Concept sketch of Eagle’s “basement” by G.R. Nanda
Upon leaving the roars and hissings of the water, Father Hawk was assailed by the raucous howlings of wolves. They growled, grated, barked and haunted the world with their eerie, high pitched cackling howlings.
It was a sea of unrelenting, booming cries for death, ringing in booming blood curling tones.
Father Hawk was still engulfed in water that dripped off of him and was flung at him in hot droplets that fizzed from the lake’s surface.
His body was pinched in an aching pain that throbbed from within his center and shot outwards. He was too weak to move. His ascent was propelled by the soaking Eagle who took slow, but strong and forceful strides to flap his wings to elevation. Water leaked from his airholes. The blockage turned the roaring and howlings to hums, collective and distant.
Father Hawk struggled to blink away the water that dripped down and clung. Through the wet droppings were the blurred yellow lines rimming the ash-choked greenery of the trees. Smoke was a grey blur blanketing the sky and the edges of the treetops.
The yellows, reds, blacks, greys and greens intermingled in a murky acne of a burning jostled forest coated by the water dripping over Father Hawk’s eyes.
His body felt as if it were on the verge of giving out. He teetered on the edge between consciousness and unconsciousness. Weakness befuddled him. There was a flame of iciness flickering at his core, threatening to lash out and envelop his insides.
The claws tightly grasping Father hawk jerked with each flap of the Eagle’s wings. It was disorienting, nauseating. The world spun around Father Hawk as he hung, limp, his claws, wings and head lolling back. The burning, shaking trees smeared by water eyes spun around and jerked to and fro.
Father Hawk’s eyes involuntarily squeezed shut as coarse warm liquid pushed through his throat and beak. He opened his beak to let out the vomit. He grunted and moaned as the substance poured out, plummeting to the lake surface.
“Shadow-seer!”
The wolves yelled in unison, shouting that phrase of two words in their rough gravelly, barking howls.
“Shadow-seer!”
Their united clamor resounded all around Father Hawk from the rim of the lake. Their voices sounded like groaning trees, roaring waterfalls and crashing rocks.
“SHADOW-SEER!”
“SHADOW-SEER!”
“SHADOW-SEER!”
Father Hawk opened his eyes and moaned after the last stream of vomit left his beak. He blinked out the last drops of water. While water still dripped down his face and from his neck, he could see more clearly than before.
In his pinched fuzzy vision, Father Hawk saw a ring of fallen trees surrounding the lake. Some had been uprooted, fallen to the waysides of the forest or had crashed into the lake, where their bark and leaves dissolved into little brown and green bits in the streaming waters.
Many had been ripped off at the midsections of the stumps. Behind the edge of the lake were the raging fires of yellow and orange tendrils flickering and dancing through foliage and leaves. Some had made their way to the edge of the lake where they flared on stumps, grasses and groups of leaves.
In between the fires and ravaged trees were howling wolves. They were the grey furred, large snouted, muscular creatures with glinting yellow eyes that Father Hawk had fought before.
They edged the lake and crowded behind, deep in the forest, in hundreds. Their roaring rippled and blew their silvery fur, fanned by the many flames around them and shook the grasses, shrubbery and trees.
Their roars pushed at the lake’s waters, creating a vortex of bubbling water that met at the center, right under Father Hawk, where it swirled and fizzed upwards like a hill of foaming columns threatening to engulf Father Hawk all over again.
The trees were the size of Eagles and the wolves, the size of ants from Father Hawk’s height.
A wolf at the center of a pack of his comrades directly in front of Father Hawk’s lolling head stood up on a boulder, visible above the rest.
“Shadow-seer!” he growled. “You have seen and arisen from what most have been consumed by!” His voice boomed above the general rumble of “SHADOW-SEER!”
“Your dominion belongs with the Shadowspawn! You are the seer of both warring sides! Your powers do not belong to the righteous!”
The Eagle carrying Father Hawk buckled his legs, tucking in Father Hawk, bringing him closer to his chest. Father Hawk could now see the swarm of Eagle comrades who had arrived at the lake with him before submersion.
They were blurs of black bodies and wings, speckled by white heads.
