For the majority of the flight, Father Hawk was in a half-awake daze. A helpless stupor of immobility and half open eyes that always threatened to close. But as his eye-lids closed, he’d always be jolted awake by the strain and motion of dangling in flight.
The grey light with flickers of red fire shone through his eye-lids, but dimmed as the journey continued airborne. The insides of Father Hawk’s eyelids turned to a pitch black.
The cracklings of burning trees, roars of wolves and the smells of sulfur and charred trees disappeared.
The Eagles maintained a straight formation, soaring into skies above smoother, rolling landscapes. They rode high enough that the darkened trees of the Shadowlands were blotted out and made to a distant carpet for hills and cliffs perched higher. Above the Mark of Shadow. Touched by light.
Higher above, the air was less musty. It was clearer. Light green trees swayed gently below them, dancing amongst each other. Unlike the cramped barked bodies of the Shadowlands below. Cliffs were snaked by shrubbery, climbing grass and vines. They had a dark reddish-brown complexion of scraggly rock that glinted in the light.
It looked like the lands of the Eagles. Yet, in his stupor of half-open eyes, Father Hawk could still tell that he and the Eagles were not close to home.
The lively hoot of a monkey echoing from below the treetops echoed this thought as well.
G.R. Nanda 