Wings as Symbolic Barriers With Bird Heads Crossing Boundaries

Wings being barriers, image A shows the bird head going above the barrier through a gap, and then the beak comes back down to connect to the top of the little guys head. The circles between those wings are upper-diagonal portal symbols for side flows. The little guy is a side flow symbol (but there is no way to know direction, without the bird beak).

When portals are at the corners, the wings are posed like image A and B. The image C wings have always been for me, more mysterious, but I think they are just like image A, except made to be ambiguous about upper or lower placement. Reminder, the shen in image C is a portal. The feather is a downward marker.

Image B is pouring water downward. The strange bend of the body seems to be doing a loop-back pose... that's a guess.

But as a guess, other examples in D,E,F,G and H are also posed with excessive back curvature. Assume briefly for argument sake that this is a loop-back for the downward bidirectional side flow, then on the opposite side should be upward flow symbols, like the pointed roof tower in image D, the mountains in image E, the beast nose in image G and the guy pointing his hands upward in image H. It's too soon to make a conclusion, just something to start noticing more of.