This is not a complete write-up.
It was a warm day. She walked aimlessly on Aydun, dust-veil anchored behind her ears, ignoring the fvayzi hails and hawking merchants.
It was the first time she'd seen one. Its back was over her head, and its head higher than that— tail long and nearly dusting the ground, slender wings folded softly against its body. It high-stepped with wide talons, blunt claws dusted with Aydun's perpetual sand. Its face was surrounded with an array of short feathers that fluffed and twitched against the winds; it wore no veil, lowered feathers from its brow shielding its perfectly round eyes.
It was colorful, amazingly so, reds and oranges and yellows mingling brilliantly in its elaborate plumage. Its rough-scaled legs, below the downy feathers, were matte black, and its claws were likewise dark. Its eyes were a deep, shadowed violet.
What gave her pause was not its size, nor its color, but its face. When it glanced over its winged shoulder, its feather-framed face and its dark eyes were not the surprise— but its mouth. It had no beak, as one would expect from such a bird-like form, but a wide, flat, lipless mouth that parted to reveal rows of tiny, sharp teeth.
It took her a moment to realize it was smiling at her.