Stool Pigeon

I'm writing this so I don't waste time actually composing an entire short story based on hard-boiled noir parakeets.

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“How did we know?” the detective had sneered, looking down his beak. “Your buddy talked. You oughtta know not to trust a magpie.”

The memory haunted Kikri as he shuffled along the low branch. The watering hole was a few hundred yards away, barely any distance by wing. On foot… He waddled to the trunk, feeling his new balance shifting oddly. With beak and toe he clambered down the rough bole.

The forest looked different down here. Kikri told himself it was just the new perspective that made the trees loom overhead, but he couldn’t forget that he’d been betrayed.