Silence.
No, not silence, but a loss of noise! My mind is clear!
My nose assails me with the scent of growing plants. Strange plants, but green as the grasses of the plains; green as the forests of Sau’du. Other things too; warm and active; hungry and feeding.
How do I know this?
… Yes!
… Life!
I live!
But where? How? I hear no sound such as I heard in the craft. I smell no aromas such as where I lay prisoner. I feel… a branch beneath my chest—as though lying in one of the nest trees of the tribe. But this is no tree of the tribe. The bark is rough; the perfume heavy and hard, rich and strong. But not one that could stand up to the storms. It feels… stiff… brittle. It feels like… a Mountain tree!
I open my eyes in shock and stare around. Pardu! To rest in Pardu country, to be found in one of their trees… Almost certain death if discovered! But… This is not mountain country. At least, not such as the Pardu live in.
I lie high in a tree taller than any I’ve ever known, over eight wingspans tall and only three or four wingspans across. The trunk is slender. I could easily wrap my wings around it with at least an arm’s length of overlap. The bark looks almost scaly, rough, jagged chunks that break off easily in my hand… at least, some of them. Thick, green leaves as large as my hand and a deeper green than I’m used to, but no shiny coating that makes the nest tree leaves so useful as platters for our meals. Their shape is jagged too, much like the tree itself, though very regular. I learn later that the natives of this world call it an oak tree and value it for its strength and the beauty of its finished wood.
It stands alone in a clearing little broader than the height of the tree. Beneath its boughs the ground is covered with golden grasses maybe as tall as my waist while within its branches I sense many life forms, mostly similar to the herd-birds of Saudu but also tiny herbivores that live within its bole and feed off of its seeds. Above the tree I sense a raptor—no, two raptors; a mated pair. Their minds seem so like those of Sau’du, yet when I espy them through the leaves they bear only two wings not too different from my own though of a dark grey/brown color rather than the reddish plumage I am used to or even the wood-brown color of my sisters’ wings.
As I watch, one of them stoops, diving into the grasses of the clearing in a clean strike punctuated by a strange squealing sound before flapping hard to lift its prey and carry it away while its mate continues to hunt. The raptor’s call is harsh and carries well, the squealing then the cry of the prey upon being struck. It strikes me then that everything I have seen so far bears only four limbs, whether it be bird or beast. The birds wings are broader and thicker of chord much like my own, while the beast seem to have no defense against them other than their coloring which blends into the background of the earth below.
About this time my own hunger pangs assail me. I must eat and eat soon. Already I am weak and likely unable to fly far in my hunt. I shift my position, grasping the branch beneath me with my toes much as the raptor grasped its prey, the larger, opposable toe wrapping around behind to cling to that support. I expand my mind, seeking any prey as large as the rabbit now on its way to the raptors’ nest, or larger if I can find it. But all I sense in the immediate vicinity is already driven below ground by the hunters or are hunters themselves asleep or waiting for darkness.
Flexing my knees I leap straight up, using my telekinesis to rise through the branches and pierce the thick mat of leaves before spreading my wings and angling away from the sun, keeping it behind me as I hunted with eyes and mind. Unlike the raptors I flew in broad curves rather than circling, my path resembling that of a serpent crawling across the ground.
For a moment I almost forgot my hunt as I saw the world below me for the first time. Immediately below lay rolling hills—mountains to some—covered in forests of many kinds of trees and broken with streams and strange paths. Trees covered the tops of most of these hills but many spans away, at least one handspan or hour’s flight away, rose an odd mushroom-shaped structure with a curved growth going from the ground up to its broad cap. The structure seemed almost white, but grey and weathered with age. The trails I espied also seemed strange, a dark grey material marked down the center by yellow stripes. I was too hungry to investigate now, but it made ever clearer that I was not on Sau’du. At least, not the Sau’du I knew.
I returned to my hunt, soon finding a four-legged creature with long, spindly limbs and broad ears. Of a pale brown color, it seemed unconcerned as I approached and died easily as I struck with my claws and twisted the neck while pulling on its muzzle with my telekinesis in a clean break. Sinking my claws deeper into its neck muscles, I lifted with my TK and flew back to the tree where I awoke just as the raptor had carried its prey to its nest.
Rather than trying to land in the tree, I settled to the ground beneath it, discovering my sky-blue leather and the rest of my possessions lying at its base, unseen before because they lay on the side opposite the the branch I awoke on. I took the time then to don my clothing and fasten my knife and my pouch at my hips before preparing my meal. It’s not like I needed them to protect myself, but they gave me the sense of sapience and signaled to others my standing as Priestess of the Web. The other decorations once tied into my fur or wrapped around my tail were long gone, no perceptible trace they had ever been placed there.
For the next hour I carefully prepared myself a fireplace beneath the branches of the tree, bringing stones from a nearby stream and scraping a circle around the fireplace clear of dry leaves, twigs and other flammable materials. These I used to create a quick nest for embers, shredding some of the grasses down to mere threads as tinder in the center of the nest. Flying up into the tree itself I sought the dead twigs and branches, breaking the smaller ones free with my hands and lowering them to the ground silently with my TK. I finally moved out beyond the clearing to seek heavier branches already on the ground to dry and use as fuel while cooking my prey. By the time I was done, I had a modest stack of wood that should last long enough to cook the beast and, if I had chosen correctly, make almost no smoke visible beyond the clearing. What smoke remained I expected the tree to filter and diffuse, hiding any sign of my presence.
Next I dug a broad pit at the edge of the clearing downwind of the tree. I carried the beast over and gutted it, dropping the entrails and other portions I wouldn’t use into the pit and burying them before skinning it and using the hide as a bag to carry the rest back to my campfire. I immediately skewered a haunch and hung it over the fire to cook while I set aside a second haunch and cradled the rest in a crotch of the tree a good three wingspans from the ground.
By now the sun had passed its zenith and lay about halfway down towards the horizon. During this entire time I had not sensed any predator large enough to worry me, nor had I sensed any sentient life form. The forest seemed an idyllic place to live and I felt safe from the dangers so prevalent on Sau’du. I now had time to study my surroundings better and realized that this world seemed milder than my own. The sky above seemed a milky blue, not nearly as intense as the blue of my home and the overall scent of the air seemed somehow smoky, though more acrid and oily than the fire which burned merrily beneath me on the ground.
From my perch in the tree I could see more of the sky beyond the edges of the clearing and frequently saw white streaks expand across from one horizon to another, tipped with some silvery thing that left the streak as a spoor in the air. On one occasion one of these things flew nearly overhead many, many wingspans above, leaving a clear crackling rumble of sound while venting two trails of white from pods beneath its rigid wings, looking only a little different from the craft that kidnapped me from the plains of my home.
Always I kept my mind open, seeking still for any sign of predator that might desire to steal my dinner or even consider me as prey. As a result, long before it revealed itself, I knew that something was aware of my fire and approached from downwind. Not unlike the minds of the creatures who kidnapped me, the mind seemed organized around certain symbols. Yet these symbols seemed different and unlike those the others had projected. It’s images and feelings seemed more on a par with my sisters, though still not so coherent as to be considered a Sending.