“Your powers belong to the POWERFUL!”
The wolves rose on their hind legs, caught in an uproar louder than the last.
“SHADOW-SEER!”
“SHADOW-SEER!”
“SHADOW-SEER!”
Trees from the lake edge and beyond were ripped from their roots, snapped in half and flung into the lake.
Dozens of trees crashed into the lake. They resounded in a hot splash that cascaded into the vortex of water underneath Father Hawk.
It morphed into a terrific geyser that imploded under Father Hawk and the Eagles. Torrents and jets of water shot forth, just merely missing Father Hawk. Yet, he felt their hot wrath.
“RISE!” shouted the Eagles frantically flapping above.
Father Hawk’s rescuer flapped furiously, this time flapping front and back, propelling away from the lake.
All the Eagles formed a line swiftly passing over the lake, over the burning treetops and their missing neighbors.
“No,” croaked Father Hawk. His eyes bulged. “Fight………..them,” he managed.
“It is not time to fight!” said his rescuer. They left the lake and entered the space above the decimated woodlands.
Concept sketch of Eagle’s “basement” by G.R. Nanda
Tears seeped from Father Hawk’s stinging eyes, befuddling his vision as they splayed out, merging into the volumes of the Shadowlake. The sight of Mother Hawk’s burning grew blurrier and distant.
It was then at the welling of further anguished tears, trembling at the brink of the wavering scene of Mother Hawk that Father Hawk thought with clarity. Mother Hawk was haunting. That was all there was to her essence. When the brightness of the searing sight diminished under the blur of tears, Father Hawk could see clearer. The burning body below was merely a spectre of his projected fears and insecurities.
He knew better. Mother Hawk was not at the bottom of a lake with the Huntsman’s soul. She was far up in Father Hawk’s former haven against the stars.
“THE QUEST”
“DON’T-LEAVE-”
“Don’t leave the quest, muttered Father Hawk, spluttering as water seeped in his beak and he spit it out.
“Don’t leave the quest!” he thought as clearly as he could.
It was all he had left after all………
Father Hawk whirled his head, pushing against the weight of the lake’s deepness. He squinted at the pale grey light jutting from the surface, so as not to hurt his already stinging eyes anymore.
The Eagle reaching for him appeared to be suspended in a slowed movement. His panic seemed frozen– etched in his still wide eyes, unblinking. Tendrils and waves of water slithered and morphed around him. They cascaded, frothed– vines turning into rock walls, melting into oncoming serpents and sea-stallions.
Pressure mounted in Father Hawk’s chest. The distractions of the Shadowlake had blinded him to his own drowning.
He’d pulled away and noticed the sensations too late. By now, the pressure and torrents of water streaming through his beak, suffocated him– hit him in a startling wave.
It seemed like he’d moved from one terrible sight to the terrible reality of struggling for air in a lake. Which one was worse?
The Eagle winced, his eyes squinting and his beak opened wide in a gurgling scream.
“COOME…. HAAA..WWK!”
Father Hawk clawed at the water helplessly as it bubbled with a rising force that seemed to crowd him out. Just when his wings sloshed down in defeat, a hot bubble swelled under him, searing his back and pushing him up.
The bubble’s fizzing consumed his hearing as he shot up, jiggling on its burning viscous surface. He rose swiftly, quickly passing many of the surrounding bubbles that had overtaken and loomed over him in their ascent.
Father Hawk was fixated on the Eagle and his capsule of slowly descending froth. The Eagle barely receded in size while the walls of rising bubbles blurred away in a passing vortex. A vortex leading to the Eagle.
Father Hawk’s rear was slipping back along the bubble. He was also getting blasted with an intake of water as he struggled to control his beak. He turned to the left and used his right wing to slap his beak.
His movement caused him to teeter off the bubble. As he fell over it, the bubble burst under his cascading weight.
The scalding slippery surface dissolved into a wave of heat that emanated outwards before dissipating.
Father Hawk was once again fighting against his weight in the rapids of the sizzling, bubbling furnace of dark water.
He frantically waved his wings ahead, trying to swim in and dent the thick liquid.
