Negotiations with the Native Bird People

The sun beat down on the deck of the research vessel, the "Serenity," as it bobbed gently in the turquoise waters of the newly discovered tropical island. The air was thick with humidity and the scent of exotic flowers, a stark contrast to the sterile, air-conditioned lab where I'd spent the better part of the past decade. I squinted up at the lush canopy of the island, the verdant green a stark reminder of the task at hand.

I was Dr. Humphrey, a linguist and negotiator for one of the world's most powerful resource extraction corporations.

My task? Establish peaceful relations with the bird race inhabiting this island. A tall order, considering our history of extracting resources from less-than-willing communities. But here I was, armed with a degree in linguistics, a decade of experience in negotiation, and an encyclopedic knowledge of bird species. Of course these weren't just ordinary birds that were on this island. They were humanoid, with wings either on their arms or sometimes on their backs with feathers covering most of their body and they often had bright colored plumage.

Humanity's first encounter with one of these bird people was rather unexpected and, well, fatal. It seems these birds were not only aggressive, but they had the ability to stretch their mouths open and consume a human almost in the same method of a snake eating a small rodent, leaving the poor soul to slowly be digested alive in the bird's belly. Security footage(From the anchored ship) of that first encounter then showed us something extortionary. The birds started speaking English and other human language, ones seemed to correspond to the languages that were known to their victims.

This was due to their unique digestive system that not only allowed them to consume and process large amounts of human tissue but also to absorb sections of the human brain that contained the knowledge of language.

That was years ago, the company has predicted that enough explorers and adrenaline junkies had met an unfortunate end on that island to form enough birds that knew our languages so that we could finally

open up negotiations with them.

As we approached the island, I started to think that

I certainly had my work cut out me this trip, the crew surrounded me wondering how we should approach the next step of our mission.