As the sound of wings reverberated through the air, Adon dashed to the birdhouse door, stomach in his throat.

His body, he couldn’t help noticing, moved faster than he’d ever remembered it moving before. Even when he’d been running for his life from the ants. And it wasn’t a small difference.

The egg, he realized, also felt surprisingly light in his forelimbs. Easy to carry.

Before he could really grasp the strange new power of his body, he stood at the birdhouse door.

Adon took only a fraction of a second to look out at the landscape, position his body appropriately, and aim the silk-coated egg. Then he hurled it as hard as he could. In the midst of the fear that gripped him, it was at least heartening to see his stolen egg fall deep into the middle of a dense patch of bush that he had scoped out earlier. He hadn’t checked it closely, but it looked like the same variety of bush he had taken refuge in earlier that day. At the least, he knew that this bush had its thorns too.

That egg went further than I would have been able to throw it before, he noted quietly. I was hoping it would land close and sort of roll under the thornbush, but instead, it wound up deep inside.

Well, the bluebird was never going to get that back.

Adon might never escape this birdhouse if the next minute didn’t play out as he hoped. Something else might end up eating the egg that he had rightfully stolen. But at least the bluebird, which had failed at grabbing the Leafy Bush Cricket corpse from the thorn bush earlier, would probably neither find where he’d stashed the egg nor be able to recover the egg if she did deduce the location.

As if that mattered, he thought, annoyed and surprised at himself for feeling such spiteful glee. All I should care about right now is surviving.

As he stood at the birdhouse door, the temptation was to try to survive by jumping through that opening. Get away before the bluebird came home. But Adon resisted the urge to run away now. Trying that could paradoxically increase his odds of death. If he simply leaped out, he would fall at the speed of gravity, leaving him at the bird’s mercy for the seconds before he reached the ground.

And the bird would certainly see him. She was so close, he could hear her wing beats, even if he didn’t see where she was.

No, Adon needed to stick to the plan. Simple and clean and his best shot at surviving the next few minutes and getting away.

He raced back to the other two eggs, and he carried the nearest one forward as quickly as he could. Then he crouched by the doorway, egg clutched tightly in his front limbs, and waited. He didn’t have to stand there long. Only a few precious seconds. The wing beats finally reached him.

Adon tried to be as still and quiet as he could, yet remain ready to move at a moment’s notice.

And the bluebird’s head poked through the door. She took in the scene inside her house. The shattered pieces of eggshell that littered the ground. The single egg remaining in her nest. The two empty spaces where the other eggs had been.

She let out a cry of indignation. Then Adon sprang into action. Still crouched in the shadows next to the birdhouse entrance, he threw his Hail Mary pass, with the egg as his football. The blue oval flew forward, forward, spinning slightly with the curve he’d semi-inadvertently given it as he released his grip.

The bluebird’s eyes widened. Her head began to dip down toward where the egg was flying. Adon’s heart sank. No, she’s going to intercept it, it isn’t going to work!

Without waiting to see what would actually happen, he turned around and began skittering toward the sole remaining egg. If he could not complete his plan, he could at least force a hostage situation. The backup to the backup plan.

Then he heard the sound of wing beats again—moving away! Somehow it had worked. The bird had failed to intercept the thrown egg, and now, she was frantically flying to stop it from colliding with the ground.

Adon grabbed the sole egg remaining in the birdhouse, dashed to the birdhouse door again, and threw himself and the egg through it, clutching the blue orb tightly in his arms. He aimed the egg and his body at the thornbush, his safe haven.

As his body flew through the air, he felt the wind rush over him. For all that he was fleeing for his life, being airborne came with a sense of liberation that words could hardly capture. It reminded him that this was what he was working toward. The leap felt like a quasi-premonition. Someday, this would be his reality. This soaring feeling, the glory of flight, would be his. Forever, not just for a few seconds until he crashed. This was what his final evolved form would feel all the time.

Suddenly, his mind was pulled away from the beautiful vision of himself flying through the air. He saw movement in his peripheral vision. A furiously flapping blue blur.

She won’t be fast enough, he thought desperately. It’s not possible…

He turned his head as he and the egg continued to fall. The bluebird was definitely flying more quickly than Adon had thought possible based on their last encounter. Her wings seemed to be kicking up a lot of dust behind her, too. On the whole, she was moving with a force he never would’ve anticipated.

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And now that he had a better look at her, he realized she had managed to stop the other egg from crashing too.

Whoa! She’s chasing me, and she managed to get the other egg in her beak. Good job catching it, I really thought it would break. She must have done some crazy aerial acrobatics… The only explanation that occurred to Adon was that this bird had strong protective instincts toward her young, to the point that she was capable of doing things now that would have been nigh impossible for her before.

And he held her other egg clutched close to his body. His theory when he was planning this possible escape was that the bird wouldn’t be able to attack too ferociously when he was clinging to her egg. Now he had his doubts.

Just great. That ought to make my escape—Adon’s train of thought was interrupted as the bird managed to accelerate even faster and almost immediately appeared next to him. Shit.

