Curr had spent most of his time below-decks, hiding as a bird and trying hard to stay away from any metal he might find. It made him less of a target, he thought, or at least seemed to make him less noticable since he could hide in the dark spots and his black feathers helped keep him hidden.

He hated these people. At least some part of him was able to acknowledge that he hated them for the worst possible reasons: one of them he'd met once had been a snotty bastard, and the Eurastadians hated them. And he'd been raised with Eurastad's principles beaten into his mind... one of the first and most celebrated of those principles was that the Aquitaneans were ponces, they were empire-builders, they were villains.

But he couldn't stay below deck forever.

Eventually, he'd given up and flown up to top deck, currently resting comfortably on a small pile of crates on top deck. He hoped his status as a big black bird on a ship on the ocean would mean people would be nervous that he might be an omen and just leave him be. Wasn't like enough bad things hadn't already happened.

He was watching a couple of younger Aquitaine sailors scrubbing the deck. Their backs were to him. He cocked his head, glad for the feathers and the beak.

He did not allow himself to think about exactly what he was looking at.

Villains or not... This was a good angle.

Curr cocked his head the other direction when they looked at him, then started preening his wing, trying to look as though he hadn't just been watching them. This was weird. The sense of being weirdly embarrassed by people always assuming his bird's brain could not think was a little muted when it came to these sailors: they probably just didn't know any better, really, than to know that some of the Tuatha could Shift. How many Tuatha had they even seen, regularly? He wondered.

At first, when the sailor came towards him, Curr took a couple of steps back along the crate, nervous. But that ship's biscuit...

Had he a growling sort of stomach, his stomach might have growled in response. In any case, he hopped forwards again, watching them cautiously. When the biscuit was dropped at the foot of the crates, greed overtook what he thought might be the tiny, underdeveloped voice of common sense in the back of his mind and he managed to flutter his wings enough to get down there and start pecking at it, scooping up bits of biscuit with his beak to eat. He fluttered his wings a bit, looking up at the sailor again, cocking his head, as though asking if he had any more.

Curr continued contentedly scooping up biscuit right up until the words 'pie' and 'eating' came just a little too close together for his comfort.

He froze, looked up at them with his head tilted far to the side.

"Taste... like... dirt," He managed, with incredible difficulty, to say the words out loud. "No good... for... you."

Curr took several careful steps to the side of them, tilting his head up their directions. After a moment, he, with some serious awkwardness, managed to get himself back on top of the crates where it was a little easier to see their faces.

He gave them a level bird-stare.

"Don't... eat me," He said, in plain Common, very slowly.

Curr gave them a level stare.

"Belong... to me," He said, but the effort involved in forming actual words with a beak meant that he couldn't put the vehement emotion he wanted to into them.

"Your... names first," He croaked, proud of himself. Maitiu would be proud, too, he thought. He needed to show him just how good he'd gotten at this.