Mother Wing
The sun slowly crept over the hills, painting the Rannoch country side brilliant colours of amarinth, scarlet and gold. The rays fell over the Black Wood, over Loch Rannoch and finally cast their glow on the mountain, Craig Varr, where a slumbering gryphon woke. The beast’s emerald eyes fell to her nest and she slowly rose to stare at her clutch of sapphire eggs. It was time to hunt, so she made sure her clutch was incubated enough to leave for a while. She was ready to take to the air, her kingdom.
She beat her powerful wings and she was in the sky, the wind beating her face and ruffling her feathers. As the great bird swooped down over Loch Rannoch her claws dipped into its blue clear surface. The glittering liquid danced around the gryphon’s claws until she started to smell a stray sheep and veered off in the direction of the Black Wood. The bird’s keen eyesight, hearing and smell made the stray easy prey and the waddling sheep didn’t suspect a thing.
The great bird had stripped every last sliver of flesh from the sheep’s bones and had started to dig up a nearby rabbit hole that didn’t seem to connect to its warren. The gryphon stopped and her feathers ruffled as a disturbing scent, carried from a distance, caught her senses. She got very scared and agitated, pounded her wings and took off, leaving feathers twirling where she once had been.
The flurry of feathers and claws dove to the alarming smell and saw something more dangerous than a dragon: gryphon dung. Absolutely terrified, the queen of the skies pounded her wings so much the trees around her bent as she raced back to Craig Varr where she saw another female gryphon. The rival female was older and bigger than the nesting mother who had given a squawk-roar so loud the villagers a few miles away could hear. The rival looked up and howled back and pounded off the rocky surface of Craig Varr to meet the mother head on. The rival was here to lay her own eggs and would get rid of any other eggs. It is a battle that neither can afford to lose; for days it went on, beaks and claws flying from either one.
At the nest a female remains, sitting on a clutch of her own eggs. Fortunately it is our female queen of the skies who fought the intruder off – but at a terrible price. The queen of the skies has lost her eye, torn out by the rival and it will scar her hunting for life. Out of her remaining eye she sees a crack in one of her eggs. The whole egg shatters and reveals a tiny chick. Soon the other eggs shatter and fragments of sapphire eggshell litter the nest. The mother gryphon looks into one of their eyes.
Anyone who says an animal cannot love, is wrong.
Short Story by Scott Bruno, Tanunda Lutheran School - Australia