Thunder rumbled loudly in the dark sky as dark clouds hung overhead in the mid afternoon sky, life still went on as rain began to pitter patter and joined the chorus of birds in ambient noise.

Laying on a moss covered slab of rock she watched as magpies went on with their sales, displaying their pretty little trinkets and wares for those interested in buying. The hustle and bustle of market was nearly overwhelming. Perhaps it would be a good idea to go find plum, maybe see what the she was up to? However that idea was thrown out the window when pale amber eyes caught sight of Roc Itai's form, his vivid eyes snapping toward her direction as if looking to go over and reprimand her for just laying about.

The young girl's fur nearly stood on end, and she gave him a rather sheepish look, quickly hoping off her rock and slinking away. Looking back to see him watching as she left. It would seem that hanging around the main area was out of the question then.  

Instead, Padme find a different place to wait out this rain. Close by, hidden by jungle overgrowth was a tiny ruined building, covered in vines and moss, stone slabs and broken statues jutted this way and that. It was there that she laid, on the mossy stone steps, listening as rain water trickled against the stone. Bright flowers littered the area and she nearly felt herself lull into her dreamscape, until the rustling of vegetation alerted her that she wasn't alone.

What if it was a Roc, even worse, what if it was Itai coming to yell at her about something?! Padme nearly felt her stomach flip. "Hello, who's there?" Her voice lacking confidence.

The rain was as soothing as a lullaby, and he walked through the downpour with little regard to it’s soaking ability. The cacophony of roaring toads (or were they frogs) as he passed a puddle was nearly too much to bear and he pulled his ears against his skull. Crinkling his nose and scrunching is face up before he barked over at them, hoping the sound was silent them at least long enough for him to finish passing through. Val would much rather listen to the waves crash against the shore, the rain drip down off the leaves, and steady hum of droplets on a roof; frogs not included (or were they toads). He let out an irritated hum and continued moved through the soaking forest, passing the merchants and their wares without much of a second glance. No fights and no theft, no reason for a bastard Jay to be near the Magpies, particularly any Crystalline ones. Pawstep by pawstep he worked his way past some rubble, still patrolling. Sometimes the less savory members of the tribe had a habit of using these piles and dilapidated structures as places for other things.

Valravn took great personal satisfaction in interrupting their scheming, hazing, black market trading, and all other things Aviari. They didn’t like him anyway, so he might as well get his kicks from pissing them off. Massive shrugging. But there was no evil bad guys discussing world domination to be found today, instead it was the purple girl he’d seen around. Somewhat startled by his arrival, she looked up and he could hear the shiver in her voice. Valravn dipped his head to let some rain water run off of it before stepping the rest of the way through the foliage. ”Just me, nobody important.” A ridiculous grin pulled across his face as he looked at Padme, ”Just doin’ some patrollin’. Y’know so nobody kills each other for no good reason.” Snicker snicker snicker. He tried to pull a straight face, Val wasn’t sure he knew her too well, but he thought that she wasn’t related to any of the families. Maybe she wouldn’t be shitty?

The Jay-slash-Raven lightly chuckled at his thought, he doubted he’d be that lucky. What a dreamer he was. She had pretty colors and enough feathers to be fairly full of herself, and an Aviari with no special bloodline was still better than an Aviari with bastard blood. Nonetheless, ”Valravn. Jay an’ Raven. I’ve seen you around yeah?”

Brows quirked as the young male stepped through the brush, answering her simply, flashing her a smile that utterly confused her. Though the girl attempted to smile back at him, albeit, awkwardly given the situation and all. Her nervous laughter bubbled up in her throat, as she shrank back just a little. Killing each other? Was that supposed to be a joke? Maybe he was being serious? She nearly blanched at the thought.

She should have been able to place the coloring to a name, but unfortunately she couldn't. Though the young lady knew this one, the entire pack knew this one. Bastard seemed like such a harsh word, but here he stood. Sapphire and Riverine, and in that moment she felt jealous of him. He knew what he was, where he belonged (so she thought). Though begrudgingly the pack had accepted him. Where as, Plum and herself had always been regarded as urchins, unable to be brought to heel or something. Rogues were no better than Bastards.

He had to have been around her age, maybe older by a year or a few months, but not that much older. Already he had ranks, and here she was still a sparrow.

