The world was a very strange place.
 
To this point all I had ever known was the steady rhythm of mother’s heartbeat and the constant presence of my brother’s gentle touch. It seemed that the world was trying to rob me of both.
 
For a moment, I was alone.  I had been deprived of the two beating hearts that had defined my entire existence – the two hearts that had been my world.  All I had known was sound and touch and now I had to know everything at once.  I made a small noise at the feeling of cold and the utter confusion of it all.  Then there were the sounds to consider, but it seemed that the sounds pushed themselves right into my ears.  The wind was gentle, but still a strange sensation nonetheless.  The night sounds were both quiet and overwhelming, especially considering that the only sounds I’d ever heard was nothing more than the muffled voices of others or mother’s own voice.
 
And then my eyes slid open and the vastness of the world seemed to unfold before me.  I studied, intently, the trees as they knitted together overhead.  But what was far more intriguing was the patch of inky black sky visible through a gap in the trees.  I found it difficult to pull my silver eyes away from the twinkling lights watching from above.  I had felt lonely.  I didn’t anymore.
 
I wiggled, getting used to the sensation of gravity against fragile baby bones.  It was strange to find my body listened to what I told it to do.  I looked back to mother to see that brother had arrived in the world as well.  Mother’s touch brought with it the same comfort as her heartbeat had, and my silver eyes lulled shut as her warmth became mine.  She chased away the cold of the world, and then moved to chase it away from brother. 
 
Pulled by the instinctual urge to want to stand, to be closer to her, I struggled to arrange my legs in a way that would allow me to stand as she did.  She made moving and walking seem so easy, but untangling long baby-legs certainly was no easy task.  The process was graceless, but I managed on my third attempt to keep my footing – breathing heavily from the exertion but beyond pleased with myself for the effort.  I smiled up at mother, hoping she’d be pleased as well.  I looked over to brother to see if he’d managed to do any better figuring out his legs, and wondered if he was as exhausted as I was. I was glad he was here with me.  I looked over at his long legs and soft looking fuzzy wings.  I reached out to touch them and pulled away when the downy feathers tickled my nose. 
 
I teetered on new legs, struggling to make the foreign appendages do as I willed them to.  They wavered, still unaccustomed to bearing weight, and I wavered atop them.  But that wasn’t enough to put me off from attempting to make them work.  The distance between myself and mother was uncomfortable.  So with one step, and then another, I drew myself alongside mother and pressed myself against her side taking luxury in her warmth. That and the gentle sound of her beating heart that again filled my baby ears. 
 
With a soft sigh I decided that maybe this world wasn’t so bad after all.