Second cousins, couple of species removed

The warm, gentle breeze rustling through the deep, rich green leaves of the jungle’s dense canopy carried the sweet scent of success. While Rockefeller much preferred to traverse more open environments, which were far easier to fly through than this, the trees here had a myriad of foods to choose from. Since he was in the area anyway… Might as well indulge. Rockefeller had been hopping from tree to tree, searching for ripe fruit when he came upon a bundle of papayas that were just perfectly ripe. They were a stunning shade of gold, almost orange, with scarcely a spot of green on them save for towards the top near the stem. At this hour, they would even be sun-warmed which would make them all the sweeter.

The young tapejara stabbed his beak into the rind of the fruit and was rewarded with rich, orange flesh with a sweet, pleasant scent. He flicked his beak, tossing the skin away as he pecked and ripped a hole into the fruit so that he could feast on his meal.

Crash, below, stopped abruptly in his tracks and gave his head a vigorous shake when something small and kind of wet landed on his muzzle. A scrunched up piece of… something. He shook himself again and bowed his head, scratching lightly at it with a clawed hind foot to knock it off so he could inspect it properly. It was bright orange and kind of fuzzy on one side, and more yellow-y and smooth on the other. It smelled pungent when he gave it a sniff, not the kind of thing that he would like. It almost made his stomach turn. So, of course, he had to taste it. Maybe it would taste better than its scent suggested.

He picked it up in his teeth and tossed his head back, swallowing it. It tasted… about as good as it smelled. A little vile, actually. Kind of like something he had coughed up once. Crash tilted his head back, looking up towards where the mysterious piece of something had come from. He was surprised and delighted to see a honey-coloured dinosaur in the trees, picking at a fruit of some kind.

“Hey!” Crash called in greeting, taking a few steps backwards so he did not have to crane his neck back quite so far to look up.

Rockefeller glanced down, then paused to rub his beak along the branch to wipe off the bits of papaya that clung to it. “Hello?” he called back. The dinosaur below looked like a rather young cryo, not far into adolescence. Probably not interested in hunting him, if it was announcing its presence. He was safe enough up here in the tree, anyway.

“I didn’t know we could eat those!” Crash waved his tail, excited. That little piece that had fallen smelled and tasted foul, but maybe it was just the rind that was bad. The flying cryo seemed to have been enjoying it well enough.

Rockefeller stared down at Crash for a moment, perplexed. He glanced at the papaya, then back to Crash. Cryos were carnivores. Tapejara were omnivores. Surely the cryo knew that.

“Do you want to try some?” Rockefeller asked, still a little perplexed but amused by the strange turn that his afternoon was taking. “I can drop it down to you.”

“Oh, yeah!” came Crash’s enthusiastic reply. He took another step back, not wanting to end up wearing the papaya when it came down to the forest floor.

Rockefeller snipped at the stem of the papaya he had been working on, cutting and twisting it with his beak. It would be a bit of a waste of a fruit to drop it down like this when it would surely just splatter on the ground below, but he had eaten a good bit of it and the rest of it would have just been left to dry or rot on the tree anyway. Besides, if Crash was so eager to try it, he was happy to help. He was also curious what Crash meant by not knowing that “we” could eat papaya. “Look out below!” he warned as he felt the fruit's stem beginning to give.

It dropped, hitting a branch on the way down and spiraling through the air before it landed on the ground with a dull thud. It was mashed, and broken, and spread apart in pieces, but Crash looked thoroughly pleased despite the messy presentation. The cryo called his thanks and bent to sniff it - the fruit still bore the same foul scent as the rind he had tasted, if not more pungent with the amount of papaya laying before him, but since Rockefeller had been so happy eating it then surely it must taste better than it smelled.

The tape fluttered down a few branches, curious about the cryos’s reaction as he opened his jaws to… Crash closed his mouth and tilted his head as he glanced up. What was that buzzing sound?