Eyes flickered brightly as she studied him, Valrvn, that's what his name was! Inwardly, she chided herself for not remembering. Padme was taken a bit off guard by his question though, it was a surprise to hear that someone had even noticed her, especially when around the pack everyone seemed like they wanted her out of their way. The Roc of Wings especially. The dappled youth gave a hesitant nod. "I'm Padme." A soft, but warm reply. "I've seen you around too, in the marketplace mostly." Heard somethings as well, most of it wasn't nice or worth repeating.

The thunder rumbled and she'd nearly forgotten about the rain, once again tuning into the steady pitter patter. "Do you, uh, wanna get out of the rain? You look kinda soaked." Padme offered, craning her neck to look at him. "It's dry enough here, just a place to wait out the rain." Her mind seized at the thought of company, but she tried to welcome the idea with a smile.

She tried to smile, it didn’t work. Apparently his joke was not to her liking, he guessed he shouldn’t be surprised. The smile from his own face faltered away into a step above a grimace. He shouldn’t have been so surprised really, and cleared his throat before recovering his expression to it’s typical “half amused glint”. He ruffled his feathers slightly, shaking a light bit of settling precipitation from them. She didn’t seem completely disgusted with him but she was a pretty enough color with nice enough feathers, the standards the Jay used to determine whether someone was nice or not. Although, Moxie had neither and he was not nice either… The Jay realized his face was betraying his personal thoughts and blinked back to the current moment with the purple ingenue. He was about to just sigh and dismiss himself from the lady’s presence when she replied to him.

Padme. Interesting name though he imagined it was no more or less than his own. The icy Aviari nodded to her and tried to offer her a smile back but now he felt hers was insincere. His own ears leaned backwards slightly, not quite pinned but they were not as perked up or interested as they had been. Instead he simply blinked at her with those piercing purple eyes. Where were his words? They’d gotten caught in his throat which was unusual for him and he didn’t like it. He tried to chuckle them back into his mouth so he could spit out something witty and sarcastic at the woman but her discomfort at his joke had shaken him more than it normally would. Valravn just wrinkled his nose a bit as the thunder cracked above him. Purple eyes turned upwards in time to see a flash of vibrant lightening brighten the darkness around them. The rain hit his face and dripped into his eyes but he just kept watching the sky until the rogue spoke again.

When she offered him to sit under the stoop out of the rain, the look of bewilderment was absolutely one-hundred percent written across his face as if he was overdramatically miming it. For a second he narrowed his eyes, suspicious of the girl and her faint smile. He looked around as if expecting someone to pop out of the bush and say something shitty to him. But why not? As much as he’d never put it into words, the idea of having someone to hang out with was a welcome change from his often lonely and silent routine, only ever really discussing things with his companion Fi. (Sometimes Valravn wondered if Fi even liked him or if she was just fulfilling some sort of duty or slavehood.)
”You’re, uh, sure?” a rather large stream of rain happened to pour off a leaf at this point onto his head, internally he died seconds before opening his mouth in an up roaring laugh. ”I guess I will.” Snicker snicker snicker.

The Jay walked over to where the girl was resting and picked what was quite possibly the farthest spot away from her he could possibly manage under the shelter to sit stiffly.

Don’t say it.

Don’t say it.

VAL DON’T SAY IT.

”So you come here often?”

Snick, snick, snick.

There wasn't much she'd gathered from the look he gave her, though Val would be able to tell that she wasn't exactly as cautious of him as he was of her. They all gave her that same look, like she was only there to play some cruel joke on them, to pull back the curtain and laugh. Though this tribe had always been known for its snap judgements and prejudices. To Itai she was a filthy little rogue, a bottom feeder. She would never amount to anything in his eyes, she and many others like her represented the collapse of society. To the other bloodlines, she was an outcast, an iridescent, and perhaps a Crystalline.

Without knowing her, the real her, she'd garnered enough hate from the lot of them. All rogues shared the same fate. Valravn might not have noticed at first (he was looking around after all), but the girl's ears drooped just a bit, smile dimming, but remaining on her face. Padme didn't understand why they all did that, and it would appear that she never would.

"Yeah, it's a lot better up here than just standing in the rain." She gave him a nod, motioning to a free space for him to sit, however, the girl's brows lifted with mild concern as a leaf spilled water onto his head. The jay laughed, but she merely blinked a little uncertain if he'd take offense and think that she was laughing at him rather than with him. Instead she gave him a sheepish grin as he stalked his way over, making a deliberate attempt not to be anywhere close to her.

