Minutes later, everyone was gathered in the kitchen. Pedro had –mostly- recovered from his fainting and Bia was dipping her burnt leg in a glass of water. They all formed a loose circle around the unconscious chick they had laid on the kitchen counter.

Said chick appeared to be about equal in size to Carla, but leaner and seemingly somewhat older. He shared Blu's cerulean feather colour except for his chest and neck which were much lighter in colour. He also sported a scruffy crest atop his head and a "collar" of feathers not unlike Blu's. Despite his current unconsciousness, he seemed healthy and breathed normally.

Carla and Tiago were frantically going through Fernando's notebook in hope of finding any clue about the situation, without success. As for Bia, she was vehemently denying having any knowledge on what could have caused this. She said she was loosely following the instructions for some "funny foam" in the chemistry manual.

Occupied with all that fuss, none noticed when the chick began to stir...

Fernando's mind was hazy, to say the least. As he began to wake up, he felt more like trying to surface from being submerged in mud than actually waking up. He also didn't feel quite right. The air didn't fill his lungs like he was used to when he breathed and he got strange feelings from his limbs. He was lying on his back but his appendages didn't align normally.

There were voices he couldn't make out yet around him, talking rapidly. Some seemed worried but he couldn't get a grasp on the ongoing conversation. He shook himself off of the haze surrounding his mind bit by bit.

First, he attempted to open his eyes slowly. Light stung his eyes sharply and he closed them again. His first glance of the world, brief as it was, showed him his kitchen, but at an odd angle. Fernando let his eyes get accustomed to the light and made another attempt. Weirdly enough, his field of view felt different too, and something dark lay in the centre of his vision. He was laying on... the counter? That didn't make any sense. Everything looked a lot bigger too. He craned his neck to look around and then the voices around him stopped at once.

Fernando was surrounded by birds. Blu, Jewel, their chicks, a finch and a cardinal were forming a circle around him (weren't they the ones flying around him earlier?), and somehow they towered above him. He subconsciously shrunk under their gaze, as confused as someone can possibly be. Then something impossible happened, the cardinal opened his beak and... talked.

"You alright there buddy?" He said. Poor Fernando was gaping at the cardinal. He tried to crawl away from him but his body refused to respond as usual. He shifted his gaze toward his chest and where he expected to find human skin and a football T-shirt, he found blue feathers.

The boy turned chick screamed in horror but what came out of his throat was more of a terrified squawk. He brought his hands to his face only to see wings come up and brush against a black beak. Then he got a good look at what had become of his legs, now ending with four black claws each. That was for the last straw for his strained mind and he just froze on the spot.

Tiago wasn't exactly sure what was happening at the moment. The second after Pedro opened his beak; the chick had begun to panic, tried to scramble away and then just stood there petrified, looking at his claws.

There was little doubt that the mysterious chick was Fernando, and Tiago kinda liked the human. He was very different from the other humans in the reserve, a lot more lively and he had a great deal of empathy towards birds for a human. He loathed seeing him in such a terrible state. He crept up on Fernando and laid a comforting wing on his back.

Fernando's head turned toward him so fast he swore he could have broken his neck if he tried. Tiago gave him a small smile and said "It's alright. We can help." Honestly he didn't really think they could be they might as well give it a try.

"Actually Tiago, we would need to know how Fernando turned into a macaw if we wanted to help" Bia spoke up. Trust her to call her brother out on that.

The transformed human attempted to stand up, without much success. Only when Tiago helped him up and let him lean on him did he manage to achieve an upright position. Fernando's gaze shifted from bird to bird for a few seconds and settled on Tiago. He made to speak but what came out was but a slurred squawk. He cleared his throat and tried again.

"Wh... What happened?" He said with a noticeable hint of worry in his voice. "And how are you speaking?" That second one was actually a pretty good question. Nobody really knew why humans couldn't understand animals when they talked. Blu was the one who answered him.

"You fainted after the glass container shattered. It spilt on you and burnt Bia. After that you turned into... well as you can see you turned into a blue macaw. As for speaking, we always could. You just didn't understand us, as no human ever does."

That earned him a bewildered look from Fernando. But something clicked within him when Bia was mentioned.

"Hold on a second" He addressed Bia and started toward her. Or rather tried to, he made a single step forward and fell flat on his face with a groan. Tiago helped him up again and he hobbled toward her at a slower pace. Clearly macaws didn't walk the same way as humans, and the tail feathers dragging on the counter were bothersome too.

