The boy looked up at John while stopping to lean heavily on his cane, confused for a minute before managing to crack a smile at the echoing parrot and the other birds all perching on the apparent ornithologist. When he actually spoke to John, his voice was oddly hoarse, like he hadn't used it for a while.

"'M'fine. You're from the hotel or somethin' right? Does that mean I'm close to it? 's'been....five days I think, heading mostly inna straight line from where I got dropped off? Name's.." He seemed to think something over before continuing to talk "August. August Lim. I like your birds mister, they're mostly parrots, right? I've seen lots of parrots before and fed some out of my hand but not all of them looked like those even though some of them did and there were lots of them on my way here. It was...really hard to resist hunting them on the way here for food but I couldn't remember all the different ones protected under the law and I don't think it'd be very good to eat endangered birds unless I was really starving and they were easy to catch, so mostly I ate fruits and bamboo shoots. Are those raisins? I hate raisins but I think I'd eat anything that wasn't boiled bamboo shoots and I'm pretty sure anything includes raisins now. I'll share them with the birds if you want and could you point me in the direction of the hotel because I think that's okay and I'm [i] really [/i] tired..."

It seemed that now that he had someone to talk to, August kept having words flood out of him without really being able to help himself.