Finally after a moment of silence, he questioned her and Padme turned her head slightly so that her pale amber gaze could meet his. "Uhhh, do you?" Clearly confused by his question at first as her brows knitted together, perplexed. "Oh! Ah, not really. I hang in the marketplace a lot more, but not recently. The Roc of Wings doesn't really care for 'rankless loiterers', that's what he calls me, well... sparrows. " Gaze flickered away and she looked down at her paws, so far the conversation was going well and that always made her nervous, letting the silence become painfully uncomfortable. "So, was your trial difficult?" Her anxiety spiked at saying the very word, ugh.

Val was observant enough, but sometimes the little things slipped under his radar. As with anyone, especially it seemed with men, the little nuances in the expression of a woman were sometimes hidden from understanding as if they were invisible. So Padme was smiling when he looked at her, and still smiling when he looked back, her posture had changed very little—he always watched it for an indication that someone might be getting angry—and overall he saw nothing that triggered the whatnots in his brain to alarm him to her failing smile. So he simply continued to look at her giving her the same expression as he had prior to her disappointment. She reiterated that he was welcome to sit with her but he was still cautious up until the point he was splattered unceremoniously with water. ”Well it’s not every day a tree pees on you.” perhaps it was a sign. The Jay would take it as one with every precaution he could, even though this particular rogue seemed expressly harmless.

For a moment he’d lock eyes with her orange ones as he craned away from her with a goofy expression, trying to get a read on her. Head cocking to the side, though it perked back up and his ears rose up again when she asked him if he came here often. The Jay didn’t want to laugh at her, but she wasn’t laughing to laugh with her so he stifled a snort best he could. Padme had completely missed the… humor? (that’s what he’d convinced himself it was anyway) he’d thrown her way. Before he could answer her however she seemed to work out the question and answered him more completely. When Padme mentioned Itai the Jay began to shake his head at her. ”The Roc of Wings is the most prideful Aviari ever in existence to not be an Aviari. I think he overcompensates his inability to change species by being absolutely unbearable. ” Val hoped that the girl was frightened enough of the ridiculous hellion to not say anything, but if not, Valravn wasn’t too concerned. ”I imagine they gave him Roc of Wings because his ears are so big if he flapped them he could take flight.” He winked at the shimmering purple girl before looking back out at the rain for a moment.

She managed to catch him off guard when she asked about his trial, and though he laughed it was obvious nervous laughter. ”Well they don’t call them trials because they’re fun and exciting, doll…” Pet names were uncharacteristic for him and so he was somewhat surprised it slipped out. Hopefully the girl didn’t take poorly to it, it hadn’t been meant as an insult. Val was just gathering from her words and her presence that she was probably wasn’t the most… thick-skinned, haughty Aviari he’d ever met. Which of course also made him feel back for having assumed she would be unpleasant upon meeting her. ”Mine was uh. Good I guess? You face your biggest fears usually and that’s what happened in mine so I guess it went according to how it should… Hhheermm. Of course I was judged back before the civil war, so I’ll never know if my judging was fair or not…”

She shot him a surprised look about how he went on about Roc Itai, he was far braver than her. Her mouth dropping open, though she did her best to stifle the smallest bits of a laugh. "You shouldn't speak like that about him." Padme warned giving a gentle smile. "Like you said he's got really big ears, he might hear you." She couldn't help but snicker lightly at her own joke, though quickly she felt pretty bad that it was at the expense of someone else.

Padme blinked at the word 'doll', was that... was that supposed to be her? Weird, though she didn't think much of it other than that. Instead her frown came from his describing the trials, that same nervous feeling, sinking and sinking. Forever and always sinking. "What do you mean by if your judging was fair or not?" She tilted her head curiously.

"I'm, uhm, I'm supposed to do my trial sometime soon. Maybe never, if I don't want to." She glanced away to the field ahead of them, taking a deep breath and attempting her best smile, though it was pretty weak. "I've got no idea what I'm doing or why." The girl could feel the trembling of her own heart. "I don't know if it's because I'm afraid they might all be right about me or just... getting older." Ears pulled back as a breeze picked up and blew misty rain into her face causing her to flinch slightly.

"I don't want them to be right about me." They all say such awful things. "I just want time, more time above all else." It's simply something that was impossible, the longer she chose to stay as a sparrow the more of a detriment she became to herself. Padme glanced back to him then, an apologetic look upon her face. "Sorry for the, uh, verbal vomit. That stuff always makes me nervous, I don't really know why I brought it up."

