Work Text:
Jo might have thought that she, like Aunt March in her chair, had fallen asleep, and was dreaming. The parrot was talking to her, not repeating set phrases but engaging with Jo in a complete, reasonable conversation as if that were the likeliest thing in the world.
"It was a cousin of mine, Polynesia, who taught the great John Dolittle," the parrot said, with such an upwards stretching of herself that the pride was obvious. "A people doctor as he was then, but he learned animal languages. Became the best animal doctor there will ever be."
Jo said firmly, "I don't want to be a doctor." Her boyish visions of going to the war along with her father were of nobly fighting. Far less appealing to her were any ideas of nursing or looking after wounds.
The parrot scratched her head-feathers with one foot. "You needn't be a doctor, I suppose," she advised, "But you're bound to be useful, some way, if you learn."
"Of course I'll learn," Jo flared up. "And then," she added much more quietly, almost to herself, "I could write the most wonderful stories."
In answer, Polly made a sound so like Aunt March when she was in a particularly peppery mood that Jo had to smother a laugh.
"Languages first," the parrot said. "I believe starting with dog language is traditional, but that poodle won't say anything much interesting. It is important to have an example." Silently demonstrating the differences between her feathery shape and the silkiest of dogs, the parrot flared her flat tail and clacked her stiff beak. She next asked Jo what animals her family lived closely with. Polly was frankly scornful to hear that the Marches did not themselves have a dog, nor even a horse.
"Cats will do," the parrot conceded, once Jo mentioned Beth's.
Jo decided that as soon as she had the material she would write Beth such stories of her kittens. She would have so very many new stories to tell, as soon as she knew bird and animal languages.