Rockefeller noticed the same, right as Crash turned his head to look skyward again. Normally, Crash loved bees. He adored them. They were cute and friendly and all they did all day was drift from flower to flower. These were not happy little bees. A papaya had fallen on the branch their nest was built into, and they were riled up and looking for the nest’s assailant. So, the next logical course of action for the only two creatures in the swarm's visual range was to -

“Run!” Crash urged with a laugh.

Rockefeller did not need any more encouragement than that. He leapt off of his perch, eager to soar away from the swarm of angry insects. Though the lower levels of the forest were slightly less densely packed, it was still not ideal flying conditions. He angled himself down and latched onto the young cryo’s feathers, and glanced over his shoulder to see that the bees were unfortunately still pursuing them, and catching up as Crash threw himself through the undergrowth and over large, tangled roots.

The forest parted suddenly, split by a slow, winding river. Crash started to run adjacent to it but when Rockefeller pointed Crash towards the water, Crash, still laughing, leapt off the bank into the river below. They landed in the water with a splash, the impact pulling Rockefeller off of the cryo’s shoulder. The pair stayed underwater for as long as they could to avoid the bees’ ire, and Rockefeller nodded for Crash to swim with him a short ways to put even more distance between them and the furious insects.

The cryo, Rockefeller noticed, was able to hold his breath for a surprising amount of time, and had no trouble following him through the water while they tried to put some distance between them and the persistent swarm. When they emerged from the tea-coloured water, Crash was laughing again.

“That was great!” he  chirped before he shook some of the water from his feathers. They would be soggy for some time, still, but it was worth it.

Rockefeller found himself laughing as well, unable to disagree. That had been exciting, if nothing else. “You alright? Did they get you at all?”

Crash paused, like he really had to think about it, before he glanced over his shoulder. “A little on my tail. That was close.”

Rockefeller shook himself off as well, though slightly less successfully. “There’s some mud here, sit down and I can help you with them.”

Obligingly, Crash sat down on the rocky islet that they had climbed out on. Rockefeller scooped up some of the mud and fluttered over to the cryo’s side and got to work.

“I can’t wait for you to meet the others,” Crash chirped. “I didn’t see you in our row when we all woke up, you must have been hiding somewhere.”

There this cryo went again, saying some really bizarre things. “What do you mean?” Rockefeller asked as he went to scoop some more mud.

Crash looked at him like the answer was obvious. “You don’t know? I guess probably not, if you weren’t there when we all woke up. You’re a ‘honey’ of course!” He looked a bit different but several of Crash’s siblings were a slightly different shape than him anyway. This was the first one that he had met that was able to fly, though. “You came out of a cradle in one of the big underground buildings. That’s why we look so alike.” Dark point gradients, and a pattern running down their ribs, all over a soft, honey-coloured base.

Rockefeller gave the cryo an odd look. Maybe he ran into trouble more often than it seemed - he sounded like he had hit his head on something hard more than once. “I hatched in a nest and raised by my fathers, Samir and Monty.”

Crash’s eyes widened in awe. “You were found by two dads? We just have the one - Duck - but he’s plenty really.”

The cryo’s eyes squinted in happiness, even as Rockefeller tried to backtrack and explain that no, he was not found, he really did come from a nest. He had heard about the facilities but he had never even seen one, let alone come from one.

Crash seemed oblivious to Rockefeller’s explanations, though, insistent in his belief that Rockefeller was another long-lost, albeit slightly strange-looking, cryo sibling. “Come on, they’re not far! I was only going out to find something to eat anyway. They’re gonna be so excited to meet you.”

“Wait, the mud has to dry first - “

Crash was already standing, mud dropping off his tail and landing back on the stones. Rockefeller sighed and hopped back up onto Crash’s back, his feathers too wet and heavy to be conducive to flight. He had to admit, as he started meticulously preening the water and mud from his feathers, he was curious what exactly Crash was talking about. This was an interesting turn to his day, to say the least.