A feather against her nose slowly tickles Djinni to wakefulness, and she opens bleary amber eyes to see the curved wall of mud and twigs against which she’d fallen asleep in the wee hours of the morning. An ochre eggshell cracks beneath her hooves as she stands, and she lowers her head to nudge it curiously. The sparrow nest had been abandoned weeks ago – a result of a hungry fox – and a tired Djinni had needed somewhere to rest.
She has never been so small before, and as she stands with her front legs on the lip of the tiny nest, she decides that she does not want to be this small ever again. Everything looks too large in the light of day (last night in the darkness, her eyelids had been too heavy for her to see anything clearly. She leaps forward on wings she did not have a moment ago, and as she drifts toward the earth she grows larger, until at last she is her true size. The black-feathered wings she decides to keep (along with the grullo tobiano coat she was born wearing), and the bracelets and rings that jangle merrily as she lands are as ever-present as always.
More awake now, she walks forward, following instinct to water. The creek babbles happily as it runs through the forest, and Djinni enjoys the bits of warmth from the rare sunlight that has made its way through the canopy. She drinks slowly, and glances up at the sound of something approaching.