#thomas nightingale is a silly goose

[the-greatest-tumbleweed]

Well, I did it. Here’s the Rivers of London, Nightingale Is A Goose AU. It’s the 20s, things are getting weird again.

Quick disclaimer: this is a mashup of the story of Thomas Nightingale, the fictional RoL character, and Thomas the Blind Bisexual Goose, a real goose that lived in New Zealand and died in 2018. It is based on a previous post I made literally just being like “there was a bisexual goose named Thomas and I feel like that has fic potential”; I originally tried to post this on there, but the cut kept disappearing so here we are. I have taken a few artistic liberties; the start is based mostly on Nightingale’s life, the latter part of the story almost entirely on the actual goose. I changed the names of Henry and Henrietta the black swans to Peter and Beverly. I also needed to make a goose equivalent of WW2, but please don’t think that it is in any way meant to make light of the actual, human WW2; it isn’t, I just needed it for the story. Final point: this is an absurd concept and therefore an absurd story, which I wrote quickly while procrastinating my schoolwork. Don’t expect it to be anything it’s not.

The Untitled Nightingale Game

Thomas was born in Waikinae, around the turn of the decade – the decade being 1980. He would be known for many things over the course of his abnormally long life: he was a soldier, a leader, a lover, and a doting father. Among humans, he was a legend. But most importantly, he was a goose.

Thomas grew up with the other big, white geese of Waimanu Lagoon, and had a relatively uneventful childhood. He made some trouble, as one does when one is a young goose.

One sunny morning, a young human couple took a stroll by the lake. Thomas and his friend, Rupert, sidled up to the couple together, and just as the young man was fiddling with a diamond ring, they honked in perfect unison. The young man dropped the ring, and the couple spent a good long while looking for it in the grass.

Another, cloudier day, he and Horace covered themselves in mud and jumped out at a group of children, hissing and honking and flapping about. The children ran away, screaming. Thomas and Horace were delighted.

The fun stopped when a man with dark hair and angry eyes came to their lake. The older geese said he had been there before, but Thomas had been young then. The man’s name was William, and he collected eggs. William would visit the lake, sneaking about, and he would steal any egg he came across. The first time he came, William took a whole generation of goose eggs for his collection, and a whole generation of duck eggs, and a great many water bird families lost eggs to him as well.

The second time he came, he began to steal eggs again. He came in with his big green wader boots, early in the mornings, and took whatever he found. It was devastating. It was infuriating. It was known in the goose community the second William War.

One day, the geese and ducks and other fowl came together, and the elders said they must form a front, they must fight back. Thomas led the charge. He would hide in the rushes and jump out at humans if they got too close – after all, you never knew which of them would turn out to be William. He would hiss and nip at their ankles when they stomped around the nesting area.

The elders sent along a group of young ducks to help him; they would quack angrily as he hissed, and were brave enough follow him into any confrontation.

One day, an old man got startled by them, and kicked one of the ducks as hard as he could. From then on, Thomas fought twice as hard, and made sure he was the first in line whenever a human was involved. Nobody was allowed to hurt his ducklings.

Over time, the humans got a little nervous around Thomas, and started to recognise him among other geese. They called him The Goose, and told their children to watch out for him.

It was several months before they achieved their final goal: William was sneaking about in the rushes, looking for eggs to steal, when Thomas jumped out at him and honked. William was startled, and fell into the water with an enormous splash. Another human heard the splash, and came running, and saw that William was holding a bag full of eggs.

“Hey! Are you nicking their eggs!?” shouted the other human, and that was the end of that.

After William had been dealt with, the elders suggested they try and steal back their eggs.

“They’ll already be damaged, surely it isn’t worth the danger?” asked Thomas, but the elders insisted, and so he lead his ducklings in through the window that William had been seen in. They were noticed, and they got in trouble, and some of the ducklings were caught and taken away by the humans. Thomas never forgave himself.

For many years after that defeat, Thomas was sad. He felt guilty about the pain he had lead his ducklings into, and he missed the friends that were no longer with him. He grew apart from the other geese, segregated himself from the group, and took to wondering about, alone, lost in his thoughts. His only friend was a nightingale named Molly, who would sing to him on occasion, and cheer him up a little.

One chilly winter evening, Thomas was out for a lonely walk by the lake, when he came across a swan. He was a black swan, and he was young, and beautiful, and looked at the world with a curiosity Thomas had long forgotten.

Thomas waddled over to the black swan.

“Hello, what are you up to?” he asked the swan.

“I’m ghost hunting,” replied the swan, jokingly.

“Interesting,” said Thomas with a smile, “Any particular ghost?”

“You would do just fine,” said the swan. Ah, this was a cheeky swan.

“What’s your name?” asked Thomas.

“Peter,” said the swan, and smiled at him.

“I’m Thomas,” said Thomas, and smiled back.

The relationships of birds are not as complex as those of humans. Had Thomas and Peter been humans, their courtship may have taken days, months, or years. They may have had enough unromantic conversations to fill a series of novels. They may have never fallen in love. But they were a goose and a swan, so it only took them one conversation.

Thomas and Peter could be seen waddling about together, cleaning each other’s feathers, swimming about in the sun. They became inseparable.

The humans that walked around the area often – the ones making sick birds better and counting the numbers of each species – often wondered when Thomas and Peter would have their first child.

After a while, they became worried one of them was ill, but then one thought to check their sexes, and they all laughed.

