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The Book of Life
Topic Started: Oct 27 2016, 09:15 PM (2,432 Views)
Sheather
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Dawn

She sits on the edge of the cliff, raising her head towards the infinite sky above. The air at this altitude is cool but the sun is bright. She closes her eyes for a fleeting moment, letting the warmth soak into her plumage, the wind to gently pass along her body, parting the short filaments on her throat like a mother's loving touch, before she glances behind her again. There, a weathered collection of debris that has been the only home she has so far known lies beneath an alcove of stone and moss, where the rain and wind never reached. The bowl-shaped mass of sticks and the bleached and splintered remnants of creatures whose stories have come to their conclusion, where mother kept her warm in the night and where father brought hot meals by day. The nest - her place of safety for so many days and night, still draws her in. She has turned away from the cliff's edge and steps softly back to the edge of the shallow cave to check on the nest site periodically throughout the morning, but something prevents her from going back inside. The dark, quiet space, stained as the stone all around it is with the dried chalky stains of her droppings and crusted blood of many mealtimes, still brings her some semblance of comfort, and yet it no longer quite feels the same without her parents there alongside her, nuzzling her, protecting her. For many days already her parents have both begun to leave the nest in the morning and not return until night, and she was content to wait alone for their return with the day's successful catch to fill her tummy, but on this day she is restless, albeit not even she knows why. There is a feeling budding in her young body that she has never felt before, a drive that at times almost overtakes her. A drive to go, to spread her wings, to leave the only home she has so far known in her lifetime. As if a switch inside her as suddenly been flicked, she is no longer content to rest. Without a final backwards glance, the young empress turns back around to face the open sky and steps off of the ledge.

The prologue now over, chapter one begins.

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Sheather
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Dawn

Dawn steps backward as the unseen something comes shuffling closer and closer to her rock until her thumbs grip the edge of the boulder. She watches, helpless, as a large gray pig-like animal with a heavy orange beak trundles toward her out of the bush and meets her gaze. It is not taller than herself but it is heavier, with a sausage-shaped body and four relatively short, thin legs. Its head is proportionally large and its beak, much larger than her own, gives the impression that it could very easily break a limb were it to get a hold of her. The animal whets its bill against the boulder and snorts loudly, circling along the base of the large stone twice, sniffing the ground, before it notices the ledge that it can gain purchase on and begins to climb up. With her plumage fluffed up and her head held low, she perches along the edge of the other side of the rock and cries out loudly and repeatedly. Sightly put off by the wailing noise, the quarbird pauses as it reaches the top of the rock in front of her and looks around for a moment before deciding to still go ahead and charge.

Spoiler: click to toggle


It doesn't bite her, but it shoves her hard, sending her to the ground. She stands quickly and runs toward the herd of bronkjirds, which retreat in tight formation, as the quarbird vaults itself off the boulder and runs after her, snorting audibly. On level ground she would be a fairly capable runner, but this isn't level ground. Hills, mole hills, stones and brush impede her escape. Her pursuer, low to the ground and better suited to the terrain, catches up in seconds. She turns to face the boar-like animal with her beak wide open, ready to strike out if it comes within range, but it doesn't stop moving. It begins to run a tight circle around, doubling back, trying to lunge and land a blow with its deadly bill on her backside away from the beak. She gets ahead of every strike, several times knocking the quarbird's bill away with her own, but it is persistent. She hisses and screams and as the conflict becomes increasingly life or death she begins to make her own aggressive lunges, aiming for the quarbird's neck and sides. She lands a bite onto the back of its neck after many attempts and finds herself behind the animal, out of its own range to fight back. She holds tight, even as the assailant throws her side to side like a rag doll. If she releases, it will turn to kill her, but if she does not, it may shake her to death. If she falls down, it's over. She bites down with all her strength and digs her talons into the quarbird's back, pulling herself on top of the animal, and suddenly finds herself at advantage. It shrieks and bucks, trying to dislodge the unwelcome rider, but Dawn holds firm, driving her claws deep into its sides and flapping her wings to keep balance as the quarbird spins and kicks beneath her. Only once she has a firm grip with her feet does she let go with her bill, looking around from her frantic, bucking perch. She has no idea where to go from here. There is no way she could actually kill this animal, even though she has put herself in the best position to if she could. For a few long moments she anxiously rides the bucking beast until it suddenly rolls sideways with a lurch and a squeal, shoving her off into the dirt.

What happens immediately after is a blur. It takes a few moments for the shock of the impact to lessen enough for her to get a grasp of the situation. There is a lot of shrieking and the clacking of bills... the quarbird's at least, but not hers. No, she was lying on her side on the ground. Her aggressor has not gone in for the killing blow, something has intervened.

All goes quiet for a moment as Dawn raises her head. The quarbird lies still in the grass, its head twisted backward at an unnatural angle.

Standing tall above it, mom.



