He needs more breaks on the return flight, and at one point is briefly tempted to just sleep on the forest floor instead of flying further, but the nest is the place that feels safe right now, and even though he still half-suspects that's an illusion, the promise of it keeps him going. 

"I think I should try to figure out why Nirvana wanted me to be a baby bird," he says to her once he's flopped there and rested for a few minutes. "It is confusing because I do not like it, and one would think that disliking something would not predict it being good for healing." 

"That is confusing! What shape would you like being?"

"- I mean, if I were choosing between anything, I think I would want to have an Andalite body again, to be - fast, and able to defend myself, and ideally to have morph and then I could be a hawk if I needed to fly places." 

"If you imagine that you'd woken up here with an Andalite body, what do you think you would have done first?"

He has to think about that for a while. "I would probably have looked for an open space where I could see everything around me while I oriented a bit, and then morphed hawk to scout, and figured out where I wanted to go." 

"I don't know if Nirvana can make you capable of shapechanging at will if you aren't relating to yourself in the way that causes shapechanging in Nirvana."

"I suppose that makes sense, it is already - more than I would have asked for - that it allows it at all, and lets me have a body without needing a host. I am also confused about why shapechanging works the way it does, though, I talked to somebody about it and their explanation of it felt...unfair." 

"Oh?"

It's oddly hard to think about, but Mhalir fumbles through recounting the story about the one person who couldn't shapeshift for a hundred years because she was always scared, and how it seems mean of Nirvana to put him in a shape where he feels vulnerable and unable to protect himself, when feeling that way will cause him not to be able to shift to a better body. 

"I wonder what that person would say about it if we asked her. It does seem bad for people, to feel vulnerable. It is very important to feel safe if you want to start feeling all kinds of other things."

"I spent so much of my life being small and helpless, I am tired of it. I - am not sure I have ever felt safe. The world was not a safe place for my species." 

"It is possible that the process that starts people as things made a mistake, but it also seems possible that learning you are safe as a bird is more valuable to you and a better foundation than learning you are safe as an Andalite."

"Am I safe? I could run into someone like the person who needed to be a lion and bite people to see what happened, I could - fall in the river - I could try to fly too high and get tired and fall..." 

"You are safe. People who are violent don't start near other traumatized people. The kind of bird that we are isn't damaged by falling. I do not know exactly what would happen if you fell in the river, do you want me to jump into the river for you and find out?"

"- Maybe? Although you are an adult bird and I am a baby bird so I am not sure it would be an accurate test for what would happen to me." 

"I can be a baby bird." She settles herself in the nest and focuses on it and gets younger, just barely quickly enough that it's perceptible change.

That's so fascinating! The most interesting part, maybe, is that she's just - willing - to do that. Not scared. 

Once she is a baby bird she clumsily makes her way to the edge of the nest. "Should we check now?"

"All right." He flutters down from the nest with her, landing next to the riverbank. 

And she makes her way over to the water and plops in. She floats, apparently, and is whisked gently away downstream.

- probably this shouldn't be scary, but in fact it's terrifying!!! 

Mhalir tries to take off from the ground, fails and tumbles over, hops to one of the little hillocks and takes off from there and flaps hard, chasing after her. 

When she observes him doing this she starts beating her wings against the water and splashes herself to shore in a bedraggled feathery heap. "I'm sorry, Mhalir, I didn't mean to startle you - I'm right here -"

He lands, more clumsily than usual, and hops to her. "- Are you all right?" 

" - yes." She sounds slightly confused by the question. "I think the stream gets us to some other part of Nirvana. Probably I should have asked someone, I'm sorry."

Mhalir doesn't say anything, just huddles up against her, shivering, and tries to burrow under her wing, which works less well when she's also a baby bird. He's still kind of panicking, which doesn't make all that much sense because it seems like in fact nothing bad happened, but - it feels to him that this isn't the point, the point is that if something had happened he wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.