"Enough, please," she murmured, pressing her eyes more tightly closed as if that would drown out the excited cadre of birds overhead. The painted mare was exhausted, and had been for the better part of the week if she were honest. She wasn't sure if it was just her anxiety about ... well... everything, or if this was the beginning of the next chapter of her life.

Either way, sleep had become elusive and she was desperate to hold onto despite the avian chatter above. But no amount of squeezing her eyes closed or pinning her ears or making generically annoyed sounds seemed to dissuade the feathery pests. A particularly loud chorus of squawks and the soft flumph of something landing only a short distance away from her made her soft brown eyes flare open in shock.

The small body in front of her did not look as though it were ready to do any kind of flying. Feathers grew haphazardly around its little blue head, some of them downy, some of them sleek and flight-ready, and it held its little shoulders up as if it were trying to hunker down from her gaze, afraid of the giant beast it had decided to land in front of. Another bird landed near it and squawked warningly at Hymn, glaring with one narrowed eye and a twist of its head before going back to the fledging and nibbling at its beak fondly. "You're just a baby," she murmured in wonder, having initially thought that it was some sort of diseased or sickly adult.

She watched for a moment as the parent seemed to be trying to encourage the child to fly to no avail. It would raise its half-feathered wings and waddle a step forward but no momentum was gained, much less the upward kind needed for flight. Hymn lifted her head upward to where the rest of the bird calls were coming from and spotted a similarly colored parent anxiously sashaying back and forth across a branch while two small heads peered over the side of a nest.

Understanding dawned and she frowned, realizing how much danger the little one was in. Tears gathered at her lids, as if summoned by the mere hint of a tragedy. There was no protection down here, and any number of predators that might harm it. Deciding there was nothing else for it, the tobiano rose to her feet and immediately received a firm scolding from both bird parents for it. Muttering not-so-kind responses beneath her breath, Hymn selected a strip of fallen bark - wide and flat - before pushing it beneath the baby bird.

The parents seemed unaware of what she was doing and took major offense to her assistance, flying at her face with claws and wing smacks. "I know," she hissed, but Hymn refused to stop until she'd managed to pick up the terrified little baby. Depositing him in the nest was a whole other story, and her neck was covered in scratches and marks by the time she was done, but eventually, the little creature had been plopped on top of its siblings. With a few last warning calls toward the little paint mare, the parents turned toward tending their baby, leaving an invigorated but slightly bloody Hymn with a strange feeling of satisfaction.

Which was, of course, followed by the abject terror of what if something like that happened to her own maybe baby? Would someone be there to take care of them if she couldn't? Would they lift her baby back to its nest, return them to their momma? The tears that had gathered earlier spilled silently down her cheeks now, her wide eyes still upturned toward the birds nest.