“We’ve got a gay goose!” they exclaimed, and for a few years, other humans would come to see Thomas and Peter swanning about. Thomas and Peter quite liked the attention, and so they would happily come and see the humans, giving them a gently honked “hello”, and they became rather popular.

Thomas and Peter lived this blissful, loving life for a wonderful eighteen years, without a hiccup. Thomas made Peter smile, and Peter made Thomas laugh. Thomas told all the funny goose stories, and Peter told all the funny swan stories, and they never tired of them. They reminded each other that the world was a wonderful place.

There came a time, however, when a potential flaw in their relationship became apparent: Thomas had no desire to have any children, lest he should lose them again. Peter had no such worries.

One day, while they were out for a stroll, another black swan sidled up to them. She was glossy and beautiful, and disarmingly charming.

“Hello, I’m Beverley, fancy making some babies?” she asked, because, as established, swans are rather more direct than humans.

Peter and Thomas had a chat about this.

“I quite fancy making myself some babies, to be honest,” Peter confessed.

“Ah, right, of course,” said Thomas, sadly.

And so Peter and Beverley made themselves a batch of cygnets, and were very happy together, for a while.

Thomas was, understandably, rather upset. He returned to his old haunts, moping about in silence. The humans got a little worried about him.

One fine day, Beverley the Swan found him sitting in a puddle, feeling sorry for himself.

“Hi Thomas,” she said cheerfully, “Have a moment?”

“I have a few,” he answered.

“I see you’re moping too,” she said.

“Peter’s moping? That’s unlike him,” said Thomas, worried.

“He misses having you around,” she told him, “And I’d quite like you around, too.”

“But he’s chosen you!” exclaimed Thomas.

“He’s chosen both of us, you silly goose!” she exclaimed back.

She poked him in the side and waddled him over to their nest, and soon the humans could stop worrying again: Thomas, and Peter, and Beverley, and several batches of babies made their home together by the lake. The three adults happily shared their nest, and the cygnets were just as likely to waddle after Thomas as either of their parents.

“There goes Uncle Thomas with his little swans!” the humans would exclaim, and Thomas couldn’t have been happier.

The years went by, and everybody was surprised that Uncle Thomas was still so well.

“You know, sometimes it seems to me that I stopped ageing years ago. In fact, I almost feel as if I’m getting younger. Do I look younger to you?“

Peter laughed at him “I don’t know if you feel younger, but you haven’t changed a bit in all the time I’ve known you!”

“You’re a goose, Thomas,” said Beverley, “You’ve looked the same since you were four, and you’ll look the same when you’re forty.”

And that was the last time they spoke of that.

However, not all of them were immune to the passing of the years. Thomas reached his early thirties, and, indeed, felt as young as in his teens. Peter, on the other hand, began to slow down, and tire faster, and gave Beverly fewer children. Thomas and Beverly both noticed, but there was nothing they could do but enjoy the time they had.

“It’s been a great life, with you two,” Peter told them one day, and then fell asleep between them a final time.

Days passed, the two of them wept, and their last children left the nest.

“I’m not finished, as a mother,” Beverley told him, and wished him well. She flew to another area, where the landscape didn’t hold Peter’s memory, and life went on.

Thomas was sad anew, but a quieter, more mature sadness – the sadness of one who has lost something beautiful, but enjoyed it while it lasted. Alone again, he began to feel the weight of his years. His wings weren’t as strong as they once were, and his eyes began to falter.

He met a younger goose, and loved her, but not as he had loved Peter. They had some goslings – what an odd thing to make children of his own! – but they soon flew away, and he was alone again.

Soon, his sight was so poor he could barely make his way about the lake. The humans noticed and decided that wouldn’t do, so they picked him up and took him to bird sanctuary – though, as a goose, he did not know that it was a bird sanctuary.

“He’s a bit of a mother goose,” the humans told the keepers at the sanctuary, and the keepers listened. When the sanctuary was brought an orphan gosling, they gave it to Thomas, hoping he could look after it. He, quite literally, took it under his wing.

Happy with this successful adoption, the humans brought a few orphaned cygnets to him, as well, and he treated them as he had treated his own little cygnets, years before. More and more little birds were brought to Thomas, and he loved them all, and mothered them and fathered them and, indeed, became good old Uncle Thomas once more.

Thomas grew older, and blinder, and more tired by the day, but still he would walk about the sanctuary with his multitude of children in tow, happy as could be. Sometimes, Beverley would fly to visit him, bringing along children old and new, and the whole extended family would take a gander around the pond.

The day came when a new group joined the sanctuary: the humans came in one morning with a cardboard box of ducklings. They were young and scared, and all alone. The humans put the box where Thomas could hear them quack, and he called them, and they came and found safety and love under his old, feathered wings.

Thomas had his ducklings and he kept them safe, and he cried with joy at his wonderful luck.

Thomas the Goose spent the last of his years at the sanctuary, raising birds of all shapes and sizes. By the time he died – aged 38, which is a ripe old age, for a goose – the humans from both his places of residence reckoned he had adopted at least sixty eight baby birds of various species, mostly swan.

When he did die, happy as a goose could be, the humans wrote about it in their papers. Thomas the blind bisexual goose to be buried beside his male partner of 30 years in the greatest love story told said Pink News, and A tiny coffin, a mayoral eulogy and a bagpipe procession: Thomas the blind, bisexual goose memorialised with touching funeral as he is laid to rest next to his lover, said the Daily Mail.

And indeed, they held a funeral, and laid him to rest with the love of his life, and wondered at the marvels of nature, and when all was quiet and everybody had gone away, a nightingale perched on their tombstone, and sang.