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Hen had an interesting life, for a chicken.
Most chickens spent their time scratching for grain, flapping around, laying eggs, or doing other chicken-ish behaviors.
Hen, on the other hand, encouraged humans to fuck.
It wasn’t a job she had asked for, but when the previous Sex Chicken had passed away at the ripe old age of one hundred and four, the Bird of Governors had appointed Hen to the position. It came with its perks (living to one hundred and four, for example), but also its drawbacks. Hen couldn’t understand other chickens anymore — literally or figuratively. They had their doldrummy lives of scratching and flapping, and she had her work of encouraging her assigned humans to do the deed. Why they needed a chicken to tell them to get over themselves and drop their pants, Hen would never know, but she understood humans even less than she understood other chickens. On the rare occasion Hen did meet another chicken (like the time she’d been assigned to a farmer who would not make his move on the postal worker obviously in lust with him), their clucks sounded like… well, clucks. She couldn’t make foot nor feather of it.
The only ones who seemed to understand her were the other Birds — with a capital B. They had also been assigned by the Bird of Governors to their respective jobs. Crow encouraged people to murder (which was extremely morally questionable, but that was above Hen’s pay grade), Turkey gave people an excuse to see their family more often, and Emu was a bit of a friendship matchmaker.
Then there was Goose. Goose, whose assigned job was to find people their soulmates and not stop honking until they gave some epic love confession and rode off into the proverbial sunset. That seemed like a much better job than just encouraging sex. Hen was certain she’d encouraged more one night stands than long-lasting relationships, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but wasn’t the sort of legacy she wanted to leave. When people thought of Goose, it was a fond reminiscence about how they’d found the love of their life because of an insistent bird. Hen was the punch line of a joke — remember that weird chicken we saw before we fucked?
The worst part was that Hen didn’t hate Goose for it. It wasn’t his fault he had been assigned his job any more than it was her fault she had been assigned hers.
Hen did not like to think about how she felt about Goose, actually. Not even when he was sitting next to her at one of the interminable Bird of Directors meetings and honking jokes under his breath to make her laugh. Thinking about how she felt about Goose would just lead to horrible, awful things, because a Sex Chicken could not fall in love. Besides, if they she and Goose were meant to be and hadn’t realized it yet, wouldn’t Goose have been assigned to push them together?
Did Birds even have soulmates? If they did, could Goose be assigned to them? The system had a lot of flaws Hen didn’t care to think about. (Also, why was there only one of each of them? Hen swore she hardly got a break before being sent off to another sex thing, and surely Sex Chicken didn’t have to be an exclusive title?)
“Hen.” She turned to look at Goose, blinking owlishly. Or chickenishly, since she was a chicken. Owl didn’t have an official job — he just enjoyed sitting in shadowy trees and hooting ominously sometimes.
“The meeting’s over?” Goose said to answer her confused look.
“Oh,” she said. “Right. Suppose we both have assignments to get to.” Seven billion humans, only one Sex Chicken and Soulmate Goose.
“I don’t, actually. If you want to get some grass or something.”
That was an extremely normal chicken-ish thing to do, to eat grass. “Sure,” she said, bobbing her head in a nod. (Actually, it was bobbing her body to make it look like a nod — stupid gyroscopic head.)
“I’ve been thinking, Hen,” Goose said as he waddled along beside her towards the green field opposite the Bird of Governors building, “that it’s going to be a lonely one hundred and three years.”
She not-nodded again, which was remarkably more difficult to do while walking.
“We could make it less lonely,” he suggested.
“How do you propose we do that?” she asked, confused.
“By being together?”
“Thank god!” came a tiny, squeaky voice, seemingly out of thin air.
Hen blinked. “Who said that?”
Goose ducked his head. If he was a human, he might’ve blushed. “My, uh, Soulmate Mosquito.”
“Soulmate Mosquito,” Hen treated. “Humans get soulmate birds and we get soulmate bugs?!”
“Hey!” the mosquito squeaked indignantly. “Don’t make me send the murder hornet after you!”
“We’re soulmates?” Hen asked.
Goose fluttered his wings nervously. “According to the Bugs, yes.”
“…is this how the humans feel when we set them up?” Hen asked, clucking out a disbelieving chuckle. A cluckle, if you will. Wow, was being set up a weird feeling.
Goose shrugged, with another wing flutter to boot. “So do you… not want to be my soulmate?”
“Oh, no, I’m fine with that part,” Hen said. “Though it might be difficult to date, with our work schedules.” Why didn’t the Bugs also handle human affairs? Surely there couldn’t be that many birds in need of bug intervention. She could definitely use some help from… “Say, what do you think the bug equivalent of a sex chicken is?”
Goose grinned, as much as a bird could grin. “A love bug, of course.”