The vortex seemed to undergo a reversal; the Eagle slowly receded and the bubbles stopped moving back. Instead, they flew up past him in their usual latitude.
The pale grey light of the Eagle dimmed.
“No!”
Father Hawk kicked his legs. A bubble burst at one of his kicks, creating a heat wave that pushed him farther up to the side. He could use these waves to shoot up! Father Hawk had moved to the right, further away from the Eagle.
He kicked a bubble rising underneath him to the left. It fizzled in its dissolution and sent a rippling wave of heat, pushing him up.
He kicked another bubble below. Pop! He rocketed up, doubling over in the process. His vision blurred. He was choking on water. The arrays of rising bubbles started to merge at their blurred edges in his eyesight.
He quickly kicked another bubble. Pop! Phoo! Father Hawk shot up.
Kick! Pop! Phoo!
Kick! Pop! Phoo!
Kick! Pop! Phoo!
Kick! Pop! Phoo!
Father Hawk was near the surface. The Eagle hung above him to his left. He kicked his claws, mustering his final strides before his body gave way.
The lake’s surface and the Eagle’s cascading froth no longer glimmered just a pale grey. Splotches of yellow, asky grey and orange sparkled and slivered around the froth and across the roof of the Shadowlake.
Pinpricks of yellow flashed through the lake surface.
Father Hawk mustered his final kicks, shooting up so his legs grazed the Eagle’s froth. Father Hawk doubled over backwards in his motion. His face neared the surface, allowing him to make out the faint green shapes of trees, whipping to and fro. A mass of leaves lunged backwards and shot over, snapping from the rim of the trees.
As Father Hawk’s head dipped back, falling through the water again, he could hear the jangled, rippling crash of the leaves and their branches, splashing into the lake.
He arched over, causing his head and the rest of his body to dive back.
He had risen, only to fall once again.
“My story doesn’t end like that,” thought Father Hawk. He screamed in fury, allowing more water to enter his beak. The shrill noise was warbled in the water. He waved his wings above him and kicked his legs a few more times. The vortex closed in on him until the tip of his left wing lapped the expanse of the sky reflecting on the water surface. Then, his body did give. Father Hawk’s pressure threatened to pinch his entire body and being into oblivion. His eyes dimmed, eyelids closing in. Black creeped across his vision.
A roaring torrent ripped through the water above him, sending whirls and waves of froth pushing into him. A thick wing of drenched dense black feathered plumage snaked around Father Hawk’s wing, pulling him up out of the Shadowlake. Father Hawk’s eyes reopened to a hellish world.
I have to apologize for the lack of communication about the missed publication date. I got sick for all of last week (not COVID). I am recovered and have written a chapter that is about to published tonight. The bi-weekly publishing schedule will resume with a publication next Wednesday on July 8th.
My break is over and you can all expect a summer of regular 2200 Blues.
I apologize for the falsity of this week’s home page countdown timer. It had to change in accordance with my routine. I’ve just completed an exhausting virtual school year and have been taking time off to rest and take care of other responsibilities. This is going to be writing-filled summer, but I was burnt out following school and I still have some unresolved issues in my personal life that are taking my focus. Rest and my personal life have been taking up my attention for the past two weeks.
I’m going to update the timer for a publishing date this coming Monday, June 21st.
Rest assured, Father Hawk, the Atlantic Canyons, Nickel and Hedonim have not left my mind!
This week, what I have for you is not a chapter, but my progress on a fictional language for the fictional culture of hawk worshippers in 2200 Blues. I apologize for the delay in publication. I was very busy with schoolwork.
I watched videos from David J. Peterson, the Hollywood language creator for the Game of Thrones TV show, the upcoming Dune movie and many other properties. I also read parts of his book, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building. These resources guided me in this process.
Concept sketch of Eagle’s “basement” by G.R. Nanda
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.
Concept sketch of Eagle’s “basement” by G.R. Nanda
The voice of Mother Hawk emanated from the deep below. It came in a ghostly pained and shrill moaning that wavered and rose up in high-pitched waves of anguish over and over again.
It was all that Father Hawk could register in the darkness. He could see nothing.
