Chickens.

 “Jay.” Charlie’s voice is not as sleepy as it should be for four a.m. That’s kind of a warning!

“Hi!”

“How long have you been up?”

“About three hours. I slept almost two,” I explain so Charlie won’t worry at all. She worries way too much even if she’d never call it that.

“And there is a reason you a) have an outfit of a chicken on and b) were wearing it at all?” she asks, but doesn’t tick the points off on her fingers so it might be all OK.

“Yup!”

Charlie sits up in her motel bed. “And that reason is?”

“I did a poem that was really popular –.”

“So you went outside at 3 in the morning to do a chicken dance?”

“Oh! No, but I could –.”

“Let’s not and say you did. Why?”

I could make a joke asking if this is about ‘why did the Jay cross the road’ but! sometimes I’m pretty smart so I don’t. “Cuz I need stuff to write about as a poet, Charlie. You don’t want me writing about you, and Honcho gets twitchy if I write about him too much and I don’t really know other people like I do you so I figured I need experiences to write about instead!”

“Like dressing up as a chicken?”

“Uh-huh.”

Charlie is quiet at that, but it’s not a mad-quiet. “Pack. I’m calling Honcho when he and Dana are awake, and we’re heading to the nearest city where the local magician won’t make a fuss about us.”

“We are?”

“We travel, and we never stay, and that does make it hard for you to make more friends – ones not on tumblr,” she adds before I can protest. “So we’re going to do that. I’ve enough saved up from things we’ve done for the fae for at least two months in a decent apartment.”

“It doesn’t take that long to make friends, because bindings –.”

“I’m going to enrol you in a school. Maybe even a human one, because you are right: you need to make more friends.”

I scratch my head at that, because I don’t think I meant that at all, but Charlie seems determined and I guess this is why the Jaychicken crossed the road?!