A Bird of Prey

“A disgusting bird”
(In regard to their bald heads) “Formed to wallow in putridity”
- CHARLES DARWIN (on the turkey vulture)

A Bird of Prey
MysteryBox42

He was the very image of death. A bald head, pale as bone, connected to a body that was as black as the night. An unconscious imitation of the Grim Reaper. A character that he did not know, at least, not by name. He had seen the aftermath of death with an almost perfunctory regularity. He knew the Man’s work well.

The kettle of vultures began their descent.

Ay was riding on the cusp of the kettle, lagging a bit behind, and missed the early flag of the shifting flight. The other dozen or so large black birds glided effortlessly downward in individual swooping motions. Their wings each made satisfying whishing noises as they cut through the remarkably still air like rotors. Ay had been caught by a spell - a daydream, if you prefer – and was quite puzzled to find himself suddenly alone among the fat, scrubby clouds.

“Crap!” Ay scolded himself, and immediately set his wings to work.

He was a young one, his wing span measuring just over four feet, and relied more on the wind to carry him than any force on his own behalf. He angled his body downward and dropped. The rushing surges of wind felt good as it ruffled his budding feathers. It felt good on his legs and talons, both of which were still gaining adolescent strength. It felt good on his featherless head and neck. He eclipsed the sun and for a brief moment he could see his shadow projected on the desert ground below him, amplified into that of a giant. All fear me, he thought, proudly. For I see all from above. Fear me for I...

But in his play he had missed the right moment to veer upward. He dived past the rest of the kettle and had to flap his wings clumsily to meet them.

When he rejoined the kettle, he could hear audible tittering. He flew silently to his father’s side, who was wearing a disapproving frown stretched across his scarred face.

“You were late, again.” Ky said to his son.

“I’m sorry,” Ay replied, foolishly, “I got thinking. I guess that I got thinking too hard.”

“You don’t smell it, do you?”

Ay shook his head, ashamed.

“You know, son, there’s going to be a time someday that you’re going to have to lead a wake of your own. How do you expect to lead them if you can’t even smell what you’re leading them to?”

Ay shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, “I guess.” But he stopped there.

“Yes?” Ky asked, cocking his head with interest.

“I guess that it all just kind of smells the same to me. It all smells so bad. I can’t differentiate the smells at all. It’s like the desert itself, you know, just one big blotch. It doesn’t really matter what part you’re looking at because it’s all the same thing really.”

“Nonsense.” Ky replied. “You’ll train yourself to smell it. Today you will smell it, up close too. You can’t live off insects and eggs forever, you know? It’s high time that you realize what it means to become a bird of prey, not a bird of habitat.”

“But what if I can’t?” Ay asked, doubtfully. But what if I can? An almost more terrifying voice whispered in his head.

“You will.” Ky said, without even looking over this time. The subject was over.

Ay sighed, wearily, and retired his eyes back down at the land below him, now more visible than before. The Mojave Desert.

It was rough and putrid land. There were no mountain ridges on the horizon. No feminine dunes and no plateaus, etching artful patterns against the sky. Just a thin crust of earth that groped indeterminably below the heavy blue. It was wide, expansive, the sole color of dirt. Ay did not know its name. The desert is all that he knew it by. It was the perfect paradigm of all of the other deserts, he knew, although in his life he only ever seen the one. Cracks in the dry soil made spider-web like designs from above. Occasionally, the green of a cacti, a box-thorn, or a sagebrush passed him by underneath. It was a slight comfort to him, as it always was, that there were still some things, even out here, that lived. In an almost antagonistic defiance against death, they lived. A cactus stood boldly erect with three arms up-stretched towards the heavens. The middle one was much larger than the other two, as if flipping God the bird, saying, Is that the best you got? Go on! I’m still standing! Ay had no idea what any of this meant - flipping someone the bird, in particular - but the thought still came to him, albeit, in a weird symbolic way.

When the kettle of vultures started to form a wide arching circle in the air, Ay knew that the wake was beginning. He swallowed and joined them. His father, Ky, was not observing his son this time. His eyes were dead-set on the desert below. They were wide eyes. Hungry eyes. The eyes of a true bird of prey.

The gazelle was very near dead.

A faint flutter of life still sparked inside of the fell creature. The animal’s back legs laid limp on the hardpan of the desert. To Ay, they looked boneless and flabby, bent back at an unnatural angel. The gazelle was supporting its upper torso and head with its two front legs, which were both only standing through habit and loyalty. It took three faltering steps and then fell, regained itself painfully, took two more steps, fell again. A gash was carved into its back that had once been spewing blood but was now mostly dry. The wound on its belly was even more severe. Ay could see intestines and guts. His father’s nostrils flared with the inviting smell. Ay could now smell it too but to him there was nothing inviting about it at all.

“Do you smell it?” Ky asked his son, thirstily.

“Uh-huh.” Ay replied. His voice came sickly from the back of his throat.

The kettle of vultures – a wake, now – formed a sinister amphitheater above the creature. A circular shape like the Roman Colosseum with blood just as much on their mind.