Then it hit him. The weight of roaring, gurgling water shaking and pushing down on him. Dark viscous bubbles, almost as dark as the black water seething from below, rose up in torrents that rumbled collectively.
Many neared Father Hawk, grazing him, burning him. They warped and bent, molding around Father Hawk’s body before rising above him, folding outwards, back into their original spherical matter.
They all fizzed and joined in a clustered hissing, echoing from the surface, filtering pale grey light. Father Hawk’s head lolled as he grew limper, his gurgling for breath became lost to him in the thunder around him.
The light filtering through cast a dim glow on the bubbles closest to the surface. They looked like dull grey planets clustered against a black expanse of space. But the light faded to the darkness around Father Hawk, the farther down it reached.
The sound of endlessly bursting bubbles at the surface was a cacophony of pounding thunder. It coalesced with the fizzing bubbles around him and the rumbling from deep below.
The further Father Hawk sank, the closer to the sound of his wife’s wailing he got.
It came in warbles, sometimes by bubbles, but always returning in faint trills that reverberated through the waves and torrents of water. It was a sad and torturous song, grieving Father Hawk with a constricting pressure in his chest. The feeling overwhelmed and choked him alongside the constricting sensation of drawing in volumes upon volumes of soaking water.
A soft ball of yellow glowed to life at the bottom of the lake. It became the focal point of Father Hawk’s attention in his glazed eyes. He lost control of his body as water continued to seep into him and constrict him in his drowning.
He wound up focused on the pulsing light that radiated pale yellow and periodically shaded to a darker pulsing orange before reverting back. It breathed in different shades, pulsing from paleness to darkness.
Father Hawk flet consumed by the light, despite it and the ball’s shape being warped by nearing rising bubbles of dark matter.
The anguished wailing seemed to pulse through from the heart of the light. The ball’s corona of surrounding edging rays of light wavered with each dimming and then expanded with ever colored brightening, drawing the size of the ball out with it.
The dimming drew it inwards. It slightly receded in size, but every brightened expansion drew it outwards. The ball’s breathing of light and hugeness was slowly turning it into a pool of unexpected warmth in the cold of the Shadowlands.
No matter that it receded with each dimming. Each inevitable drawing out and expansion created a larger sun at the center of Father Hawk’s descent.
The closer Father Hawk descended, the slower the rising bubbles of dark matter became.
The water rumbled, almost quaking. The glowing ball shuddered and the darkly rising balls vibrated in their slow flight.
The wailing seemed to emanate from directly below the ball’s surface.
It inflated directly below Father Hawk, bent and warped outwards, turning into the molding of a creature, coated in the hot glowing magma of light. It stretched and dripped over the wailing creature as it protruded out of it.
Slowly, the light washed over and sank back into the sun. Mother Hawk emerged out of the liquid cocoon of light.
Hers was a charred body; her feathers were crisped, bloodied and bent. Her beak oozed molten light and her eyes were reddened and clamped shut in agony.
Her screams were deafening.
Flames danced over her feathers, charring them and they turned into dark wisps of heat that fell down, floating and descending until they reached a small sphere below, where they became the sulfurous clouds of a new planet.
Concept sketch of Eagle’s “basement” by G.R. Nanda
Father Hawk nearly jumped when he noticed the twelfth shadowsnake. It was a speedy creature that tore through the water, practically galloping. It drove itself down and below the lake, arching its back before diving in. Then, it would almost immediately thrust itself back up the water, moving through the air in an arc, before crashing back below.
As it did this, the water exploded and flattened in thick curls of foam, thicker than any caused by the other snakes. The water seethed with quick repetitive movements, louder than the other snakes.
The snake appeared for mere seconds and disappeared as soon as it had appeared.
“Now!” said Sunjata, louder than before and more urgently, no longer whispering. Father Hawk looked at him, moving his eyes away from the lake. Sunjata was looking at him intently with frowning eyes. He raised a wing and nudged Father Hawk gently. He didn’t remove his wing. The six other Eagle comrades stared at Father Hawk expectantly with calm faces. Their eyes slightly squinted, as if they were curious as to what Father Hawk would do.
