Part 1 - The fall

Part 1 �" The fall

 

The Hawk Mother was proud, strong and large even for a female of her species.

In her time before the heat welled up inside her and bid her find a mate, she was a magnificent hunter. Swift as the wind and silent as the sunshine that bathed everything that was her dominion.

She hunted the fish of the oceans, the land-dwellers in field and forest and fought bravely the other sky dwellers, she would never retreat, until the others gizzards had been ripped hence to fall from grace to the ground below, to the place of shelter and confinement forever more.

Hers was a noble and majestic existence.

She was a hunter and a warrior, none could defy her will, and she lived only for the thrill of the hunt and victory in battle.

 

Until one day after the heat had done it’s work, and the strongest and most impressive of the males that with talons tore, and that pecked and screamed their fury to have her had long departed, to fly once more and forget the passion of the heat until the world tilted once again, as it had forever before, and would forever after, she moved with the deliberate urgency of a mother. Her instinctual call brought her to the cliffs of her own hatching and her pride bid her to the very top, where, in the roost of greatest prominence, of best shelter and which she fancied could only belong to her, the hawk mother soared high above and wreaked her fury on the ill-fated mother that had the audacity to arrive before her. The battle was fierce but short. The smaller hawk escaped fluttering weakly, blood ran freely and was ripped away in a scarlet rain from the gouge where her eye had been. The One-eyed Mother flew as best she could where fierce talons had ripped her and her new half vision attempted to unbalance her as she fled for her life.

 

Without pity nor ceremony, the Hawk Mother rolled the offenders eggs out of the nest to fall for an impossible time, the only life they would ever enjoy, to the sands far below where they spilled the life contained, and were taken by the tide. The one eyed mother screeched her lament as she circled downwards, to find a dark and sheltered place where her wounds could heal and her fury and sorrow could take the shape of a cold and malicious lust for the blood of the Hawk Mother and the retribution of her clutch…

 

The Hawk Mother, already forgetting the sweet taste of her victory, settled into her new home. Arranging the flora as she saw fit, busying herself with this she made a warm snug in which to bring more life into the unforgiving world.

Little hawk was the third to hatch of his 5 siblings. He, like a countless many before him, came into the world screeching and struggling. Blinded by the sun and chilled by the air. His world was the nest and his mother a loving god that kept him warm and sated his hunger when he cried and stretched his neck forth in his effort to get more sustenance. To be the first and the most favoured.

His baby feathers shed and his first few hawk feathers began to show through, as the sun made its way across the sky and disappeared below the horizon taking the warmth with it, Little Hawk learned of day and night, and as his hawk feathers began to shield his body from the nights cold and the biting rain. His eyes were becoming the Hawk eyes that could see all he focussed on. When this fastidiousness began to take place he realised his place in the world. Everything was below him. And his mother could go above and below and moved very high, then fast… before she returned with sustenance for his aching belly. Little hawk fought with his brothers and sisters, they played, they huddled and life began to take its shape in their minds as the pleasure of basking in sunshine, the thrill of being the first to feed and the unpleasantness of cold and the warmth of mother, like the sun, but with biting cold at their backs, as the sparkling ocean of a clear night sky lulled them to sleep.

 

Little Hawk soon established himself as the fiercest of his siblings.

He learned to hop around the nest first and evade the snapping beaks that harried him, a skill that would save his life many times in the ordeal to come. He would pick up the larger twigs of the nest in his curved beak and shake his head violently, harrying his siblings with feather ruffling taps, Little Hawk chirping and screeching in malicious and playful joy, his brothers and sisters in anger and hurt.

