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You recalled his mother's appearance for a moment. A small lady made of flowers and leaves... was that who this walking brussel sprout would eventually become?
A name floated to mind. It seemed appropriate, and you liked the way it sounded. A small grin entered your expression as you glanced at the green speck upon Mary's back.
Florian. That would do nicely.
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The five of you traveled with little interruption. Through sparse forests and the brief open plain, you were greeted with a shocking absence of normal creatures.
You always had your notebook on hand, attempting to scrawl down what you could, but the sheer amount of neofauna in comparison to Earth's natives was impressive.
While you walked you would mostly see birds, small mammals, and the occasional predator. Any kind of fish in the Sacramento River had long-since been outnumbered, with even the salmon from before Redding now being absent, the enormous body of water being swarmed by especially colorful fish-likes and-- for reasons you could not explain-- <span class="mu-i">lilypads</span>, of all things.
At one point you felt it right to harass Steele just the slightest bit. His attempts to call for Indiana by some other name were far less important-- instead, you quietly shouted to him. "Look, look!" Though the older man was reluctant, he relented rather quickly upon hearing a screech.
A bald eagle with a fish flew in a tussel barely a tree's height above you all, its screeches and constant jerks parried by a shocking lookalike: some kind of chick covered in white feathers with a beak as large as the eagle's talons, a body almost <span class="mu-i">larger</span> than its opponent's, the balded bird becoming disoriented by the chick's headbutt (that had somehow left the fledgling bird unphased), tumbling down to the ground with a visibly broken wing and another cry for help.
The fluffy stranger returned the screech, its cry not too dissimilar to the eagle's own, flying off in victory with hardly a scratch on its body and the bald eagle's fish clutched within its talons...
You jumped forward to catch the falling bird, unsure of why by the time it had landed in your hands. The bird of prey had landed with some fanfare, too, almost forcing you to tumble forward with how much it weighed. This was definitely a larger specimen... and yet, it didn't even seem to have a chance against its odd look-alike.
Mary, Indiana, and Florian eagerly crowded the animal. It tried to caw and flap its wings, seemingly trying to ward them off, yet moving the broken wing only brought more pain and left it unable to function. You had to prompt your companions to leave it be, with Mary especially taking a bleating interest in the bird, before it stopped exacerbating its condition trying to ward them off.