The Flight

        Slender splinters of wood littered the ground below, and more fell at a steady pace to join them. After each piece fell, a wicked beak dove back at the wood in aimless frustration. Freeing next a distinctly larger piece from the log on which she was perched, the hawk kept it in her mouth. She held her head up proudly, feathers rising from her body, as she turned her head from side to side, showing off her trophy. When her display brought no response, she shook her head and opened her beak wide, and let the shard of wood fall to the grass.

         So far, all her efforts had gained her was a chipped and scratch-ridden beak. Yet she persisted, as only the current moment mattered, and that was the undeniable urge to return to the sky. To a mind locked in the present, a sore face was a small trade to make. None of it mattered. She had to return, this land that now held her was not her place. The flight feathers had grown on this young hawk, and powerful muscles, honed but never tested, were restless for the challenge. The old man had just begun allowing her short measures of flight. Then one day, he was gone. Then the new people came.

         Now she found herself tethered by both legs to the ground. Such a system had never existed amongst them. The other birds were too long contented to show much care for the change. They had been willingly bound in mind, and the tether was but a physical extension of that. The elders ignored the incompetence. The younger hawk longed to be far from them all. After beating her wings and screeching at the outrage, the new people had finally come back. It took her the rest of that morning to get the hood they put over her eyes off her face.

         After that, she kept quiet, busying her mind with breaking her bonds. The well-hardened leather would not break under the assault, so the hawk buried her frustration in a victim that would react. And thus, the splinters began to pile up. The effort brought her no closer to freedom; but if it took the rest of this day, and the day after that, so be it, it would continue. 

         The sharp features of her aquiline countenance betrayed no emotion. Her eternal outlook to the world was fierce and distant. That unchanging gaze currently focused on the bond that held her down. She snapped at it a few times. On ignorant chance, the chip in her beak, and its jagged edge, found tether. The leather, weakened from earlier attempts, broke within seconds.

         She continued to pick at the severed tether, until an unconscious shuffle of taloned feet revealed to her the success. She spread her wings, beat them in rapid motion, and hopped into the air. And, in a fluttering mess of green-skilled wings, she tumbled indignantly to the ground.

         Scuffling in the grass, wrestling ungainly with her own wings, she managed to stand. Hunching over, feathers fluffed and beak wide, she dared anyone to deem her a weakling. Off to the side, one gray falcon piped a laugh.

         The young hawk screamed, shook her feathers back into place. A rusty squeal echoed the call. Her head, and that of every other bird in the clearing, turned to view as the cottage door opened. From the upsetting position on the ground, her first reaction was to squeak a request for help. The notion fell dead as the strangers walked out of the old man’s cabin.

         She hissed. When her fevered display of ferocity did not deter the strangers from approaching, she swiveled her head to stare at her feet, willing them to let her jump high as she flapped her wings.

         She had only managed to hop in little circles before one man took hold and pinned her down. She could only gape her mouth at the further indignity of her failure. As she calmed, the stranger turned to his fellows, and voices exchanged sounds. With a shrug, the stranger stood, and lifted her off the ground. Her head brushed the ground as she was held upside down.

         The young hawk did not care to be treated like dead prey brought back from a hunt. She twisted, flailed, kicked and bit at every inch of her captor that came into range. Her captor yelled and tossed her away.

         Aided by the force of the throw, she took to the air, climbing higher with every frantic beat of her wings. Her feet kicked to help in the ascent; a loop of tether still wrapped around one leg.

         The going was awkward and strenuous, but it was flight. Across the clearing she traveled, landing heavily in the upper branches of an old pine. Finding her balance, she immediately began preening her feathers in celebration of the victory. Completing this, she shook her tail feathers and looked around at the height.

         A rock tore through branches and thudded into the trunk of the tree. Thoroughly startled, the hawk let go of the branch, shot off into a premature second round of flying. This time she cleared the treetops, and as luck would have it, the wind picked her up and eased her progress.

         Soaring was almost as straining as the initial take to the air. The currents helped but also demanded constant consideration of the slightest angle of the entire body. So at first the young hawk was dragged along on a winding course, until all came under control. The forest clearing and its small cabin vanished unnoticed as she sailed. And with that piece of land went all the troubles.

         There was no joy to be had, nor frustration or anger. This life had achieved a balance. All was replaced with a single existence. Everything melted into nothing. And that nothing was its own something, beyond what the separated parts were capable. The world was not a harsh thing distinct from the entity it surrounded, but came as an extension of that self. The mind was not trapped in flesh, but reached out to encompass everything.

         As each beat of tempering wings took the air’s phantom ever farther, she let the tranquility of the southern summer’s calm hold bear her in its grace. The colors of life below stretched in all directions, as far as sharp eyes could see. And this hawk’s eyes took in everything. A field teeming with jittery vermin caught her attention. She screeched a jubilant promise to return to seek them out, but for now, the taste of the realm of the sky was all the sustenance required.

         Before long, her sojourn carried the hawk beyond the forest. The trees thinned, the grasses grew higher. Riding the warm air was another hawk, lazily floating while searching the ground. The hunter chirped a greeting as he circled gracefully up to meet her. She flew straight on by.

         The plain sprawled before her, a seemingly endless wave of grasses. The warm currents took her higher, and steadily higher.

         The passing of her shadow scattered a collection of crows. They circled and cawed as they mustered the courage to drive her away. She paid them no heed, she would stop for nothing this day. And the sight before her did her no temptation to break that vow. The crows, in apparent triumph, settled back to their feast.

         The hawk shifted her sail, and put the scene behind her, let the befriending wind bear her toward the sun.