 

On a day like any other, with the sun shining and the sparkling blanket of the ocean shying away from the cliff base, doing its daily revealing of the fluctuating yellow band that Little Hawk observed but had no understanding of, apart from its presence in the moving picture of his beautiful world. He stood atop the protruding rock on the edge of the small cave like indent in the cliff face that was his families home, he used the rock as his getaway route when hopping in and out of conflict with the other chicks, that now looked like miniatures of the grandiose and majestic sky-dwellers they would have become. He stood atop his getaway rock and observed the sand that he did not know was sand far below, and watched the black specs that were the other inhabitants of the cliff that he had a limited concept of, that they were ‘not mother’. He stood without fear, bracing against the wind, as he had no concept of falling, only the instinct of fear and thrill that the edge brought, and his prideful resistance of it. He scanned the skies and caught sight of his mother soaring high, signalling her imminent return with sustenance. There was no shortage of prey on these great cliffs, many species flocked to them in the thousands to breed, parents fished the oceans and brought their catch to their desperate chicks. The miracle of life was played out before Little Hawks keen eyes, all of its wonders and atrocities were his to behold from the very top of this vast face of light, sound and mortal beings, as it stretched forth in both directions, the ocean vast before its feet.

 

There he stood observing, feeling the thrill of life in that moment, when she stuck.

The One-eyed hawk mother, in the weeks since the raiding of her nest and the demise of her clutch, had nursed her wounds in a cave far below. A place of darkness where she let her wounds heal and lived a debased existence, feeding off the insects of the cave and harbouring her hate for the Hawk Mother above. As her wounds healed and she ventured out to find prey that would serve to build her strength once again and impart her desperate revenge, she had to learn to fly and hunt less an eye and her viciousness and cunning was all that stood against starvation. When this day that for Little Hawk seemed like any other day, finally arrived, she left the cave and spread her wings. Feeling the thermal that would lift her upwards towards her fate. She rose and rose, circling as the immensity of the cliff rushed past her. She crested the cliff and rose higher still, her eyes locking onto the outcrop that was once hers to call home and saw with her keen vision Little Hawk observing the life that was about to be ripped away from him. She rose and levelled out, pointed her beak towards entrance to the small cave and Little Hawk in the mouth of it, tucked her wings and dove with all the grace of the winged race. She rushed through the air and as she spread her wings at the last possible moment, her rage rang forth as the battle screech that had been building in her since her demise. It was in this moment that Little Hawk turned his little head to where the yellow band and the ocean should have been, turned black now by a blur of rage and malicious retribution. It was the screech that saved him, in a split second he had hopped to the side in instinct and was bowled over by the one-eyed hawk mothers wings, narrowly missed by her lightning talons. She had been expecting a fight and flew into the small space with rapier talons slashing in a fit of blind rage. Little Hawks siblings were ripped to shreds in seconds while Little Hawk himself was bowled over again and again by the mad fluttering of her wings unnoticed in the front of the cave, her back to him, wedged between the cave wall the base of his hopping rock. In that moment the Hawk mother returned expecting hungry chicks and finding a raging one-eye, covered in blood and feathers.

With just as wrathful a rage, the Hawk Mother fell upon one-eye’s turned back ripping and tearing out the tough feathers trying to get to the flesh. One eye turned in pain and shock but fought immediately, the red mist of retribution still upon her.

In all this Little Hawk was bundled around, being narrowly missed by talons and beaks, unnoticed in his smallness. Bounced and buffeted around as the Mothers tore at each other, both in righteous rage, Little Hawk was finally bounced out onto the mouth of the cave, where he lay in pain and shock, screeching over and over in panic. One eye took a blow and realised her fate was sealed fighting in this cave with the larger, healthy Hawk Mother. As Little Hawk was hit to the fore of the cave, she saw her chance and leapt away, spotting Little Hawk mid leap and gripping him in her talons as she first spread her wings and then contacted them, diving with all her speed to escape her immediate pursuer.

The world rushed by Little Hawk as he struggled for breath still uttering his panicked squeak, his mind reeling from the unknown sensations accosting his young mind. Pain and fear, the roar of the wind like a storm as all the instinctive terror of falling took him. Near the yellow sands, in the shadow of the cliff, after the One-eyed Mother spread her wings to break her speed, is where the Hawk Mother caught her. Leaving her wings tucked for a moment longer, she opened them like a parachute and simultaneously bared her talons and with her speed sank them deep into the one eyed mother, so close were they to sands that One-eye caught the tip of her wing and twisted it badly as she then when into a tumble and lost her grip on Little Hawk. He was launched free and his little body tumbled through the air, wings fluttering futilely, and landed in the soft sand at the base of a rock.

