“Papa, I am tired,” I said.
“Eat some more,” he said, “and then you can go to sleep.” He fed me, and them Mommy fed me. I ate and I ate. And then I slept.
My dreams were horrible. I hurt everywhere, and my head was spinning. I dreamt horrible things, of scrabbling along the ground with others. Strange others, without feathers or wings. They had floppy things all over their bodies, not feathers. All over their bodies except on their faces.
And their faces were strange. They had no beaks. Just ugly flat mouths, and strange nostrils above them. Some were bigger than others, some were very small. Some seemed familiar, but I couldn’t tell where I knew them from.
I hurt. I hurt all over. And the dreams went on and on.
And then my dreams changed. I began to dream of the air. Flying high above the ground, flying among the tops of the mountains. I could feel the air on my wings, I could see the currents in the air.
I flew with Mommy and Papa. I flew high above them. But then, when I was tired, they held me up.
I awoke, sort of. I awoke, but I hurt all over, and I didn’t want to move. “Food,” I cried, and Mommy and Papa fed me and fed me until I fell asleep again.
And I hurt, and I hurt; and I dreamed and I dreamed.
I awoke, again, and was hungry, “Food,” I cried, flapping my wings and raising my beak up high. Papa fed me first, and it had never tasted as good as it did today. Then Mommy, and hers tasted even better.
“Mommy,” I said, “look at my wings!”
I didn’t know why I wanted Mommy to look at my wings, but I was suddenly very proud of them. They fed me some more, and then Papa flew off. I hopped onto the edge of the eyrie and watched him go. I loved watching Papa fly.
He flew farther and farther, but I didn’t have any problem seeing him, no matter how far he went. I watched him swoop down after a rabbit. He looked at me from the ground as he ate the rabbit, and saw me looking at him.
“My son,” he called, and I heard his cry.
I smelled something from behind me. There was the lamb that they had been feeding me. I hopped down and over to it. I held it with my claw and tore at it with my beak.
“Well, isn’t my son getting bigger,” Mommy said, as I nibbled at the meat. But I soon tired of that and she fed me the rest.
I flapped my wings again. I liked flapping my wings. I was so sore, sore all over. And my feathers. They were so small compared to Mommy’s and Papa’s. I felt a bug crawling up under my right wing, and I nabbed it between my feathers. Then I preened myself, enjoying the clean and straight feeling of my feathers.
My feathers all straight and clean, I hopped on the edge again, and looked for Papa. There he was. He was hunting again. I hoped he would get something soon. Mommy was finishing off the lamb, crackling the bones.
“Come, come feed,” she said, and I looked. She had opened the skull, and I hopped down to taste the strange white food inside of it. It was soft, and easy to swallow. Not tough, like the meat had been. Mommy ate some, but mostly she let me eat it. Soon I was full, and tired. Mommy settled herself over me and I went to sleep, as happy a baby Eagle as had ever existed.
I had been flapping back and forth across the nest for days, and finally Papa said I was ready. So now I stood on the edge of the nest, looking out over the abyss. Papa stood beside me, and Mommy flew far below, lazy circles in the wind.
I hopped, and flapped my wings, and settled back. I was scared, and excited. I took another hop, and my feet left the eyrie, just for a second, before they came back down. Papa watched me with one eye, but he didn’t say anything. This was all up to me.
I flapped, and I flapped, and I hopped... and I was off the eyrie! My feet clutched spasmodically, but there was nothing underneath them. I was falling, and flapping but still falling. Then, suddenly, I wasn’t. One flap just felt right. I caught the air just right and lifted me up. Just a little bit, but I knew how to do it now. One more missed flap and then a flap that worked, and another, and another, and now I was out away from the edge and Papa was besides me, “Glide!” he called, and I straightened my wings out.
I wobbled back and forth sharply. I made small changes in small muscles in my wings, trying to correct. Some of them worked, others were too much and I wobbled the other direction. I was going down, but not fast. I was jerking from side to side, but less every minute.
“Are you tired?” Papa asked, and I nodded.
“Fly straight,” he said, and dove beneath me. I tried my best to hold myself straight, but I felt myself jerking back and forth. Straight! Straight! I knew I could do this.
