Ambrosia Rosewood

“Why do you call Drakey, Mallard?”
Gosalyn’s question catches it off guard, almost dropping from the perch it’s taken in the garden, taken off guard by the young girl's question. Sure they’ve been questioning each other back and forth all afternoon while they’ve been away from the other two adults - they’re off on some mission or another with Gizmoduck much to Mallard’s complaints.
It hesitates because it’s not too sure if it wanted to go here with the girl yet, she knows the basics about it’s history with F.O.W.L not as much as it’s shared with the other two though, there’s some things he doesn’t think the child needs to know. This is something he’s not share with anyone else. Not because it’s the worse thing in the world, in fact there’s not really one bad emotion connected to it, but it’s more to just do in general with what happened to him and what it was actually like in there for it. No one else can really understand exactly what it was like there, even the others that had been held, it was like a personal hell for all of them and none of them would have coped or reacted the same to their situations.
“Are you sure you want to know?” It asks, slightly hesitant, it doesn’t want to scare her off and if she really wants to know, moss thinks it’s willing to share now, it at least knows it should receive no judgement from the girl. It finally catches her eye for the first time since she asked the question and she shifts slightly nervously before then responding to it.
“If you don’t mind.” She’s a little uncharacteristically nervous and it can understand why, it has one hell of a history, “If you don’t want to…” She hesitates.
Ambrosia gets a flower to sprout just in front of Gosalyn, so she looks back up at them and his calm smile.
“I guess it can be rather cathartic for me to finally share to someone why I do it, most people just think it’s a fun little quirk I have, which to be fair, it is becoming one of those nowadays.” It makes no move to get closer to her, needing that bit of space to talk about this.
Gosalyn nods and takes this as a sign to sit where she is also waiting, though is greeted by a flower chair, which she carefully sits, crossing her legs and pulling them close to her body. Ambrosia takes a breath, looking away from her for a second and just shakes his hands, an attempt to clear it’s head and try not to make mossself overwhelmed about this idea - it’s really not something it needs to panic itself over. Taking another breath, a deeper one this time, it then looks down at the girl and gets a reassuring smile,
“Well, it’s another one of those quirks that I picked up while at F.O.W.L - one of many,” it laughs softly, if it tries to take these years too seriously then it begins to become overwhelmed and pressured by it. “We were only given surnames to use, if we were even allowed to refer to those people by a name in anyway.” It pauses for a second watching Gosalyn’s mind whir.
As yes, right now it doesn’t make much sense as to why this is the reason it now tends to stick with and refer to Mallard by his surname - if anything it could be seen as more derogatory.
“This annoyed me, I was a bratty teen when I first arrived and this never really changed within me, much to their own distaste. But yeah, I had no liking for this formality so alongside a couple of others that were there at a time, we set about trying to learn the forenames of as many of those who interacted with us as possible. I began to refer to only those who I knew these first names for, both to their faces but also to the others. The more I did this, the more it annoyed them which meant that I just stuck right to it.”

It pauses, fidgeting with it’s leaves, not quite pulling them off just yet. Not wanting to look right at Gosalyn but when it finally does it, she’s looking up at moss with wide and curious but not judgmental eyes. Though it can see the gears turning in her head, how exactly does this connect with Mallard, so it finishes it’s story.
“This meant I sort of lost respect for those who demanded that they be referred to by their surname - you get that right because you’re special and important and that’s not something you can choose for yourself. Its-” it pulls a leaf out of it’s arm with a shaky hand, the pain distracting it for a second, this is something harder to explain then he thought it would be. It makes full sense in it’s head, but trying to get someone who it’s their head to understand is a different story.
“It’s because you care for and respect, Drakey.” Gosalyn interjects.
It stammers for a second but yeah, no, that’s correct, though that care probably goes deeper then the child is going to expect it to be. He may have also not quite expected her to have been able to guess that and it really hopes she does not bring up the fact that he's the only one of the group that it does this to - at the very least it could use the excuse for her that she’s a child and he is a lot older then her thus outranking her in a sense.
“Yeah, Mallard is the first person who actually saw me as a real person and I know you helped me out there…”
“But I’m a kid and I couldn’t really do anything to change your situation alone.”
She interrupts and it nods, his point exactly and he’s glad she’s understanding and not at all seeming mad about it. Even with the best will in the world the thirteen-year-old would have been unable to help it in anyway without an adult to help, couldn’t have provided him with a place to stay or even really helped feed it - there’s only so much food a child can make ‘go missing’ before it draws attention.
“I’m glad to have finally told someone this - but please don’t tell Mallard about it.” moss shifts a little uncomfortably, “I’ll tell him someday but I - I need to work out how to tell him exactly.” It leaves the rest of the comment up in the air. It doesn’t want to give too many more things for Gosalyn to over think, but he knows it’s probably given more then enough to her and it prays she doesn’t make the wrong idea.
“Right, anyway. We were given a job, right?” It laughs and jumps from it’s place in the tree, the moss around the tree growing for a few seconds to give it a softer landing then it may have had without it. This earns the plants a soft pet onto itself as thanks as he offers Gosalyn a hand, which she uses to pull herself back up out of the flower, which she also thanks as it then sinks back into the ground and back to how it previously looked, a normal flower.
Gosalyn then yanks Ambrosia’s arm, pulling him down towards her face and she lowers her voice,

“I know you like him.” she states, and Ambrosia panics, wanting to flee, “I won’t tell him - don’t worry - but I would say give it a shot, tell him.” And she lets go of his arm. It straightens back up but then turns to talk back to her, but she waves him off. Before then shifting and acting as if she hadn’t said anything.
“Anyway, why are we hanging about, we’ve got a job to do.” And with that she legs it, leaving moss to flounder for a second before chasing after her. Maybe it will question her about this later, or simply try to forget that it happened - probably feel brave and actually tell Mallard. Gos, she wouldn’t lie to him about something like that, right? He knows she helped Mallard and LP get together and he’s heard how infamous some of their awkward flirty moments were, it just prays that it wasn’t like that too.