"You shouldn't just dip the burn in water" He continued "If you want it to heal right, keep it under running water for about 20 minutes at room temperature. I think Linda also keeps some burn slave and bandages above the sink too. Try that instead."

Fernando stumbled toward the faucet and tried to grab it with his wings, but again fell, this time in the sink. His indignant squawk garnered him looks from the rest of the room's occupants.

"Bia, I think you ought to listen to him" Jewel gave her daughter a nudge. "He does help at the centre so he should know"

Jewel's youngest daughter made her way to the sink, hopping on one claw with a wince marring her facial features. That grimace disappeared as soon as her brother opened the water above her wounded claw. Except Tiago neglected to take Fernando into account and gave poor Fernando a good shower.

Said person climbed his way out of the sink and glowered at the little macaw. He shook the water off of him like a dog, drenching Tiago in the process and turned back towards the adults.

"Alright, wounds are dealt with. Now we can focus on the matter." He spoke, still with a bit of difficulty, showing he wasn't used to the beak yet. "Like do you know how this" He gestured to himself "happened?"

"No clue, really" Nico answered "You just fainted, there was a flash and then, feathers happened"

That wasn't really the answer Fernando expected and didn't help in any way. He turned a questioning glance towards Bia but only a shrug for answer. He groaned in annoyance but only irked himself further when what came out his throat sounded more like an irate bird than a human. He slumped against the wall and held his head in his wings. Everything just felt so foreign to him.

"Hey now, I'm sure we can find a solution Fernando." Blu said, approaching the kid with a pained smile. "Surely if we look into it further, we can find a solution. If you can turn into a bird like that, turned you back can't possibly be that hard now, can it?"

"Yeah, we're gonna get you through this in a breeze!" "Sure thing alright!" Nico and Pedro were quick to jump on the occasion to cheer him up. Even Bia and Jewel gave him an encouraging nod from the sink. He allowed a small smile to grace his features.

"This is great, thanks guys. I'm glad I'm not alone with this." Maybe, just maybe there was a chance to solve this. Not that any crossed his mind at the moment. Still, any bit of help was more than welcome. He allowed himself to lighten up for now. "What do you say we get to it now? It's not like I have anything else to do at the moment."

"We can help but only for a bit," Said Pedro "the club's waiting and we've got auditions to do too." He bobbed his head in an annoyed manner "We've got a lot of candidates to sort through sorry"

"Club? Auditions?"

"Oh yeah" Carla jumped in "Rico and Pedro have the most awesome club this side of the Atlantic! Birds come from all over the place to party there."

"Which you're too young to go to in any case." Jewel was quick to break her momentum in a typical maternal no-nonsense manner.

That amount of organisation in bird society was a bit surprising to Fernando but he didn't show it and just thanked the finch and cardinal for the help anyway.

"I'm gonna look on the computer for clues" He began "You guys stay with Bia for that burn, call me when you need to apply the salve, I will help" He was addressing the spix's macaw family as he stumbled away unsteadily. He reached the edge of the counter and let himself fall on a stool and then on the ground, a bit painfully he might say.

The transformed human completely missed the looks the blue birds were giving him as he disappeared in the doorway to the living room. All of them were giving each other pointed looks, which Pedro and Nico noticed.

"Kid's gonna need our help, come on Nico!" Pedro said and flew off without waiting for an answer. The finch wasn't far behind his best friend and soon enough Jewel's family was gathered alone around the dripping sink.

Jewel turned a predatory gaze toward her children. This didn't bode well for them and they knew it, particularly when Blu was obviously backing her up with a look just as severe on his face.

"So..." The first word made the children flinch "Anyone of you feels like repeating my remarks about NOT getting in the house without me or Blu?"

Bia shrunk noticeably from her position on the sink.

Making his way to where he had left Linda's I pad was an adventure in itself. Everything around him was a lot bigger and his claws weren't ideal for walking. That made a long stretch out of what should only have been a few paces. And then...

Fernando had left the pad charging on the couch in a corner of the living room, but he had gotten so small he couldn't see the top of the couch from his position on the floor. Being small really sucked, period. He tried to jump to no avail, and without hands climbing was basically out. Sure he knew macaws climbed using their beaks as much as their claws but there just was no way he would be caught doing that.

The party birds found him building a pile of magazines to get to the pad. They perched on top of the sofa and gave him weird looks.