“They’ll be a squabble, that’s for sure.” Ky said to Ay, his voice pitched low. “Don’t expect any of the other families to just give you an opening. You’re going to have to take it. If the other vulture is bigger than you, use your cunning. If they are smaller, use your talons. Understand?”

Ay fixed his eyes on his talons, sharp but lacking experience. An anxious nausea coiled in his belly. Blood would soon be spilt, he knew, all around.

The marred gazelle made one last gallant attempt to hold itself upright. It must know that it’s already dead, Ay mused. It must know that. What is it still fighting for? What does it hope to achieve? The creature rose, triumphantly, and for a moment Ay could feel nothing but a swelling pride for the beast and admiration.

When the gazelle fell again it was for the last time.

Ay understood the deadly philosophy behind the form of the wake. The circle. There were none in charge. No hierarchy. No front of the line and no back. No vulture family had a more advantageous opportunity than the next. It was a free-for-all. Every bird for themselves. It was a frenzy.

One of the vultures riding on the inside of the wake shrieked. He was an old bird with a wide wingspan of nearly six feet, which bore feathers that were battered by the effects of time. On his face and neck he wore numerous scars that charted a long history of squabbles. Most of them won, Ay knew. His shriek was infectious.

At this, the vultures formed a single black cloud in the sky as they plummeted down en masse to meet their prey.

It was pandemonium. Some of the birds began their squabbles in mid-air. Bills and talons were drawn like switchblades. Blood issued out into the blue sky and fell upon the desert floor. The dirt drank it up greedily. It was used to the taste. Squawking and shrieks of either triumph or pain suddenly occupied the desert panorama.

Ay’s father dived through the chaos with the surety of a thrown dart, heedless to the skirmishes all around him. Ay had tried to follow in the opening that his father had made, but two fighting vultures knocked into him, sending his flight awry in a crazy zigzag pattern. He was small enough to not be considered a threat, so that none of the larger birds would come at him, but he did just narrowly avoid a stealthy plunge that another young one had hoped to disable him by.

He flew outside of the cloud of birds and could see with a mounting horror that the gazelle was already flayed apart. The larger birds were first and got to enjoy the choicest parts of the beast. The creature’s eyes were both gone and what remained were two vacant sockets that seemed, to Ay, to still be staring.

The gazelle gave a death cry. A long toneless note that was filled with agony and played individual keys on Ay’s bones. It’s still alive, Ay thought, with a terror that lapped pure hysteria.

Panicked, horror-struck, too unnerved to do much else, Ay dropped like a stone, far from the rest of the wake, and found sanctuary inside of a nearby sagebrush.

A space of time passed that could have been hours. The sound of squabbles and ripping and tearing slowed and then ceased altogether. When Ay emerged from the sagebrush most of the other vultures were already gone. Remaining were scavengers, picking at what morsels were left on the skeletal frame of the creature. Mostly young ones, too young and too weak to take part in the real action, as their fathers watched, their own appetites quenched, from a few yards away. The bones of the gazelle were made brilliantly white. They don’t leave much, do they? Ay observed. The chicks who were far too young to take part in the flight would be feeding that night on regurgitated leftovers.

The flutter of feathers startled Ay. It was his father. He was wearing a stony look. It was set across battle-worn feathers and two more scars to add to his collection, one of them deep. In his bill was one of the gazelle’s disconnected eyes, still gaping wide open. He relieved it on the dirt before his son.

“Eat.” He commanded, simply.

“I can’t.” Ay said, weakly, appraising the detached eye with disgust.

Ky brought his talons down on his son’s face. It broke skin and left a bloody gash across his left cheek.

Ay cried out. “I’m bleeding.” he said, stupidly. “Daddy, I’m bleeding.”

“Now, you’ll have at least one scar to speak fondly of.” Ky snapped, coldly. “Call me daddy again in that sad voice and you’ll have another. A bird of prey your age, unscathed after his first wake.”

He glared at his son with disgust.

“When we get back to the burrow you’re to tell your mother that it was another bird gave you that scar. If you’re not going to fly with honor, then you can at least wear the facade of honor. Do you understand me, boy?”

“Yes.” Ay sniffled.

Ky looked at his son through the corner of his eye and then was gone.

Overhead, the desert sun watched with a bland indifference. As indifferent at the gazelle’s eye that stared up emptily from the ground, as if searching the sky for some lost meaning. If there was meaning to find, Ay had discovered it in that gleaming white eye. It was rough and putrid land, but that was because it was a rough and putrid world.

Word Count: 1997

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"A vulture with a conscience what a thought
this tale reveals imagination wild.
A vivid picture of what nature's wrought
gross, gory and defined, but not defiled

With tenderness, Ay tries to find a way,
unaware at all that he's too young.
Ky grasps the chance and promptly ruins his day
then plants Ay's foot upon hell's bottom rung.

Without the least regret, Ay flunked the test.
'I can't,' he feebly squawks 'she's like a pet
'It's time for you to fight and do your best.
You can't,' his father sneers,'You wanta bet?

Ay learns the lessons of a vultures kind,
but still, the specter lingers in his mind"
- Verse kindly written by Norbanus, copied with permission