The planet’s hemisphere darkened, roiling with gaseous elements. The light of the sun washed over, illuminating shards— debris floating haphazardly around the ball. They looked like broken asteroids swimming in the cosmic space.
One shard rolled around in the light and its jagged patterns of light-colored stripes against the dark background were highlighted by the sunlight.
From there, they were unmistakable. They were the broken shards of Life’s eggshell. The planet broiling with red heat and black ash was none other than Father Hawk’s child.
Has it come to this?
Father Hawk tentatively reached out to his agonized wife in his slow descent.
What is this vision? Is this what’s happened to my forsaken child and the forsaken mother of my child as I’ve roamed around in the soul of the Huntsman on a quest to find a damned flower?
Mother Hawk continued to wail in ghastly screams as she was crisped and melted by the sun. Feather by feather, blackening, dissolving. Back and red tufts continued to fall away onto the planet Life. It was becoming so choked by the falling sulfur that it developed a smoking fiery corona rimming its surface. It shot tendrils of fire and smoke from the surface.
Father Hawk desired to free Mother Hawk from the glowing red chains that bound her to the sun. They were thick and impermeable, unchanging against the sun’s flaming magma.
Father Hawk wanted to fake his quest for the Holy Flower— forsake his training with the Eagles. He wanted to control and change the terrible fear— the terrible vision that confronted him in the depths of the shadowlake.
Father Hawk opened his beak to exclaim to his wife and scream his own screams of anguish, but nothing came out except for gurgles and the black space seeping into him, turning into choking water.
“Hawk!” came a distant voice, echoing to him. “Hawk! Hawk!………….Hawk!………”
The voice was masculine and came in warbles, similar to how Mother Hawk’s wailing had sounded when she was farther below Father Hawk.
The voice was followed by a thunderous downpour, breaking through the distant roaring of rising bubbles. The latter was consistent; the former was a jangling cacophony of splashing motion, irregular in volume.
Father Hawk rolled around at the noise to see a vision spilling down from above where bubbles hissed, pale grey spilled down from a roof and an Eagle dived frantically. He was enveloped in dark and violent foam. Tendrils of liquid shot out and returned to strike him. The Eagle’s eyes were wide in panic and he gagged through his beak, struggling against the water. Bubbles formed out of his desperation to breathe.
The sight was real.
Though who was Father Hawk to say that the sight below him wasn’t? The confusion tore at his heart and mind. He turned his head around, looking back at Mother Hawk where the water was a cosmic space lit by the embers of pain.
He had to know. He had to find out.
“NO!” screamed the Eagle. The download of his dive didn’t grow in volume. “COME—WITH………..ME!”
Mother Hawk’s wailing had turned into a feeble moaning. Her body was now thinned, stripped of its thick plumage of feathers. What remained was charred and clumped against a skeleton, revealing itself in scorched and withering bones.
“YOU CAN’T CHANGE IT. YOU CAN’T—CONTROL!”
“DON’T BELIEVE IN IT. SHADOW………….LAKE—ISN’T—REAL!”
The planet Life churned with ashy clouds, now frothing at the hemisphere’s surface.
“DON’T LEAVE THE REAL! THE QUEST………IT’S REAL!”
“BE……………….PRESENT!”
“DON’T—LEAVE—YOURSELF!”
G.R. Nanda 