The bird looked right back at him. "Oh come on," he said, in a sardonic voice, fluffing his feathers out to get at a particularly itchy secondary, "you thought it was a monologue. Admit it."
He stretched both wings out and opened his beak, the way some people yawn. Another of those disgusting throat-clearing noises. "You could buy a goldfish. Nobody to disappoint." Matthew was accustomed to giving unsolicited advice to the brooding types. "You could just kick it. You know. Actually live. Since you worked so hard for that pulse you got."