First of all, I like this. The first thing I noticed while I was reading this was the absence of 'was'. You did a good job staying away from telling the story in a passive voice. That was something you did good and there was other things too, but a main problem I see in your piece is the lack of explaination. Throughout the chapter, you make a statement or do an action, but you don't follow up on it. There was very little of the character's thoughts in the story. It kind of put me out of the story. For example, in the sixth paragraph, she takes feathers from a couple peacocks. I found in strange that she did not have anything to think about what she was doing. She just walked up and took the feathers. It was weird, but did not spark my curosity as it was clearly supposed to do.

Another good thing I saw in your piece was the limitation of pronouns. I didn't notice it first go around, but second time around I usually notice that a writer is using pronouns way too much. You did not and that's good, it made for a pretty smooth chapter where I did not have the urge to stop. One thing I did notice though, sometimes you pack your sentences in with too much action. When you do that it becomes nearly incomprehensible. A couple times I found myself going back and rereading a sentence because I didn't get it the first go around. That's not good. You need to grab the reader, especially since this is the first chapter. For example, "Slowly, she inspected each feather; looked it over, turned it in her hand, rubbed it against her face." Well, first off, I don't think you need that semicolon. Since you seem to listing off actions, a regular colon would be better, but that's still not the clearest way to write the sentence. This sentence sounds rushed and is jammed with action. Break up the sentence. Have her think about what she is doing. Do that, and I guarantee it will be a more interesting segment.

Overall, I liked the story and would continue reading it. This is just the first chapter and the farther you get into the story you will start to improve on the things you weren't so keen on beforehand. At least, that's my experience. Good luck and thanks for allowing us to read this great story!