Then I felt his presence below me, changing the way the wind swept around me. I stared straight ahead and could feel it as he came closer and closer. And then, much to my relief, I felt his strong back touch, and then press against my claws.
I kept my wings out, and together we started in a slow circle. The warm air from the valley was rising here, and I could feel Papa shifting his muscles back and forth as he kept us level and soared around and around in the warm updraft. My own wings were catching the air as well, and I tried hard to imitate his motions, as if I was flying on my own.
Suddenly he dropped beneath me. I had a moment of panic, and then leveled out, seeking the thermal on my own. I could see it, see the difference in the air. And I could feel myself being lifted up as I struggled to keep myself in the updraft, struggled to circle gently around its center.
“Good, good,” Papa said from besides me, and my heart glowed.
“Let us go up a bit, and then we will fly back to the eyrie,” he added.
We went up and up, and I followed him back home. He had told me, over and over, how to do the landing, but I rather muffed it. I flew up as he had told me to, and lifted up at the last minute, but my claws caught on the leading edge of the eyrie and I tumbled in.
“Not bad!” Papa said, landing neatly besides me, “I did worse, my first flight. I slammed right into the front edge of the eyrie and my Papa had to grab me and lift me over.
Well, so I hadn’t done badly. I preened myself with pride, stopping every few seconds to look at Papa. “Where is Mommy?” I asked him.
“She stayed below us for the flight, in case you had difficulty. She is hunting now.”
My blood raced, food soon. And not at all too soon for me, Mommy was back with an ugly pink animal.
I pounced on it, and as I tore at it asked, “What is this?”
“A pig,” Mommy said, from where she stood next to Papa, watching me. I ate the liver, and the kidneys, but then I sat back and raised my beak, “food, food!” I called. I didn’t like eating the muscles themselves straight, and so I held my beak while Mommy and Papa fed me.
“I’m full,” I declared at last, “and tired.”
Mommy tore at the pig, while I waited impatiently. “I’m tired,” I said again. Mommy was taking too long! But she finally finished and came and wrapped me up with her large wing, and I slept.
I soared besides Papa, my eyes scanning the ground. “Do you see anything yet?” He asked.
“Not yet, Papa. No, wait, there is something.”
His eyes followed mine, “Good? What is it?”
I focused down on it, “I am not sure. It is bigger than rabbit, and not the same shape. Perhaps a badger?”
“Almost, it is a rock warren. They are hard to hunt, so you have never seen one before. Look, it is gone already, back down its den. Look for something else.”
“There, Papa, there is a goat.”
“Well, yes, but a goat is too large for you to hunt. Look for something else.”
We circled for another half hour before I finally said, “Look, Papa, there is rabbit!”
“Dive!” He said, and I dove. I snapped my wings almost closed, and I dove. I had long practiced this, diving toward the ground and just missing it. but this was the first time I had to add actually grabbing something.
The rabbit saw me at the last second, and jumped. I grabbed and tried to flare and to land all at the same time and basically failed at all of them. I think I hit the rabbit, but I definetly hit the ground, and hard, tumbling head over heels. My beak hit the dirt, and I sat up, spitting and coughing. Ughh, I was filthy, and my feathers were all out of place.
I looked around, and couldn’t see the rabbit. Bother. I had thought I had at least hit it. I began prrening my feathers to cover my annoyance. I hadn’t been doing so long when Papa landed, “Not bad, not bad,” he said.
“I missed,” I said.
“Well, I have seen better landings,” he replied, “but at least you killed the rabbit, and that is the main thing.”
I did NOT want to seem like an idiot, so I stuck my head back under my wing, preening out some dirt stuck there. I had killed the rabbit?
Papa began laughing, and I poked my head in even further. “You’re sitting on it, my son.”
I jumped away, so excited to see my first kill. Sure enough, there it was. I hadn’t really been sittiting on it, it was behind my tailfeathers. I looked at it, poked at it with my bill. It’s neck was broken, I had broken its neck!
Papa was looking over my shoulder, but he didn’t say anything. I pecked at it. And again. Finally I tore it open, and ate it, first the liver and then the rest. I was almost big enough to eat it all in one bite, but not quite.
“Shall we hunt again,” Papa asked.
“Yes, Papa,” I answered. I watched him launch himself off the edge and into the air. I always loved watching Papa fly.
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Von