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Kiiswiite was not remotely sulking.
She just couldn’t understand why Jing didn’t like her all the time. Yes, he had a preference for duns, but he was already so weird by both human and avian standards. Besides, weren’t humans always going on about their ”marriages” and ”partnerships“?
Kiiswiite would be a perfect “partner” for Jing. She knew humans, and liked men. Plus, she was a hybrid, just like Jing’s young charge, and Sirawit liked her. Not that she was supposed to help raise him, of course. But Kiiswiite’s dunparent’s coworker was a polar, and polar brights helped take care of their courtee's young. Kiiswiite was just being multicultural!
She knew she was weird for an avian, but she couldn’t help it. She’d been raised on and off by her dunparent’s human partners, so she was plenty aware of how bizarre she was.
She could think about all this and prepare for the Lunar New Year feast at the same time. It overlapped with Late Winter Cleaning in Chéngshì, so she could muse about her relationships while vacuuming the floor perfectly well, thank you very much.
The doorbell going off had Kiiswiite perking their ears out. Speak of the sinner, that had to be Sirawit. “Coming!” Kiiswiite called, switching off the vacuum.
Trotting to the front door, they opened it to see the kid clutching a sheaf of papers to his belly. “Greetings, brightmentor Kiiswiite,” he chirped politely, sounding subdued.
“Come on in,” Kiiswiite said, matching his tone and Tiiliitian tongue. “Remember, let's use English as best as we can when talking in my house. How do we say it again?”
“Hi - ih, hello Kiiswiite,” he stuttered out as he ducked his head and came inside. He shucked off his shoes, made a flightline for his usual chair, and hopped up into it.
“Great job!” Kiiswiite said cheerily. She was tutoring Sirawit in English, and he'd been picking it up fast. He'd grown up speaking Tiiliitian and Mandarin Chinese, but English was widely used enough that Jing had asked her to impart her skills. Kiiswiite wasn't really used to instruction, being a translator of official documents by trade, but she could help a friend. Even if he was just a friend.
“Now Sirawit, what's wrong?” She asked, dropping her bright (heh) tone.
The little dun fidgeted in their auto tailored, seasonally appropriate hanfu. “I have to buy new clothes again,” he mumbled, enunciating each word.
Ah, that’s right. Sirawit would soon be turning eight in Earth years, which meant maturation. No doubt the flightless/skimmer hybrid was feeling the tightness of their clothes and getting teased in their tradie group instruction. That hanfu looked brand new, so at least Sirawit could wear that for a while.
“Everyone has to buy so many clothes at your age, little yiirisit,” Kiiswiite chirped.
“No!” The little dun shouted with surprising vehemence, thumping their sheets onto the table. “I'm not like everyone,” they hissed, ears down.
“Oh, don't brux!” Kiiswiite yelped, only slightly panicking. Jing would see the new worn-down marks in Sirawit's lower beak tusk and ask why his kid was crying again. Though from the look of it, they'd already sorrow-bruxed on the way to Kiiswiite's place.
“Don't brux,” she repeated in Tiiliitian more calmly this time, offering the kid a cup. “Here, drink some tswii instead.” The seed juice was as drug-free as possible, considering Sirawit's dunparent's problems.
The kid accepted the cup and chewed on its spout instead of their own tusks. “Everyone can tell I'm wearing flightless auto tailor stuff in group instruction,” they mumbled around the cup, confirming Kiiswiite's suspicions.
“English, Sirawit,” Kiiswiite chided, filling her own cup and sitting across the table from the kid.
“Why do I have to?” The kid huffed obstinately. “It's holiday time, right? I'm not going to speak any more English now.”
“Well, you're here to learn,” Kiiswiite said, a little helplessly. At least Jing wanted Sirawit to practice his Tiiliitian with her, too.
She huffed, willing her ears to stay level. “Look, kid,” she said, deciding to drop her cheerful act. She'd never claimed she was good with children. Just Sirawit. “Other kids are always gonna be mean about things they don't understand. As soon as my crest started coming in, the other students wouldn't shut up about it.”
Kiiswiite indicated their misshapen crest, especially the larger-than-normal skimmer length at the back that gave their honk an almost flightless sort of pitch. “Most of them already knew what I was with my half-diver feather patterns, but they got worse with my maturation.”
The kid stared up (almost across, with his height) at them. He'd stopped chewing on the cup and was hanging on to their words. “What did you do?” he asked, forgetting that he wasn't going to speak English.
Kiiswiite flapped their ears forward with a happy brux. “I rigged the dust baths to cover them with black paint,” they said smugly.
Sirawit hiccup-gasped. “No way!”
Kiiswiite human-laughed, ha ha. “Yes way. They stopped bothering me after that, especially the other brights. And that's why I'm a snake.”
“What is ‘snake’?” Sirawit asked, and oh right, they hadn't really gone over animals in English.
“Shé shēngxiào,” Kiiswiite clarified. Snake zodiac.
“Ooooh,” Sirawit said, nodding hard enough that their ears flapped. They looked down, counting on their knuckles to convert avian cycles to human years. “It's… ‘snake’ year now, then?”
“Yup. I have to be careful. But that does bring me to today's lesson.” Kiiswiite shuffled the papers on her side of the table. “Since it's Lunar New Year, Xīnnián, we'll learn about the zodiac!”
She handed over the sheet of paper with the English and pinyin names for each Earth animal, tapping them as she went over each one. “Sirawit, you're a rooster, jī. You already know the story of the zodiac race, but I want you to write it in English using the words I give you. Afterwards, read what you wrote back to me.”
In time, Sirawit's deepening voice read aloud, “The first animal to win the race was the rat, riding on the cow…” and so they went.