"A little help over there guys? I can't get up."

With a succinct "sure", Nico unplugged the pad and tossed him the cord which Fernando grabbed in his claw. They just pulled him up afterwards.

"Thanks guys" mumbled Fernando.

"No big deal kiddo" answered Pedro "But you really ought to learn climbing or flying if you're gonna stay like that any longer. Which I don't hope is gonna happen of course!" He added as an afterthought.

"But I don't see what's there to help you with that. Got a plan yet?" Nico asked.

"That's the plan" Fernando waved his wing at the Ipad beside him. "We look for some clues on this"

"Oh, I think I saw one guy talk into that once, except it was... smaller?" Pedro poked the pad with a claw.

"Not the same thing I think. That one is basically a small computer" That got him confused looks from his companions. "Think of it like a book, but really high tech" A hesitant nod for answer; guess that would have to do.

He poked the central button with a claw and the device sprung to life, showing a family picture of Linda with Tulio and him. Blu was also on a branch in a corner of the picture. A swipe of his claw proved ineffective to do the unlocking, but it surprisingly worked when he touched the screen with a primary feather. Nico and Pedro were letting out impressed aww's behind him and Fernando decided to entertain them, for all the help they were willing to give.

He opened the music player and selected a samba playlist of Linda's. "Do you guys like Samba?" He asked with a smile.

"Boy, we live on the rhythm of Samba!"

"Alright, lemme put some in the background while we try to figure all this out then" He said as he pressed the play button. Music started playing and he toned the volume down a notch so as not to be too distracting.

He then started up the search engine with a flick of a feather. To his growing surprise, wings were a lot more agile than birds actually let on. He could even flex his primary feathers as if they were fingers even though that ought to be impossible.

"So... What do you guys think we should look for?" He brushed a wingtip against his beak in wonder. "I don't think asking directly is gonna get much results, else we'd know turning into a bird was possible"

The cardinal cocked his head with curiosity. "Dunno, if that's your lil'cocktail that made you that way, maybe look for a potion or something like that?"

With a shrug, he typed in "potion that turns you into a bird" on the engine. Dozens of results popped up immediately. People asking about old films, fiction stories, beauty tips (what the heck?), and nothing actually serious or of any relevance. Trying it in Portuguese wasn't much better, and adding the spix macaw factor only led them to preservation and ecology websites.

All the way in the search, they were bobbing their heads and tapping their claws to the rhythm of Samba, which at least eased the strain on Fernando's nerves. Nico and Pedro were a lot of help, butting in with ideas he wouldn't have had on his own, but Internet was desperately void of knowledge regarding substances that can change one's species, unsurprisingly.

If he could, Fernando would have made an attempt to check out the deep web. His better judgement and actual lack of capacity to do it prevented him from consulting the more disturbing parts of humanity's prime mean of information sharing, fortunately or not depending on who you were asking.

An hour in the search, Nico and Pedro bade him their farewell and went on their way back to town. With the canary adding that they would gladly keep helping him if they could find the time, but they had their own club to deal with. Fernando promised to visit when he got the chance, being really curious as far as how birds could actually go clubbing.

With a sigh, he turned off Linda's Ipad, shook his head dejectedly and hopped off the couch. He more or less stumbled his way back to the kitchen in a not so elegant manner. Macaws weren't very good walkers in the first place, being unused to this body didn't really make it any better. He saw the blue macaw family chatting on the kitchen counter. Bia was now sporting a smear of burn salve on her leg, sloppily applied he noted.

Upon reaching the foot of the counter, Fernando called up at them to get their attention. If the couch had already been tall, the counter looked as high as a skyscraper from below. Tiago peered down at him.

"Hey, much luck with Nico and Pedro?"

"Not really, we looked but they had to go back to their club." He answered with a negative shake of his head. "Say, how do I get to you?"

"Uh you can't fly yeah. Try grabbing onto the drawer handles with your beak."

"Beak, of course I should use THE beak, of course..." He muttered too quietly for Tiago to notice.

Looking up, he took aim at a handle on the third row and leapt, beak open. He predictably fell flat on his face. That was going to be a lot harder than it looked, how did birds make it look so damn easy, climbing all over the place? He wished he had the flight part figured out already, or, even better, his original body back.

An electric cord fell in front of him then. Looking up, he saw Carla and Tiago on the edge.

"Hold on to that, we're gonna pull you up." Said Jewel's eldest.