“It is time,” said Sunjata. He spoke in a level voice, quietly, but no longer whispering. “We walk to the edge of the treetops and you will dive forth as soon as you spot a snake emerging. You mustn’t hesitate for the snakes. Do not stay above water for long. Though they can swim underwater for long, they cannot keep going without periodically rising above water for air. These are fleeting moments and as soon as you spot an emergence, do not hesitate. Dive forth and soar quickly to snatch the creature. As soon as it is in your claws, fly up and we will follow behind and intervene if the snake gets close to biting you. You must be firm and wrestle it to submission. The creature will grapple with you to try to escape. You mustn’t let it. If it does, we will fly back here and move to a different treetop on the perimeter.”
Sunjata paused and a silence ensued, broken up by rustling leaves in the trees.
“Are you ready, Hawk?” he asked, eyeing Father Hawk with his intensely frowning eyes.
Father Hawk opened his mouth. He looked back at the lake. The fast snake was gone, but he spotted the thin dark tail end of a snake disappearing below far away. For all he could see, the lake was a placid oasis of grey stillness.
“Yes,” said Father Hawk with an air of thoughtful decisiveness, ending off at a high pitch, as if he was wondering at his own decision.
“Then move!” ordered Sunjata. He pushed Father Hawk forward and Father Hawk followed the movement, rushing to the edge on his claws. There was the rustling sound below of the other Eagles following behind, their claws brushing the leaves.
When Father Hawk reached the very edge of the treetop, he constricted his claws, clamping on the leaves bordering the edges. They were held up by wooden branches that snaked around below.
His eyes widened and he scanned the lake intently once again. His eyes strained under the tension and weight of his own eyelids, folded in frowning concentration.
He looked all across, noting the slow ripples and wavering in the water and their thickness, height, duration. He looked at folded white lines, shining under the faint sun, cloaked by grey clouds. He noticed how it was the line edging the top of a crest that shone brightest. He saw how the glow dissipated as the thin crest flattened, sunk. Then, the glow split apart, highlighting newly formed crests of thin grey waves.
They could have just been the breeze or wind. Or the slow and rarely lapping waves of the water itself. Most of them probably were one of those two just because most of them were slow and quickly melted away, almost as quickly as they had appeared.
But Father Hawk had paid enough attention to the lake to know that there were going to be ripples large and long lasting enough to be signs of snakes.
He spotted a crest emerging to the far right, larger than the rest. It was towards the right, but stayed close to the center, far enough from the lake’s bank.
Father Hawk leaned over ever so slightly, so as not to fall over and peered intensely. The crest, bobbed, waved. But it didn’t waver. Didn’t melt away. Suddenly, the beginnings of a black line emerged from the end in front, squirming out as its body rose up, cutting through the edge of the crest.
Father Hawk’s eyes widened and the soles of his feet pushed up, making his claws clamp down harder, tearing a few leaves off their branches.
Sunjata’s breath moved right behind Father Hawk and his wing lightly touched Father Hawk’s back. But by then, Father Hawk decided to push off. Sunjata’s wing moved on Father Hawk’s back with his fall, but in seconds, Father Hawk was plummeting far below Sunjata’s touch. The air and wing rustled him in his plummet. Father Hawk spread open his wings, riding on the propulsion of air.
He tucked his head and tilted his wing, turning their front below, and their back up. He tilted his whole body to the right, eyes locked on the snake above the water.
Below was the stillness, interrupted by a whirlpool of the snake’s movement. The water gurgled, frothed and rippled around its path.
Father Hawk swooped, diving headfirst for the snake.
He neared the snake and its slimy thickness revealed itself. It was actually a very dark shade of grey and under the faint sunlight, tiny spots of reflected light danced all over its wriggling body.
Father Hawk soared within mere inches of the snake and caught soft susurrant whispers that, despite their low volume, pierced Father Hawk’s ear with their repetitive sing-song pattern.
Father Hawk’s concentrated frown wavered for a bit and his eyes widened warily as his descent seemed to slow in time. The hissing whispers were eerie, unsettling and venomous in their weakening hold on Father Hawk, entering his body like fumes, breaking his concentration.
