“Hello everybody and welcome to the show! I’m Daniel Cliffe, and my associate here is Maxine Terrai. Today we’ve got the world’s last surviving poisonbird and his handler here as our guests,” Daniel said, speaking to the camera. He turned his attention to me and Krim, “So would you mind just telling us a bit about yourself and your job?”
I inferred that he was talking to Krim, so I waited with my mouth shut.
“Hi, my name’s Krim Harley. I’ve been working with poisonbirds for several years now. This year is my third year working with Eclipse. I’d rather let him talk for himself, but in general my job is to make sure that he gets fed a healthy diet and help him learn and practice his routines and songs before his performances. As far as the diet goes, though, poisonbirds are called poisonbirds for a reason. They thrive on foods that us humans would consider dangerous poisons, and foods that us humans would eat are like poison to them.”
“That’s really interesting, I didn’t know that,” Terrai commented.
“A lot of information about poisonbirds was kept inside the industry and wasn’t always common knowledge. It’s just a weird trend.”
“That seems pretty odd,” Daniel added, “So can you give us a breakdown of what makes poisonbirds special then? All I really know about them is what you’ve told us and that they are humanoid but bird-like, right?”
“Yeah. No one knows when their species originated, but they were discovered in the wild about 40 years ago. Being unknown creatures that seemed to have intelligence similar to our own, it didn’t take long for all of them to be removed from their natural habitat and studied in captivity. Shortly after that, they were actually deemed too dangerous to study, and they were sold off. After that many poisonbird owners discovered that they had amazing voices that mesmerized people. They trained their birds to sing on a stage, and started selling their service. Physically, poisonbirds are humanoid, like you mentioned, but it was also determined that they are not the same species as humans, and not even close enough that we could interbreed. In fact, the scientists weren’t even certain which animal family they belonged in, as their species has no defined genders and resembled both mammals and birds closely. For instance, although their species does not have distinct males and females, those with female reproductive organs can carry children or lay eggs, depending on the scenario and the hormone balance in her body.”
“That’s astonishing. If they don’t have distinct genders, but their reproductive systems still mirror those of females and males, what exactly does that entail?” Terrai asked.
“Well, unlike most animals, and I am including humans, poisonbirds didn’t seem to have anything in their genetics like our sex that universally coded for what sexual parts they would have. It varied from poisonbird to poisonbird. As such, any given poisonbird could have any combination of female and male parts or even no parts at all.”
“So were there poisonbirds that only gained male traits or only gained female traits?” Daniel glanced at me, probably wondering what I had under my costume.
“Yes, although research found that their species leaned towards having more organs rather than less, so it was more common for a poisonbird to have breasts, a vagina, and a penis, than for one to have only female or only male parts or no parts.”
“Okay, that’s pretty cool, if you ask me. Moving on, Eclipse, let’s give you a chance to talk for yourself. Could you just introduce yourself like Mr. Harley did?”
“Well…” before I could even go into a sentence, Terrai and Daniel let out simultaneous gasps. I thought they were going to say something about my voice, but both seemed confused and hesitant, so I went on, “My name is Eclipse. I’m 19 years old now. I was born in captivity, although since all poisonbirds were in captivity it only makes sense that that’s where I was born. I was sold my current owner when I was 5 years old. I don’t think I really need to talk about my job, right?”
Krim looked at me, “What if people don’t know about poisonbirds, Eclipse, you should explain properly.”
“Okay then, I perform songs on stage. And by perform I really just mean sing, although there have been special performances every now and then. There’s not really much to me other than that…”
“Well, that’s okay, haha,” Terrai interjected, probably entranced by hearing my voice, “Eclipse, do you think you could sing for us now? Show the audience why they should go see one of your shows?”
I nodded hesitantly, unsure what to sing. I looked to Krim, and he gave a reassuring smile. I settled on a slow and quiet song, and sang through the first verse. The lyrics were ones about being free, so I was never quite sure if the effect that the song had was what it should’ve been, but I would’ve sworn that Daniel and Terrai’s jaws were on the floor if I didn’t have a better understanding of basic human anatomy.
“Wow.”
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