Fernando complied and grabbed the cord tightly with his claws. The kids pulled him up easily enough and he was soon standing next to them... with the adults giving him a quizzical look.

"I can't fly nor climb" He answered the looks with a shrug. He turned his gaze to Bia "So how's the burn?"

She wiggled her afflicted limb. There was some salve on it but it was badly applied and looked like it was gonna fall off any minute from now. The kitchen's first aid kit was laid open beside her.

"That's not going to do it at all Bia. You need a bandage with that." He turned to Jewel and waved a wing in Bia's direction. "May I take care of that? I think what I know ought to do the trick."

Jewel seemed hesitant but Blu jumped in before she could object.

"By all means, if what I heard from the others about you is true then I'm sure she's gonna be alright."

Fernando pushed the tube of salve and a roll of bandage toward Bia but he stopped after giving the comment some thought.

"What you heard from the others?" He questioned.

"Of course, the grapevine in the reserve knows of you. Ever since you began helping with the care for injured birds you've gotten quite a reputation."

"Birds have a grapevine? I don't know why but that one's not even much of a surprise..." He said as he washed his claws in the sink. "Then again, I've noticed birds around here were behaving a bit differently from the usual. Less skittish I mean, they don't fly away quite as fast and they seem to hover around more often."

"No surprise there really." Mentioned Carla "Word gets around and everyone wants to see what's up with you healing birds. Being part of Tulio and Linda's family helps too."

"Uh uh" Acknowledged Fernando absentmindedly. He grabbed the salve and applied it thoroughly onto Bia's extended leg, making sure the coating was spread thick and even. Then, he rolled a bandage tightly around the burn, which he fastened with some medical duct tape. "Burns aren't too common with macaws" He started "You'll have to replace that tomorrow, and for a few days on at least. Try not to get it too dirty and it will be alright soon enough. 'kay?"

"Yeah sure. Thanks a lot." She said as she tried putting some weight on the injured leg. She didn't seem to be in so much pain at the moment, with the salve doing a numbing effect.

"Oh, and try to keep the leg extended if possible. I can't say for sure if the joint is touched, but please don't take a risk with that."

With that Fernando was left just standing there, sort of. He didn't really have any idea where to go from there on. Blu gave him a look and he just found himself staring awkwardly.

"So..." The older macaw began. "What're you planning to do?"

"I dunno really" He shrugged "I guess I've gotta keep looking for clues. But at this point, I think I'd be better off asking Tulio where he got the chemistry kit from. It's not a serial production and he got it from a flea market."

"Wait a second" Bia countered "Can't you track what we used in it? I mean, sure, it was mostly random but the manual should help."

"Did the manual make any mention of transformation?" Jewel asked.

Bia just shook her head, making a passing note that the ingredients were mostly harmless and fairly standard products. No hope that way, something must be up with the kit itself and the only person who had a lead on that was Tulio.

Then Fernando froze all of a sudden, a panicked look on his face.

"Oh crap" That got him a sharp look from the adults "Sorry, but I just realized I forgot about Gloria."

"Gloria who?" Tiago queried.

"She's Tulio's replacement at the centre, and my caretaker while he's off in the Amazon. I was mostly free today, but she said she would check in with me tomorrow morning. Oh god she's gonna be so worried."

"Ahem, surely we can find a plan Fernando. I don't think we can turn you back by the morning, but maybe..." Tiago looked at his mother in askance "We can find an excuse for your absence? Like, you went back to town or something?"

The human-turned-macaw shook his head at that. "Wouldn't work, too many people know me around the city. They would notice if I haven't actually been there and would just assume I've been kidnapped."

"And that's a bad thing because?" Tiago asked.

"If they think it's a kidnapping, they will go looking here for clues and there is no way I will be able to find a solution, among other things."

Blu started pacing back and forth across the counter, a thoughtful look upon his features. He mumbled unintelligibly for a moment and cast his gaze towards Fernando.

"What if you left a message here?"

"About what?"

"Well, you could say you missed Linda and Tulio so badly, that you went on your way to Manaus to find them."

Bia brightened at once. "Yeah, that wouldn't be close to people you actually know so they wouldn't outright notice it's a lie and they would try to chase after you."

Fernando nodded slowly. "That... might actually work. Linda is gonna be worried sick though when words get to her."

"Where are they exactly anyway at the moment?"

"If I heard that right, they're working at an outpost, far off in the Amazon. They've only got a radio and supply boat for contact."