The sounds stopped as the grey snake dipped its head into the water and began slithering back under.
Father Hawk could hear the flapping of his Eagle comrades above him and that broke him out of his uncertainty. Animals behind him. For him. Supporting him. Father Hawk had them. He could do this.
Father Hawk dropped his claws and dipped them into the water, clamping down on the tail end of the snake which was still on the water’s surface.
The lake was chilly and its sloshing frigidity swamped his feet. But his claws were quickly back up in the air.
The water below splashed excitedly and came up in foaming spurts above the bent, rippling surface due to the snake’s ceaseless writhing, twisting and slapping on the water.
“Hurry!” screamed Sunjata. “Wrestle it to submission! Flap! Flap! Fly away!”
Father Hawk clenched harder on the wriggling snake, feeling it grow limp in return. He flapped harder and he swung his body to and fro, rising substantially with each thump of his wings.
At this lake and amid these trees where all was quiet and mostly still mere seconds ago. Where critters sulked behind bark and under plants. Where creatures of the water bathed and dominated below a still surface only interrupted by the most momentary of gentle ripples.
Here, the scene caused by Father Hawk was a thunderous storming ruckus. Waters splashed and churned where the shadowsnakes had attempted to escape from Father Hawk.
Determined, he flapped as hard as he could and lifted his head to the sky, only allowing the jagged tips of leafy green treetops to enter his vision.
The shadowsnake’s hissing returned. It arched its neck around from below, bending its neck to look at Father Hawk and began flicking its tongue.
Father Hawk panicked and held the shadowsnake down, clenching harder on its scaly grey body. He pressed as hard as he could with his claws and inadvertently, pushing his claws forth, away from himself, his flapping wings moved backwards.
By the time he noticed his backwards movement, it was too late. His second of hesitation brought on by his observation cost him flight and Father Hawk immediately flapped frantically. His wings beat speedily, but in a shorter depth.
He dug his claws into the flesh of the shadowsnakes and shook his feet, trying to disorient it. The snake’s head jiggled in stiff movements. In the shaking, the hissing blared in intervals, whenever the snake’s head whipped towards Father Hawk.
Nevertheless, the hissing was deafening and earsplitting. It consumed his hearing, penetrating it. Father Hawk could hear the shouts of his Eagle comrades, but their language was unintelligible to him over the noise of the hissing.
When the hissing practically became a gushing, overwhelming sound, the water beneath the ripples repeatedly and then suddenly burst into arrays of bubbles, fizzing, popping and always reappearing. From underneath came a gurgling sound. Seemingly thousands of spuming bubbles dotted the water. They were steaming grey warts and heat emanated from them.
His vision fuzzied, first at the edges, then slowly centering across. Eventually, he was rendered sightless except for blurry masses of sifting colors. Black and white objects danced and waved across his vision around a thin writhing black snape. The Eagles were wrestling with the snake which appeared to be in a wild dance for a bite of Father Hawk.
Father Hawk writhed almost as much as the snake he clutched. He jerked, twisting his limbs and torso and flinching every time the snake’s head bent towards him, whether it bent up, around or under. However, with time, Father Hawk weakened and slowly grew tired.
The bubbling turned to a deafening roar and the hissing to an electrifying, overwhelming crackle.
One of the black and white masses of the Eagles screeched and opened its beak, baring it at the shadowsnake. The snake hissed and flinched, turning its head back. As soon as its head was positioned away from the Eagle, he grasped at the snake’s body.
The heat below grew stronger and more immediate. Father Hawk was flapping, slower and slower. The weaker and less forceful his wings became, the closer to the boiling water he got. And the closer to the water, the weaker he became, befuddled and scorched.
The hot wave baked his back and shooting droplets of froth seared his feathers, inflicting a burning sensation that crawled all over.
Meanwhile, the Eagle who’d grasped the snake had managed to tighty clutch it, squeezing it. She was supported by two other Eagles, one who had grabbed hold of its middle, and the other who squeezed its neck. They were all positioned to the right, keeping away from a flailing and trashing snake head that hissed through a wide open mouth. The hiss was high pitched and coarser in its helplessness.
