The cub lay immobile-it must have struck its fragile skull on one of the scattered rocks perhaps it was dead already. Silent, Highcrest angled her wings and dived. This time it could not regain its footing and tripped headlong over its forepaws, crashing hard to the dry earth. As she cocked her head and swooped lower, the small lion stumbled again. This lost and frightened cub, prideless and motherless, would be an easy kill.Įasier, in fact, than even she had thought. Far from here, her own offspring waited for her, beaks open, bellies empty. Highcrest felt no pity for the exhausted little lion. Highcrest could see no predators in pursuit-the cub must have lost them some time ago, if they ever existed-yet still it hurtled on, clearly terrified. It stumbled every few pawsteps, but picked itself up and fled again, as if a pack of jackals were on its stubby tail.
Highcrest adjusted her wings, stooping through the air to follow the creature’s path. Perhaps it was fleeing some flesh-eater, but it was too foolish, or too panicked, to glance skyward for a different danger. There! Something moved on the grassland far below, a flickering shadow of darker gold, something that bolted heedlessly across the open plain. The need for prey warred inside her with the urgency to return to the nest, to protect them from daring predators. Her chicks were hungry, their beaks forever gaping for more food, and she had hunted too long already. Highcrest’s eyes moved on, searching, always searching. Their ears swiveled and flicked then, unthreatened, they returned to browsing on tall acacias. Highcrest’s piercing gaze made out her own shadow, flickering across the golden grasslands a couple of giraffes tilted up their horned heads to watch the great crowned eagle pass overhead. Rivers glittered like thin streaks of silver far below, and the forests were smudges of green.
The sun blazed high and white over Bravelands, steeping the whole savannah in a dazzling paleness.
0 kommentar(er)
