Someone had tried to poach her right to her face. Ming Huang puffed out her cheeks in anger. 'How could I be so pathetic?'
She couldn't even manage the simplest Transformation. 'Some Phoenix I am. I must be a crow hatchling, born in a nest someone built in a parasol tree!'
She had learned so much from her Mother and Father, and she understood a great deal... which led her to a terrifying thought: 'What if I'm a male chick?'
Female hatchlings were always born individually in human form, but she and her brother had both come from shells. Her Mother had once said that there were cases of hens turning into roosters, so it seemed possible they had gotten her gender wrong...
'All that talk about brothers and sisters being born as twins or triplets in a single clutch must have just been to comfort me.'
'Is my Transformation into a female unstable because I'm actually male?'
