"It got cold," the parrot admitted, "but I found a building that was giving off hot air." He'd huddled by a vent somewhere atop some apartment complex, and it had worked well enough for the past two nights. "What's 'freeze'?"

He considered what Julien said. "Hope is important," he said finally. "It helps you be brave. Bravery. That's...important. Somehow." Even if he didn't really know why yet. But he liked the word well enough, and he liked the concept, and it seemed to resonate with something deep inside him.