“Don’t you dare,” he warned. The cockatrice looked down at him, and quick as lightning, pecked one of his fingers. “Ah! Don’t! Ye sunova—“ The cockatrice came down again, plucking at another finger. He felt his grip slacken, and he reached up his right hand to grab another fistful of grass before the cockatrice crowed and pecked it to hell and back. The human yelped and lost his footing, his right hand tearing away from the ground with a tuft of grass uselessly clasped between his fingers. He was now dangling bodily from his left hand and panicking all the more for it. Cockatrice or no cockatrice, he knew he couldn't hold his weight with his left arm on its own for too long. He cast one desperate look up at the cockatrice, which regarded him coolly. “You—“ He didn’t get to finish the sentence, for the cockatrice stepped off his left hand and gave it one last peck in-between the knuckles. That was the end of it.