The Eagles flew over the lands, but slowly descended closer to the treetops. Once distant shrubs, they were now bustling, swaying bodies of leafed wooden limbs.
From below the leafed green masses were bodies of grey and red poking through the green and rustling the undergrowth, tumbling through it.
They scant seemed distant from the hills of red and brown rock that buttressed the trees on their sides and overlooked the woods in towers that loomed every which way, fading into the blur of the blue sky’s havens.
But the grey, red and brown objects moving at a fast pace on the forest surface were not rock crumbles or rubbles broken off the jagged cliffs. They moved at too fast a volition and speed to be mere rocks and stones where no wind blew. Branch by branch, they grabbed vantage. The stream flowed from the very bottom of the forest up into the tree branches.
Why! They were monkeys.
Hoots bombarded the air. They were shrill, but lilting with lightheartedness. Bubbling like laughter.
Monkeys scrambled at the forest floor and mounted the trees. They chased after the Eagle’s airborne path. Almost as if they were trying to grab ahold of Father Hawk’s legs.
Suddenly, upon the first dozen monkeys reaching the top of the trees, they split at the peak, diverging into two different paths that raced across the leafy roofs. Bounding over different trees, the two streams, slivered in their furry brown masses across different stretches of woods, separated by dozens of trees in between.
Amid a frenzy of frantically moving masses of monkeys vying for leverage, climbing over each other and grappling branches. They climbed above, around and to the sides of each other. They were a web of interlacing threads, constantly shifting and rolling.
However, amid the frenzy, the masses always separated into the distant lines, rivulets receding away at distantly separating paths.
Father Hawk watched in fascination below him. The cascade of hollering monkeys climbed up the trees, creating a squawking high pitched clamor. Yet, monkey by monkey, they dropped down, melting into highways, moving further and further apart the more the monkeys strolled.
The highways hastened underneath Father Hawk until they surpassed the Eagles’ flight. Their shouts faded to a shrieking din and their bodies settled back into the undergrowth. At the far reaches of the highways, their presence dwindled to mere splotches of grey and red, bubbling and popping in between the leaves and trees.
Father Hawk looked back up the woodlands, trying to see the monkeys’ onward path.
Rising in front of him were two rock monoliths, ascending from mounds of lower rock grazing the trees.
They rose like dry mountains, peaking at the blue haze of the higher heavens.
The monoliths were bridged by a craggly rock ridge of orange protruding from the poking trees.
As Father Hawk neared the ridge, he spotted a small monkey, frozen atop the ridge, watching intently with beady black eyes large enough to be seen from so high.
Once Father Hawk and the Eagles neared the ridge, the monkey flailed and screamed. He jumped on all fours as Father Hawk passed over, shouting into the trees below.
The Eagles suddenly swooped to the right, shifting their left wings upwards. They swivelled and glided below, moving fast and skimming the treetops where the clamor had left them behind, turning into an increasingly distant chatter.
Smaller birds fluttered here, flitting away from the oncoming bodies of Father Hawk and the Eagles.
The wilderness here seemed more active, teeming with buzzing, darting critters and scuttling bugs and mammals, scampering up tree bark and, the forest floor and slithering out of crevices in leafy foliage and clustered sticks.
The life and movement was spread out larger than in the Eagle’s haven. Larger than anywhere in the Shadowlands. Here, the life was so spread out that its din of chirping and buzzing created a general din emanating from all directions.
The Eagles broke formation allowing those on Father Hawk’s side to hover to the earth in between the trees.
Swooping to the treetops, they left the safe haven of the skies for the gently rumbling, teeming leaves topping the trees and blossoming in the buzzing undergrowth.
The Eagles separated, flying farther and farther away from each other, but staying in a constant line. Father Hawk’s chest pinched and a fuzzy faint semi-consciousness flooded him. It bled darkness, obscuring the forests and cloaking the Eagles’ destination.
G.R. Nanda 