A claw swiped down, aiming at grabbing hold of Adon and the egg. Three talons long enough to casually disembowel him filled Adon’s field of vision.

No… No, I’m not going to die here!

Adon twisted his body into an unnatural ‘U’ shape to evade the talons, slightly altering the trajectory of his and the egg’s flight through the air. The talons inched closer—almost touched him—then pulled sideways, missing his body. The bluebird’s momentum carried her forward, passing Adon and the egg in the air.

She continued flapping her wings furiously, but Adon knew she would have to overcome her own momentum before she could get back to where he was. He didn’t think she could do that. This was over. He just had to stick the landing, and then—Wait, what is she doing?!

The bluebird was still flapping her wings, trying to overcome and reverse her momentum before he could get away. But at the same time, her claws reached up to her beak and took hold of the egg she had been carrying in there.

What, she wants to swallow me whole now? That won’t work unless she wants to swallow the egg too—

The bird turned her head to face him, and for the first time, Adon saw the look in her eyes. He thought it would stop his heart. The normally pure black bird eyes glinted with a hint of red. Adon felt as if he could see the malice in her heart.

There was a touch of madness there, too, it seemed to him. Then he corrected himself. No. It’s a mother’s fury. I’ll have to be very careful of letting this bird see me going forward. She probably doesn’t have the insane sense of smell the ants do, but she’ll certainly never forget what I look like after I took three of her four eggs from her.

The bluebird opened her mouth.

It’s futile, he thought. You’re too far away—

The wind around Adon’s body changed. It seemed impossible, and perhaps it was—playing by the logic of his last world—but he felt the wind pulling him and the egg toward the bluebird. Somehow, the bird was sucking him through the air toward her open beak.

What the heck is this?! She never used something like this before. Why didn’t she use it to pull me or the cricket out of the thornbush?

But he knew the answer to that immediately. This breath attack wasn’t very powerful. All he or the cricket would have to have done was hang on to the bush to avoid being sucked in. The bird had no way of realizing that the cricket was dead. Maybe she’d been worried about sucking in a bunch of thorny plant pieces. By contrast, Adon and the egg were now floating in midair with nothing to hold onto.

This also seemed like a bit of a desperation move, he realized as he observed for a few seconds. He could see the bird visibly tiring as she used it, though it had only been a moment or two.

Still, he was sure she wouldn’t tire fast enough to let him and the egg slip free.

How to get out of this…

Adon wracked his brain, then made a very quick decision. The bird didn’t really care about him. She was concerned first and foremost about her egg. That was why she chased after the other one when Adon threw it away. He pushed his body off of the egg, toward the thornbush that had been his target this whole time. He felt the tattered remnants of his dead leaf cloak and scraps of shed skin pulled from his body as he jumped free.

Then he was out of the path of the bird’s breath attack. Falling again, but just as he’d thought, he was not the bird’s primary focus. He never thought he’d be so relieved to lose out on food.

As he fell, he saw the bird’s egg land squarely in her beak. Her whole posture changed at that moment. He saw a multitude of emotions in the movement of her body. Relief. Exhaustion. Triumph.

She knows I still got half of her eggs, right?

The bird’s head turned to face him as if she could hear his thoughts. That evil glint was still in her eyes, albeit slightly weakened now that she had the two eggs she had seen him with back in her possession.

Adon landed on the hard ground and started sprinting toward the thornbush. He didn’t need to keep looking at the bird to know what she was doing now. He wasn’t in the clear yet. As he ran, he heard the sounds of wing beats pursuing him, confirming what he’d expected. Even with her beak and claws occupied holding onto the two eggs, the bluebird wasn’t ready to give up on him quite yet.

He stepped into the shadow of the thornbush, and then he felt a tingling on the back of his neck. The wind from the bird’s body had reached him. He turned his head slightly, and he saw the left wing slicing towards him.

Adon was able to throw himself forward in a last burst of speed. The very tip of the wing grazed his body, but it was only a glancing hit. It neither damaged him meaningfully nor slowed his momentum.

Then he was beneath the thornbush, and he skittered as deep into the protective shelter as he could until he found the plant’s stem and began climbing up. Toward where his prize should have landed.

Outside of the thornbush, the bluebird made no sound to indicate her displeasure, but Adon felt it all the same. She fluttered just above the ground, making small circles outside of the thornbush as if she was waiting for him to show himself.

But Adon had certainly had enough adventure for one day. He wasn’t going to show himself now. He would try to make sure this bird never saw him again.

He managed to finally reach where the webbed up egg had landed. His recollection of its trajectory had been roughly correct. It was safe and appeared intact, stuck between two of the bush twigs that made a fork shape.

Adon immediately set about webbing himself and the egg in place. He wasn’t sure if the bird had any more unnatural tricks like that weird breath attack, but he was not taking any more chances. The sun would be down soon enough. Then he could make his escape.

For now, he just needed to hold out and ignore the bird flying in small, tight, angry circles just out of reach.