"So it's gonna be a while before they know of this right? Gives you some time to solve... this" Blu gestured to Fernando with his wing.

Fernando nodded. "Alright, I'm going to leave Gloria a message telling her that." But he stopped moving then. "Ah... I don't think I can use a pencil in that state."

"Write in on the PC then?"

"Right, much better. I'll just leave her a text and hide what I would take to go to Manaus. It should do the trick. I just have to hope they don't think it's a fake." He sighed and made to leave.

"Wait." That was Bia, Fernando turned back to her. "What are you gonna do now? You're not staying with us?"

He just shook his head at that. Entertaining as that may have been, he really needed to keep on searching, even if it yielded nothing at first.

"It's barely 16.30, I'm just going to get that letter done on the computer and print it. Then it's back to surveying the internet for some clues." If there were any actual clues that is, but he didn't dare think about that too much.

With that, Fernando just hopped off the counter and walked to the office. The blue macaw family seemed about to stop him for a moment but a quick look from Jewel stopped them. They flew out the window to do who-knows-what. Fernando honestly didn't give it much thought: they would be back for Bia's leg tomorrow anyway.

As he passed through the living room, his claws walked on some glass shards. He pulled back with a loud curse and only at this moment did he notice a tiny puddle of liquid among the shards. Apparently some of the substance hadn't hit him or Bia and fell there. A sense of hope beamed through his chest and he hurriedly grabbed the smallest vial from the discarded chemistry kit –it had fallen off the table in the confusion-. The macaw carefully hopped on one leg with the vial held in one claw, once more regretting his lack of hands. He delicately scooped the remains of the substance in the vial which he capped with some wax paper. Even with his current reduced size issue, the amount was tiny but it was one more possible lead back to humanity, which was enough to raise his spirits.

The vial was deposited by the entrance of his bedroom, before he made his way onward to the office. He would take a look at it later before going to bed.

The office itself was just a spare room that Linda and Tulio used for administrative work, there still was a guest bed even, and kept ready more for the sake of politeness than actual necessity because they didn't get many guests. In a corner of the room there was a cheap IKEA desk with a fairly standard desktop computer on it. Thankfully, a stack of boxes and binders gave him a mean to climb his way to the keyboard.

With a push of his beak, Fernando pressed the "On" button on both the computer and the printer. They started up with a loud whirr of the ventilator and the obnoxious, deafening, sound of Windows starting up. That had him pressing his wings against his earholes in pain before he pulled the plug on the speakers with his claws.

Figuring out how to use the desktop turned out to be harder than with Linda's tablet, but he recalled a video his adoptive mother had shown him of Blu typing by hopping on the keyboard. Not easy by any stretch of imagination but if he kept the message to Gloria short that would have to do. Using the mouse was thankfully a lot simpler, and he could manage manipulating it with one leg if he stretched out his wings for balance.

Biting off a curse regarding the difficulty of such simple tasks, he opened a word document and set his mind on the task. He needed a message, short and clear, on how he missed his adoptive parents so bad that he went on his own to meet them in the Amazon. That kind of behaviour wasn't really what he would do –he was smart enough to realize they would be back soon enough and he had plenty of people that cared about him in Rio and at the sanctuary-, but with his absence Gloria would be forced to believe it.

Fernando began typing, only for his text to appear in a horrible red and green mess of errors on the screen.

"Goddammit Microsoft!" He exclaimed with an indignant chirp. He erased his first line and set the document to Portuguese, much better. Linda must have used it to write home, hence the English setting.

His message went as such:

Dear Gloria,

Please don't think too badly of this, but I can't bear Linda and Tulio's absence anymore. I need to see my family now so I decided to find them myself.

When you read this message, I will already be on my way to the Amazon. There is nothing personal about this; you and everyone at the sanctuary are wonderful people, but not quite a family. I guess having lived alone so long is why it's so important.

Fernando

PS: sorry for the mess in the living room, I was in a hurry for the bus.

The last line was an utter lie, but should give them a false trail to follow. It pained him to cause the people at the sanctuary that kind of trouble but he didn't really have a choice, and this alternative was better than the kidnapping excuse.

He pressed the print shortcut and got his letter in a neat format. Thanks Linda for programming some premade formats.

Afterwards, he busied himself with more research on internet but it yielded, if it was even possible, less than with the help of the Samba birds. Fernando kept changing search engine and key words, but to no avail. The only mentions of human turning into birds were sheer fantasy or the rambling of most likely delirious idiots on obscure blogs. Not to mention a rather horrific article over an imbecile that tried to turn into a parrot with facial surgery.

