Let the bird in, and acquire a new 'friend.'

After failing to catch it, I let it go. Temporarily, of course.

"Take any dookies and I'm teleporting you to Honduras!"

The sparrow drops to my desk. In typical tic-like fashion, it begins to peck at a stubble of eraser shavings. I fold my arms.

"John! Are you awake yet? It's nearly noon!"

Mother's voice resonates from downstairs, and I open the door a creak. "Yes, Mom?"

"Can you drop your sister off at her friend's? I've got my hands full, and she's supposed to get there in five."

"Do I have to?"

"Of course not, now get down here and start the car, mister."

I close the door and summon the keys to my fingers. Family ties, and all.

As I get myself a little buttered up, I notice the bird hopping onto my bed. Still here, huh? I shake my head, and start to head out. Instead, I stop at the foot of my mattress and watch the new visitor jumping from increment to increment, and feel a random idea creep into my head as I crouch down to bring it to eye-level with me.

"You must like it here, don't you?" The bird doesn't quite have the mimetic vocabulary of a parrot, let alone a human. So, to be expected, it merely continues exploring my bed.

"I've been thinking," I continue anyway. "With how great this power is and all, I think I'd like to keep it economical. Or at least, deliberately paced. You know. Proper portions make an optimal meal and all that. Lean and mean."

Hop. Hop.

"And, well," I mull, "if I'm going to take it steady, I'd like some kind of assist. A Watson. Confidant. Wingman, if you'd excuse the pun. What do you think?" I watch the bird closely. Then, silence notwithstanding, I make my decision. "Right then."

Rising to my feet, I direct a finger at the beaked animal. "Sparrow, with a snap of my fingers, you will become my new loyal, magically imbued servant, devoted to me, and my right-hand wingwoman in matters of reality-warping in the field. To commemorate this, you will also be spiritually linked with a part of my essence, which will partially define and ground you to this world as a unique agent, and establish your new sense of identity. This will also grant you a fragment of my abilities, having been directly sectioned off of mine."

Snap.

POOF!

A billow of white smoke suddenly peregrinates my room, which causes me to enter a minor fit of coughs. Now that simply wasn't necessary, I think to myself.

Amid my own throaty beatdown, however, I catch a litter of lighter, squeakier throat expulsions.

"Ack! Ahhghem..." Then, "Ow...."

When the smoke clears, my eyes take in quite the sight.

Sprawled over my bed sits a dark brown-haired, slim girl with a tender row of eyelashes and an impeccably smooth, bright complexion, contorted into an uncomfortable wrinkle as she proceeds to cough into her sleeve-covered fist; a fist that is, in fact, not a fist at all, but what I assume is the tip of a wing covered in chestnut colored feathers, taking up almost half of her face. She has on a normal sized pair of blue jeans and a jacket in a brown just a shade or two lighter than her head of shoulder-length hair, the hood of which was pulled up to cover said head. Despite having only one eye open, as she moves her hand/wing to rub the closed eye gratuitously, I observe how it emits a subtly striking pupil of hazel.

And then I notice how, across that eye, sits a a distinctive, scar-like red streak, which suddenly shifts its gaze to me.

We say nothing for a moment, our eyes awkwardly locked together.

Only for the silence to break, like always, with an insistence that it was not all just a dream.