Flight School: Hunter

Adventures of Flight Crew #8

"Dmitri is a potatoe. He potats in his room," said a certain blonde to himself, opening his third pack of Oreos and staring at the only sentence written in his learning journal, complete with an artful splash of coffee on the cover, courtesy of a bad morning.

Just a week ago, Dmitri was envisioning the month of his life. 'Yo it's essentially a holiday,' was what he'd claimed back then, eyes lit up like Christmas lights befitting for the occasion that had so evidently arrived earlier than expected.

A curious sparrow had called him out right then and there in the dining hall, nibbling on his waffle fries. 'What do you think makes a holiday a holiday? Does the staying-at-home-ness make holidays the way they are? But people travel on holidays. Why do they do that? For a good time I suppose. Or, well, to escape from whatever isn't a holiday to them. Then... is staying at home a good time for you, Dmitri? Does it make a good enough escape?'

No valid, sound claim or conclusion in the history of arguments was ever made over a dinner table and this was no exception. He had insisted back then that everything was going to be great as long as he got to laze around in bed.

Simply put, he was wrong.

The falcon had spent the first week of the island's bird flu pandemic completing a quarter's worth of his arithmetic homework, a third of French, a fifth of flight theory and a pinch of island history—and could therefore conclude that he hadn't completed a single thing on his to-do list. Except 'make memes'. That, he'd done four times. A day.

Needless to say, Dmitri couldn't possibly be writing this in his learning journal, a stellar replacement for homeroom classes that all of Winged were obligated to complete. One entry had to written per day to preferably describe their home-based, quarantine-style, learning experience. At this, a single word would come to his bean-filled, Oreo-stuffed, bedridden mind: potat.

Spelt like that.

This all would have been perfectly fine had his homeroom teacher been something like his prey Kipa's—some well-mannered, bespectacled widowbird who wasn't the raging demon that Professor Faustes Quint was. Unfortunately, the latter was what he'd ended up with and the mere thought of handing in his coffee-splattered, potatoe masterpiece was enough to send shivers running down his fragile spine.

At once, he sought the help of his fellow Winged.

"Hey Luci?" Dmitri popped out onto the balcony and called across the balustrade to his neighbour, Lucienne Deveraux. Who did not appear. "I know you're there, your window's open. Please stop ignoring me because I really, truly need your help this time round."

Moments later, he was greeted with the rare sight of a harpy eagle. She'd emerged from her room, arms folded, hair up in a messy bun and tortoiseshell glasses atop her nose. "Oh my god Dmitri. What is it?"

"Um, the journal?" The falcon held up his tattered copy, sheepish. "I need some inspiration. There's nothing to write. I've done nothing but come up with memes and half-assed my way through assignments this whole week. Mostly memes though. What did you write?"

Both Luci and her Avian's eyes narrowed into a slit as they squinted at what appeared to be a potato standing on the balcony across hers. "Well that's your problem, no?" She slid a packet of mint Oreos out of her pocket and proceeded to tear open the packaging. "And you really think Faustes is going to read it? Something like a... diary by 'little shits'?"

Ah, enlightenment. It was not an often occurrence for Dmitri Ford, except in the presence of people like Iolani Tori and his all-knowing crush standing right in front of him in her pyjamas.