to the Galapagos islands. She usually had free range to fly about in a section of the evolutionary sciences part of the zoo.

A couple weeks ago, the bird had hurt her wing and was in recovery. The zoo's aviary vet had already looked at Beagle, so Tatiana was just looking after her while she recovered. In no time she would be back to flying around the indoor enclosure she normally stayed in.

Speaking of Tatiana... Rachel coaxed Fizz to hop onto her finger. She knew her mentor would be walking in any second. Though Rachel didn't want to put Fizz back, she knew that she would need to. Although, she now had to deal with the fact that she might be one hundred percent insane.

Rachel was almost positive that Fizz had something weird about him. No, scratch that. She was entirely positive. No doubt in her mind. Rachel decided to just drop it. So some wacky magic powers. She couldn't keep him and Tatiana wouldn't believe her so there was nothing to do. Fine.

The girl, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor and holding a parakeet, looked up as she head a cough. Tatiana cocked her head and gestured for Rachel to get up. That she did, Fizz still standing on her finger, and passed the bird over to Tatiana. Fizz waited a few seconds before stepping slowly onto Tatiana's hand from Rachel's.

Rachel called goodbye to the cage of parakeets, and heard the same chatter of "bye!"s as when she had said hello to them earlier.

Tatiana let Rachel stay in the golf cart that they used to travel around the grounds when she went into the next building. Rachel had seen the gorilla from the primates exhibit many, many times already. Though she co-operated enough to sign with Rachel some of the time, the girl got the feeling that Glinda the gorilla had some sort of deep-rooted hatred for her.

The only reason that Tatiana visited the gorilla was because she liked to. Technically, Tatiana was only hired as a bird trainer, but she often visited with the other animals as well. She loved Glinda, so often the trainer would come and try to teach the ape more signs during free time. Glinda's actual trainer didn't mind.

That day, Tatiana only stayed long enough to check up on Glinda. Rachel was glad, because sitting in an empty golf cart was not super amusing. Going inside to sign with a creature that had something against her was even worse, but still.

When Rachel got back to where she was staying, at Tatiana's apartment, she collapsed on the couch.

"Tatiana, Tatiana, Tatiana! Tat. Tatianaaaaaaa," Rachel called over to where her Counterpart was doing something in the kitchen. She wanted to go get something to eat. It was already nearly eight in the evening, after all.

Rachel loved being able to go to the zoo with Tatiana, and she would miss it once she was gone, but it meant that they couldn't have dinner until pretty late. Knowing that she wanted to be an avian trainer like Tatiana was was great, but Rachel still wanted food ASAP.

"Hush, Rachel," Tatiana told the girl, who splayed out even more on the couch and sighed. "I have news from the Counterparts Program, if you're interested?"

Though her tone was questioning, Rachel knew that Tatiana was well aware that she was interested.

"You sent in the single request for your trip to the Program for an extension to a month and a half instead of the scheduled one." Rachel rolled her eyes.

"Yeah. I know. And they approved it. That's why I sent in the second one, duh." Rachel spun around so she was upside down and facing Tatiana she grinned expectantly. "What did they say?"

Tatiana frowned. "I know you were really liking the zoo, but I know you also want to see your mum and dad. So, I hope you're not too awful disappointed that you're going home. They denied your request."

"Oh."