And then beside me, as unreal as any of it, was the bird. It looked familiar, like that which I’d once met in the labyrinthine hedge maze so long ago. Like the Hermit’s cockatrice, only now it was not yellow but red, and had a lizard tail instead of tail feathers, and it wore two goat-like horns on its head.
The beast ran up beside me with its long taloned legs. It kept pace for some time, seeming to run from a shared enemy. Then it turned its big, beady eyes towards me, opened its beak and “caw-cawed!”