A big ridiculous grin pulled across the lips of the blue and gray Jay when Padme’s little jaw nearly fell off the bottom of her skull. Valravn snickered a little as she attempted to fight back giggles at his statement. She was gentle though, it was obvious that as much as she liked hearing it she wasn’t one to dish too much of it. The Jay was almost disappointed for the purple girl, a sense of humor might do her well given her position and status in the pack. But Val wasn’t the type to criticize someone who already received so much unjustly. Padme scolded him lightly with a smile and a giggle. The Sparrow had made a joke, albeit a small one; Val nodded approvingly. Padme was frightened, and Val figured that was fair but he had nothing to lose really.”Ah, with all this rain pitter-patter his ears are probably burning. Curled up cuddling with his scrolls somewhere.” The Raven winked encouragingly to make the girl feel better about making the jokes. If he wasn’t so uncertain of how to pleasantly interact with someone, he would have trusted his instinct to reach out and offer her a soft touch on her shoulder. Instead he refrained, offering a lopsided grin before looking back out at the rain. The bastard imagined she probably did have more fear than he did. ”You’ll excuse me, growing up as a bastard, it uh… makes you choose between hating yourself or not giving a damn about upsetting others. Guess which I picked. ” They were going to hate him anyway weren’t they?

The Roc had probably imagined Valravn saying much worse about him anyway, he seemed to always think the worst of the well behaved gray and blue bastard. So let him. Maybe one day he’d see the Roc of Wings fall from grace and he hoped it was onto a pile of rocks. The thought was unusually violent but Valravn chuckled anyway, extending his head out into the rain to receive a few droplets on his face. Purple eyes blinked softly as he turned to look at the girl who seemed to be confused at being called doll. Had nobody ever called her anything like that before? No sooner had the question popped into his head than the answer did too. If Padme was a rogue then no.. probably not. He sighed. The girl seemed to come back to reality to ask a question and the Raven ducked his head slightly, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. ”Well, I took my trials prior to the war. Y’know, back then my “muddy blood” was even more of an indiscretion. I’ve always wondered if, well maybe, they were extra rough on me because I was a bastard. It wasn’t unheard of and my judging wasn’t full of praise and accolades.” Valravn had barely finished articulating the last syllables of his word when the pretty Sparrow piped up nervously. ”Well the trials will help with learning about yourse--...” She was nervous and delicate, soft-skinned and easily swayed. He wanted to grimace but tried to fight back the worst of it—some still slipped through though. In the grand scheme of choosing to be a victim or a victor, she had incidentally chosen victim. They had ruined her way of seeing herself and it made him sick. The corners of his mouth twitched involuntarily, trying to not let his fangs poke out because he didn’t want her to think he was upset with her.

The world was big and it was scary and it was certainly made worse by everyone telling you that you were a blight on society. ”This is why we had a war,” the Jay started firmly, ”So that those pompous assholes would come down a few pegs and you and I might come up some. Don’t forget that for all the things that feel the same, things have changed. They’ve got absolutely no fucking right to make you feel like you aren’t worth it.” The man was nearly bristling, looking at Padme with angry eyes, ”You have time, make time. Make it.” Was Padme as bold as he was? Val had received his ranks and his status by fighting tooth and nail and making opportunities for himself. ”Don’t know what you’d like to do? You can shadow ranks, make up some bullshit about how you want to be a contributing member of society and want to learn. They’ll be asses but they usually won’t send you away. Find something you like…

What sort of things do you like?”

Val would help her if he could, because now he was angry. Now he was feeling obstinate, now he saw another opportunity to ‘stick it to the man’ so to speak. The Jay didn’t have a blooded family, not really, so that left him open to make one out of those others who didn’t have families either. The bastards and the rogues, the dirty, dingy side of Aviari society. If they weren’t careful, he’d make sure a civil war was just the start. And he’d do his best to learn how to play the game by their rules if it came to it. But until then he’d just simmer, feeling boiling anger under his skin because Padme didn’t deserve to feel this way about herself. ”They’re wrong. I promise.” This time the boy would follow his instinct, closing the distance between the pair to rest his paw softly on her shoulder. Comfort was a weird thing for him, he’d received so little of it growing up.

Didn’t mean she had to suffer too.