The Eagles flapping around the three Eagles pulling at the snake, yelled something to Father Hawk, but it was completely drowned out by the desperate and frantic hissing of the snake and the roar of the nearing water.
The battle was blurring to Father Hawk every second. He made out a long red bar flicking out of the snake’s head, but what he identified as its tongue soon narrowed to a thin red blur.
Panic. Fear.
“What am I doing?”
Father Hawk barely flapped his wings. The lower part of his body slumped, nearing his proximity to the water.
The hissing snake and roaring water seemed to be fumes for his ears, wrapping around his mind and intoxicating him with melancholy and vexation.
“I knew I couldn’t do this.”
He was being immersed in a bath of hot air. And the more he bathed, the more fearful he became. The closer he got to the water, the angrier he became. The more helpless he felt.
He hated Mother Hawk for pushing him away with her misery and anger. The winged shapes and the squirming line of the snake turned into nearly indistinguishable blurs. Finally, the frenetic shapes of the black and white Eagles lifted off with the snake, wrangling it out of Father Hawk’s claws. He had finally let go when he grew tired of the Eagle’s tugging.
A series of barking noises pierced the day, breaking through the clamor around Father Hawk.
He knew he couldn’t resist. Who was he? Not an Eagle trained from birth.
He was nothing but a foolish god, broken of his goodhood.
The bubbling water and its roar overtook everything else, cutting off the barking.
Father Hawk fell.
The world above him washed over. Flying water covered the edges of his sight and singed the bottom of his body.
And most of all, Father Hawk decided, he hated the Huntsman.
The shadowlake’s frothing waters of darkness submerged him.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) is a refreshing action movie in the era of the Disney blockbuster empire. It pulls from the cult classic original Blade Runner (1982) to revitalize the art in action movies. 2049’s director Denis Villeneuve is among today’s best filmmakers and science fiction storytellers. His follow up to Ridley Scott’s original lives up to its legacy and succeeds on every level.
Every element of this movie is awesome and masterful: The production design. The acting. The cinematography. The sound design. The editing. And of course, the story.
Ryan Gosling takes a challenging “unhuman” role and makes it sympathetic. Like Harrison Ford in the original Blade Runner, he’s charismatic, but portrays a cold and hardened masculinity resulting from a dystopian noir cyberpunk world.
Blade Runner launched cyberpunk, the subgenre of sci-fi which portrays worlds and stories of technological and scientific advancement that are simultaneous with social decay. Blade Runner 2049 expands on the cyberpunk aesthetic and themes of the original while staying true to its origins.
Like its predecessor, 2049 is a detective story—gone wrong. On the job, officer K (Gosling) discovers a world-changing truth about the state of humans and replicants, synthetically created humans. He begins to question his authorities and his own existence following the discovery of a replicant skeleton who did what only humans were thought to be capable of: give birth.
Neither K nor the viewer gets an answer to the first movie’s question about Ford’s character Rick Deckard’s possible replicant identity, retaining its ambiguity. Los Angeles is still a dystopian city with an oppressive and congested atmosphere. Only, it’s snowier, and the distracting neon apparatuses, looming architecture and flying cars have all been made sleeker and more sophisticated to reflect the 30 years that have passed. In 2049, neon entertainment and news holograms are projected onto fog.
K’s survival often depends on his quickness with a gun and his cold cruelty. Luckily for him, he was designed to strictly obey orders. Gosling is expressionless for much of the movie. Many early scenes indicate discomfort, stress or tension through slight facial contortions and tightenings.
Various socioeconomic demographics and geographies of 2049 are presented in K’s work, taking him throughout the city and its outskirts. The world is bigger than the original’s.
Of the most visually striking and atmospheric parts is the remnant of Las Vegas where a dirty bomb went off. K slowly walks through a deserted land choked with orange gas. Out of the gas appear large erotic statues. It’s eerie and haunting, one of many visuals that linger in your mind as it tries to parse through the images and understand them.
2049 is thought provoking, immersive and warrants more than one viewing.
G.R. Nanda 
