The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 79: Sparrow

Have you seen a newly hatched sparrow? If not, you cannot possibly comprehend the horror of finding yourself in a nest of them.

My siblings were as bald as miniature chickens plucked and ready for roasting. They had raw, pinkish skin, with splotches of moldy grey on their heads and wings and running in stripes down their spines. The corners of their mouths were as swollen as pus-filled sacks. They were the most revolting creatures I'd ever seen.

And I looked just like them.

I stared at my featherless chest, which looked exactly like a tiny, uncooked chicken breast. I gaped at my featherless wings, which looked exactly like tiny, uncooked chicken wings. It was wrong. It was so wrong. Living birds should never look like this!

I opened my beak to shriek again, and my mother sparrow dropped in a bug. It was still wriggling.

Eeeeek!

But my sparrow body devoured it while my Piri-brain retched. When it was gone, my sparrow-brain opened my beak again and screamed for more. And so, alongside my hideous siblings, I fed.

What other options did I have? I could, of course, have squirmed to the edge of the nest, flung myself off the side, and hoped that Glitter would reincarnate me as a better bird next time. However, if my two-hundred-odd years as many, many catfish were any example, she'd simply order Flicker to stuff me into the next sparrow egg to hatch. All I'd gain would be another forty-nine-day stint inside an archival box.

No, better to wait this out. Sparrows had to develop faster than baby turtles, right? They couldn't possibly look so disgusting for months on end. If they did, humans would have stamped them out for marring the landscape.

All right. I could stick this out. I would stick this out.

A deep breath, another bug to eat, and then my eyes were drooping shut. Being horrified was exhausting. I needed sleep to muster energy for my next round of outrage against Glitter.

Four days after hatching, my siblings and I started to sprout down. After that, we looked much more presentable, and the nest no longer resembled a butcher shop. The view got even better when we grew beige-grey feathers and began to approximate real sparrows. By then, my eyeballs were so traumatized that I didn't consider adult sparrows drab and boring anymore. I even thought that the sight of my siblings as fluffy feather balls verged on cute. Honestly, at this point, I'd have taken anything over sparrow hatchlings!

This phase didn't last long, though. Soon we were learning how to fly, and then, one sunny morning, we all left the nest and flew off in separate directions. My siblings would be searching for food or patches of dirt for dust baths.

As for me, I had a different goal. It was time to figure out how to return to Honeysuckle Croft.

The landscape was different. That was the first thing I noticed. After some pondering and more flying, I concluded that it was because the plants were different. Their leaves were weirdly broad and overall larger than I was used to. And everything was so green. I wasn't used to seeing so much green everywhere. It felt wrong.

Anyway, plants were all well and good, but where were the people? I needed to find a city or a village or, at the very least, a farmstead, so I could eavesdrop on conversations and figure out where I was.

Eventually, I came to an orchard where human and spirit farmers were busy harvesting small, reddish fruits. I zipped over for a better look – and backwinged in shock.