Name: Introducing Tui! (think New Zealand native bird) Nobody knows if this is her birth name or a name she has given herself, but it fits in multiple respects: Tui's markings and color are a little bit like the bird and her love of New Zealand has long since earned her a name relating to the island country. In any case, it's a fitting name, and isn’t that important too?
Gender: Female
Personality: To a stranger, Tui seems odd, as if she’s separated from society. She prefers to be with only a few, trusted friends: people who she knows she can lean on when she needs it. These people know her much better than any other: she's strongly attached to everything she loves and very introverted. She can be moody and has an avid imagination, and although she’s very intelligent she isn't nerdy or a know-it-all. She isn't very sensitive and cannot be offended. She really loves her closest friends, many of which aren’t kiamaras but birds from her homeland, New Zealand.
...............................................
It was raining the morning of my second birthday.
Nothing new, I mean, my birthday is in June, during the rainy winter up here on the North Island. And I like the rain. It isn’t hot like the sun, and it makes everything wet. Or am I weird to like water too?
Besides, even if I wanted to stop it there was no way I could've. I decided it wasn't worth considering, got up, ate a quick breakfast, and got out of the house before my aging mother could yell at me to milk the cows. Dashing down the street, I wondered what to do on my second birthday.
I knew my parents wanted to give me a feather or six, but if I let them pick my feathers they would be unfamiliar, not like the nearby native bird park, my second home. I came to the conclusion that before anything else, finding feathers was vital. I know, I know, my parents meant well, but seriously, I probably knew those birds better than I knew them.
I paid admission and stepped into the park. Of the many native birds there, I knew exactly which ones I wanted. The kaka and kea enclosures were near each other, and even though the park was a maze I found them quickly.
The keeper, being the all-knowing entity that she was, already knew that it was my second birthday and that I’d be at this enclosure. She carefully plucked a feather from the kea and one of the kakas after I asked. They were big and bright, and I loved them. I thanked her and began walking home..
By now it had stopped raining, so I walked home through freshly rain-washed streets with a double rainbow overhead. When I had gotten back to the farm, I milked our two cows without being asked and gathered the hens’ eggs. I was about to visit the sheep when I spotted another friend by the fence edging the cows' pasture: the fantail.
The fantail is a funny bird. It flits around like a butterfly as it catches the gnats it eats. They're usually difficult to catch, but today it took little effort to trap the small bird. When I reached to pluck a breast feather, it turned around, letting one of its beautiful tail feathers fall to the ground. Then it flitted away. Astonished, I tied it to my tail.
Feeling that my feather collection was pretty much complete, I found my favorite book off my bookshelf and headed into the woods behind the farm. I sat beneath my favorite tree, which wasn't really a tree but rather a silver tree fern, and began to read. Hours went by. I was finishing my book when I heard a familiar call that sounded a lot like R2D2 from the Star Wars movies. A tui was beside me! I realized that I had forgotten a favorite friend to collect a feather from, and it waited patiently for me to pick a dark, iridescent feather from its plumage before flying away.
After an uneventful evening, I climbed into bed, hoping for a good night's sleep. My eyes closed...
At some point in the middle of the night, I found myself awake. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized that there was a kiwi standing on the windowsill. I gasped, scaring it, and it jumped down from the windowsill and into the night. I was still recovering from the shock of having an endangered national symbol of a bird within ten feet of me at one in the morning when I noticed that my bird friends had left me another gift.
A kiwi feather was sitting on my windowsill, trembling in the nighttime breeze.