This commotion had attracted the attention of other birds, scavengers looking to make an easy meal of the loser of this rare fight to the death. And they flocked now as the two mothers continued to rip and tear at each other, blood and feathers flying as they fought now on the ground. The One-eyed Hawk Mother being driven on only by her desperation, no longer fighting to kill, but to survive. The flock descended and after surrounding the pair, began tentatively to add their own beaks and wing swipes and in some cases talons to the fight, trying to tip it either way and quicken their easy meal. Soon they were frenzied and increasing in audacity their attacks on the raging Hawk’s. Soon the Hawk Mother came to her senses and realised she, though inevitably the victor, was close to being consumed by the swelling mob, with one final slash and a beat of her wings, left the One eyed mother to her fate. She gave her victory cry, lamenting the loss of her chicks, unaware that little Hawk lay metres away, comatose from shock and hidden from sight.

 

Though mortally wounded and crippled, One-eye still had the blind fight of survival left in her and in a fury of talons and beating wings she half hopped, half fluttered with the mob hot on her heels. She jumped from rock to rock fluttering painfully and harried at every opportunity by the boldest of the mob. But most quickly lost momentum on the steep cliffs and soon she was making her painful limp upwards, with none chasing, but still making her panicked ascension, insane with pain, as if the Hawk Mother were still on her back.

Little Hawk awoke sometime later.

The sky was orange and pink and the sun had long dipped behind the farthest cliffs, allowing the biting cold to take hold.

Little Hawk was cold, terrified and more acutely alone that he had ever been in his short life. He found his feet and stumbled in the sand. He chirped wildly as it sought to grip his feet and make his hopping feel sluggish, it grabbed at him and wore him as he hopped around attempting to escape it. He finally found solid rock and began to calm, looking around agitatedly and fearfully. Everything as he knew it was turned on its head, it seemed to him. The immensity of the cliffs stretched forth above him, and the vastness of the blue ocean was a narrow band in his vision, moving closer now with the flowing tide.

Panicked confusion gripped him.

He knew not where he was, why this change had come so quickly nor where his mother was. He had missed her before, but in the knowledge that he could look out and perhaps spot her with some looking, or that she was returning soon to feed him. He did not feel this way now, and he looked in vain in the fading light.

 

Very suddenly the coldness deepened around him, and he longed for his nest and the comfort of his siblings and the warmth of his mother. His belly ached with hunger and fear shook his tiny frame as violently as the cold that seeped and numbed.

Little hawk headed towards the only familiar thing in sight, the cliff face. There he hopped upwards onto a rock that felt similar to the hopping rock of his nest, and once atop it, another rock presented itself but higher still. He made the top of that easily, and the next and the next. As he made the umpteenth leap and spied a small crevice with some grass and feathers tucked inside that looked warm, he turned and caught sight of the view from his new vantage point. Some familiarity stunned him into looking, agape, at the new view laid out before him. The ocean had expanded further, the yellow band was apparent and stretched left and right the way it should, he chirped joyfully but still the view was not right in his reckoning. He looked back to the cliff and saw, once again above him, another hopping rock. He looked back to the scene that had defined his place in the world, and made a connection in his little hawk mind. The further he ascended the more familiar the world seemed to him, the more vastness there was before him and the more cliff there was below. All of this felt right and good and he surmised that the more familiar the view before him the closer he would be to the place where his mother was, where there was warmth and sustenance and safety.

 

Most animals, in this situation, may have given up. Or made a decision that would have ultimately led to their demise, quickly or slowly. But Little Hawk was of a species of warriors and hunters. He had pride in his blood and resolve in his soul. The former he would find along his way, the latter was an irrevocable aspect of his nature.

 

Little Hawk resolved to climb.

To make for the top and find his mother, or his destiny.