Sinnamon was a sparrow. Now, I'm sorry reader, but I have already
lied twice to you in telling the girl's story. For Sinnamon was neither
a sparrow, nor named Sinnamon, and yet she was both. The name
Sinnamon came from her desire to express guilt for driving her parents away.
It had to contain that word, so that everyone, from the other children to her
teachers would call her it, damming her for that unknown mistake which left
her alone. Yet the name could not be blunt, to be so would provoke worried
talks, rules, the overbearing false carers...Cinnamon was a type of spice and
everyone found it cute when the silent girl penned that she wanted to be
known. No one thought of it as more than a funny spelling that she would not
take their gentle hints to rectify, so just left her to keep it.

She was also not a bird. She had no beak, nor feathers besides the ones that
she liked to thread into little woven delicacies to wrap around her small tanned
wrists. It was annoying when the overseers addressed her in the same way as
she thought of the bracelets. Could she not be a person? Must she be nothing
more than a trinket because of her mistakes of the past? If they would not see
her as human, she would refuse to think of herself as one. She was not strong
enough, she realised, to raise high above the clouds to the world she could
only reach in wild, unregulated sleep. Yet she could dream to escape this nest,
whose twigs would cut no matter where she stood and whose other seized
victims would snap and claw at the over-zealous geese that would continue to
shout and cry even if they were not, or could not be wanted. Yet Sinnamon
still wished to soar, despite realising how the outside world was full of falcons
who would rather take a talon to her neck just to stand a little higher than
allow her to achieve her dream. Or worse...the ones that would see the little
sparrow and dismiss her as unimportant or ignorant of the outside world. She
could not stand being disregarded like that. It drove her mad.

"Which means that, converted, this is equal to what...Sinnamon?" She looked
up towards the board where various equations and mathematical jargon were
slung and scanned for the latest addition to the hieroglyphics. Simple ...
3x2+2. She held up a card. "No Sinnamon, it is not fourteen. Sinnamon?"
Silence. "Right class; let's move onto our decimal introduction." At last. It
had taken longer than usual to be allowed to her own thoughts. That may be
a problem at a future date. Sinnamon ran a single finger through her fiery
red hair and looked down to her page, flicking through until she caught up to
herself. She spied various memories she'd attempted with a smile, the happy
escape through her art washing across her as she stole glances at her earlier
works, but paused upon reaching her favorite. She traced a finger slowly
across it as she became lost in thought. The light brown feathers marred with
splashes of wetness and crimson and the sparro'�s half closed eyes, slick with
sparkly pain. She gazed at the chains around her wings, attaching to the walls
of the dark cloud in which she was entrapped; then even for a moment across
the small bloodied scar across the left of her chest, a faint trail of crimson
leading back down to her talons. Sinnamon would not, nor could not show this
to anyone. If they had even a faint idea of the emotion behind the piece...no,
much the better it was to live as she had. In silence and dream and hope that
one day, she could take flight