a little out of wing

Dandy smiled encouragingly at the bird as he sidled up to her nervously. "Give me a moment and we can make this easier for you." She clattered back into the shelter, picking up each pack in her teeth and reaching back to place it onto the harness over the blanket on her back, shoving it slightly so the prongs on the bottom caught onto the harness and held. Returning to the bird, she knelt down. "You can hold onto the pack so you don't claw me but you can keep your balance,", she told him as he hopped into place. Carefully, she rocked back to her hooves and waited a moment for him to settle himself. "All right, youngling, let's see about getting you back. I'm from the north, so normally I would use the north star to navigate, but down here the north star and Ursa Major aren't visible, so we'll need to use other constellations." Turning towards the south, slowly so the bird didn't fall, she indicated a slightly crooked cross-shaped constellation. "One way of navigating in the south is the southern cross. It isn't as accurate as the north star, but it will lead you south. Draw an imaginary line through the longest part of the cross down about five times it's length, and that will point just off south. But since we aren't going south, we are going northwest, we need a different method." She turned again towards another set of stars. "There are constellations called equatorial constellations that are visible in the north and south hemispheres. But they are each only visible at certain times of the year - during the summer you'd see here a constellation called Scorpio. We're looking for one called Orion - the hunter." She showed him the shape of the constellation, locating it in the sky. "These three stars are Orion's belt. These three up here form his shoulders and neck. Take a line from the middle star in the belt and go up just to the right of the middle star in the top and that is about north." She faced the direction the stars indicated. "But we want to go northwest, so we need to orient to the left of north." Moving again she faced about halfway between north and west. "To navigate this way we want to pick out a landmark on our path, go to it, orient to the star again, and pick a new landmark on the route until we get there, and the last landmark will be your home. Ready?" Waiting for his assent, she set off towards the first landmark.