By G.R. Nanda
Through the lush green, Father Hawk jogged, cutting through and separating clumps of grass. He accidentally ran into herds of large, furry and brown bison who grunted at his approach or butted their huge horn-studded heads at him. When they did this, he had to frantically scuttle around the herds or flap his wings and hover away as quickly as he could.
Without his godhood, the stamina in his flight had been taken away. He occasionally soared far above the heads of packed animals alongside other winged creatures as they and the grass zoomed by in blurs. However, he wasn’t used to flying with such effort– such exertion on his wings. So, he found he couldn’t fly for long periods of time. He needed to rest from each flight and practice again.
So, most of his time was spent on foot, moving through the grass. Here, he was likely to be confronted by– if not bison, other animals who were usually bigger than him such as squirrels or long muscular deer who leaped over him while Father Hawk tried to avoid getting trampled by their legs.
It was a hardship he wasn’t used to. He toiled from hour to hour, scuttling through the long and endless grass under the endless white sky.
When he rested in between periods of flight, he walked through the grass. Finally, he had to rest from walking itself.
He stumbled into a patch of shorter grasses bordered by taller grasses when the sun had almost passed completely overhead. The sky was dimmer– not quite the brightsheet of white it once was. Now, it was a duller grey appearing like an overhead rock.
All around him in the distance, critters chirped and out of the endless thickets of grass appeared tiny mosquitoes and other dark insects. They fluttered with wings in the air and crawled and scuttled with little skinny legs on the dirt and on blades of grass.
They buzzed around Father hawk and sometimes nipped at his feathers and beak. When that happened, he always flinched, tried to swat them away or both.
The air was filled with the scent of dirt and below Father Hawk’s feet, the undergrowth of clustered dried grass. The former was dank and heavily odorous while the former was lightly musty.
Father Hawk had gotten so used to the feeling of sleek grass needles brushing his feathers, ruffling them. He was almost as accustomed to the grass as he had been the chilly vacuum of space pressing on his feathers, flattening them as he flapped his wings, flying through the cosmos.
There was a slight chill in the air and sporadic winds to waft it that were stronger than they were when it was brighter earlier in the day.
In this place. Inside of the huntsman’s soul.
Father Hawk huffed and then buckled down onto his knees. Up above, still visible through the border of tall looming grass, was the lump of Coyote’s Rock. It was still massive. But seemingly more so than before when Father Hawk was farther from it. But it wasn’t close enough. The dark mass that it was, was only so close that its outline had expanded a little bit.
The rock itself could now only barely be seen through the grey slivers in between the shrouding tendrils of black fog. The fog seemed to have grown thicker and blacker as the sun had passed overhead.
The Coyote himself couldn’t be seen at all.
Father Hawk closed his eyes and allowed his body to crumple to the ground. He fell on his side and rolled onto his back. He let his head loll back and sighed deeply.
He was so tired. Lying down, all of the fatigue of the day’s activity seeped in. Settling over him like a blanket that weighed him down. He couldn’t move anything. Except for his eyelids which he opened a crack, but while he felt their new weight threatening to close in.
Over him, away from the bordering grass of the edges, towards the center of his vision, a field of millions of glowing white stars beckoned him. It was breathtaking. And even more endless than these grasslands.
Father Hawk inhaled slowly. It was fresh air and delicious to his taxed lungs. He exhaled and as he did, his eyelids grew heavier and moved slightly closer.
“Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh…………….” he said quietly.
He scanned the sea of stars and its few tendrils of colorful gaseous nebula, searching for,
“Huntsman.” His voice was a whisper. If he was going to get the Huntsman’s attention, he would have to be louder because he would be a constellation of the sky. He was just too tired. “Where are you?” he whispered. “Oh, Huntsman, where are you? Talk to me. I know you’re there somewhere. Why would you leave now? Did I do well today? I did a lot. I think I did well. Oh, Huntsman…………….”
With that, his eyes closed and sleep overtook him, leaving the sea of stars as his last sight of the day.
G.R. Nanda 