Before he could realize it, the clock on the computer showed a late hour and the sun was nearly down. Fernando's stomach grumbled and he was forced to comply to his body's demands, as much as he despised the bloody thing.

He jumped off the desk, making a hard landing on the flooring, and walked to the kitchen. Gloria's meal was out of the window since he didn't expect his present avian organism could withstand the utter awesomeness of good bacon so he would have to gorge himself on the content of the fruit basket on the kitchen table.

Once again, reaching the top of furniture proved to be an adventure in itself and it took him a few minutes of arranging items the right way before he gained access to the desired fruits on the table. A single mango was enough to sate his appetite –the thing was almost as big as he was for Christ's sake- and he found himself enjoying it much more than he usually did. Guess birds have a different way of tasting fruit, not that it was unpleasant. That made him wonder how other food tasted, but that train of thought would have to be postponed.

Because he was way too small to reach the switches, his evening would have to be cut short and rely on sunlight. Fernando finished his meal and wiped the remains off of his beak with his wing. The pit was thrown in the trash can without much of an afterthought and he managed to drink some water from the faucet after jumping from the kitchen table to the counter. At least in this body he didn't need to eat quite as much...

A jump back to the floor and a bit of walk led him to the bathroom. It was a fairly simple bathroom with a sink, toilet and bath/shower. Typically, Linda and Tulio's necessities would have been spread all over the room, but most of them they had taken along on their venture in the Amazon. Now it was mostly Fernando's stuff, with a fair-sized pile of spare towels.

Determined to maintain at the very least a semblance of hygiene despite the loss of his humanity, Fernando hopped inside the bath and pulled on the tap with his beak. Water rained down on him instantly from the shower head. His feathers soaked up the water in a matter of seconds, making him a lot heavier. He let the water run along his body for a few moments, enjoying the relaxing sensation that swept away a bit of the day's accumulated anxiety. He didn't dare use soap because he wasn't a hundred percent certain it would pair well with his feathers, a good rinsing would have to do.

The shower didn't last very long, and the young bird was out within three minutes, the last one having been spent trying to reach the sink's handle in a slippery environment. He shook the water off not unlike a dog and rubbed himself against a towel left lying on the ground, which he had used the night before when he was still human. He let out a sigh –which came out as a soft whistle- and dragged the used towel in the laundry bin with much effort.

By then, the sun was just past the horizon and light was starting to disappear. Amongst the rising shadows and growing darkness, the lone chick walked to his bedroom. He was tired enough that he fell asleep nigh instantly when he hit the pillow on his bed in an inelegant blue heap of feathers.

Unfortunately, the night was not to be a good one for Fernando because the first half of the night, he spent tossing and turning in his sleep, a frown on his face. His claws were clenching and unclenching in quick succession.

"Linda!" He cried out, snapping awake. He looked around, his breath quick and irregular. "Linda?" He asked around fearfully. He made to stand up but then he noticed his own body and the events of the day came back to his mind with a vengeance.

He collapsed on his back with a loud sob, which only aggravated him further when the sob only sounded like a distressed chick. He might not let it on in public, but the added strain of his adoptive parents' absence and the transformation proved to be too much for him. He had done his best to avoid dwelling on it, without success.

His mind reeled with the implications of the transformation, the letter to Gloria, Linda and Tulio's eventual reaction to it. Hundreds of possibilities and outcomes went through his head without any coherence. Fernando was just a crying mess, fearing that the family he had come to love after his life in the favela would be taken from him so easily over a chemistry accident.

His sobbing continued for hours before he settled down enough to catch his breath. He felt so desperately alone at the moment with no one to comfort him, like Linda would when he needed. And there goes his train of thought, making him feel even more miserable.

Fernando found himself looking out his window at the sky. It was a clear night and he could see hundreds of stars shining softly. From where he was lying on his back on his pillow, he just asked the sky a simple request, hoping that whatever power high above would be so kind to help him.

"Please, just please, I only want to see my mother again." He spoke softly.

He didn't get an answer save for the rustle of the wind through the jungle canopy. He rolled over and stuffed his head in his pillow to fall back asleep.

He didn't.

Higher up in the trees, a blue macaw walked back to his nest in the birdhouse, his thoughts now occupied by a particular young macaw.