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The Gaiaverse

| Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands |


Other Spec Evo

| Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur

A Wholesome and Good Thing

| Sam |
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Sphenodon
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Calcareous

dang kids these days, leaving home without telling anybody and going and getting themselves into trouble

We have a Discord server! If you would like to join, simply message myself, Flisch, or Icthyander.
Some of my ideas (nothing real yet, but soon):
Refugium: A last chance for collapsing ecosystems and their inhabitants.
Pansauria: A terraforming project featuring the evolution of exactly one animal - the marine iguana.
Mars Renewed: An insight into the life of Mars thirty million years after its terraforming by humankind.
Microcosm: An exceedingly small environment.
Alcyon: A planet colonized by species remodeled into new niches by genetic engineering.
Oddballs: Aberrant representatives of various biological groups compete and coexist.

..and probably some other stuff at some point (perhaps a no K-T project). Stay tuned!
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DINOCARID
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Adolescent
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I have a feeling these will become very emotional eventually.
Check out my deviantart here
Projects
The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms
The Tetrarch (coming soon)


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Victorbrine
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Adult
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This... is...



FABULOUS





sorry for the big letters...
“There's a tree," Starflight said, jumping to his feet. "In the forest."
"No way," Glory said. "A tree in the forest?”


"Ce corps qui s'appelait et qui s'appelle encore le saint empire romain n'était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire." -Voltaire

"So if you wake up in the morning and it's a particularly beautiful day you'll know we made it."
-Capa

"One of those capsules hit a wing." Victor said. "Had to do an emergency landing." He pointed to a crumpled plane a couple dozen meters behind him and shrugged. "Not my most elegant landing."
-me in Flisch's story "Spec Evo: Void Entry" (Act 3)

"but by rule 34 of the multiverse, if it exists, there’s a world full of it." -Tet

"I must ask you to leave now." -Everyone (not realy though) in Flisch's story "Spec Evo: Void Entry"

Projects Status

My Blog (SE Blog)

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyBzYPIsLp0uHoPtT6ZEyww
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trex841
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Entity
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DINOCARID
Nov 10 2016, 11:55 AM
I have a feeling these will become very emotional eventually.
I have a clip at the ready for when it happens.
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs
A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team.

At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
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DroidSyber
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I'll cut ya swear on me mum
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DINOCARID
Nov 10 2016, 11:55 AM
I have a feeling these will become very emotional eventually.
I think already has
Non Enim Cadunt!

No idea how to actually hold down a project.
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Sphenodon
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Calcareous

When you think of it, Skipper's whole life has an emotional background. No parents and stuck in an unfamiliar, cruel world full of beetles.

We have a Discord server! If you would like to join, simply message myself, Flisch, or Icthyander.
Some of my ideas (nothing real yet, but soon):
Refugium: A last chance for collapsing ecosystems and their inhabitants.
Pansauria: A terraforming project featuring the evolution of exactly one animal - the marine iguana.
Mars Renewed: An insight into the life of Mars thirty million years after its terraforming by humankind.
Microcosm: An exceedingly small environment.
Alcyon: A planet colonized by species remodeled into new niches by genetic engineering.
Oddballs: Aberrant representatives of various biological groups compete and coexist.

..and probably some other stuff at some point (perhaps a no K-T project). Stay tuned!
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Sheather
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Dawn

Dawn is overjoyed to see her parent again and rushes to her side, chirruping with excitement as the adult swiftlet lowers its long neck downward, nuzzling the back of its offspring's head with its enormous bill in a comforting gesture. Immediately, the fledgling opens her bill and begins to beg for food, clacking her beak against her mother's intermittently whilst quietly growling. She is famished after her adventure, but mother brings no food. Rather, she pushes her chick's head in the direction of the stricken quarbird, its eyes shut and blood now trickling slowly down its throat. For a moment Dawn steps backward, eyeing the now-still body of the creature that just minutes ago nearly killed her with great apprehension, still very much anticipating the animal to stand back up and charge her again. Mother's attitude is very different; walking ahead of her young, she lowers her head and grabs hold of one of the quarbird's hind legs in her bill while pressing an arm against its stomach, and twists, removing a mouthful of downy feathers and a hearty drumstick fit to feed an army, still hot, the blood still running freely. Any inhibition on Dawn's part is quickly extinguished now, as predator becomes prey. She runs up to her mother, begging vigorously now, but the adult swiftlet ignores her again and lifts the leg of meat out of her reach. She tosses the leg in the air and catches it again, now holding it in a position to swallow. She distends her jaw, tilts back her head, and engulfs the leg whole until it's nothing more than a visible bulge traveling down her neck and into her stomach.

Dawn gets the idea now and turns to the carcass to feed herself. First she tugs on the neck, making little progress, but soon works her around to the flank, where the flesh was now opened and accessible. She begins to pluck tidbits. Soon her mother will take another limb, opening the carcass further to grant her chick access to the most desirable portions; the entrails. Both will feed heartily today, unaware of the three pairs of eyes watching their every action from just a few tens of meters away, in the tall grass near the boulder where Dawn first encountered the creature that would become the carcass she now gorged upon. There, a smaller female quarbird stands stock-still at the edge of the tall grass, two half-grown chicks, their plumage pale and patterned with white speckles, flanking her on either side and cocking their head in quizzical looks. After a few minutes one begins to cry out softly only to be shoved aside by the mother's beak and quiet down. The family, now one fewer in number, eventually turn away into the thicket, while the larger griffons dismember their patriarch. He was brought down striving to protect his family and though he did not survive the encounter, in this he succeeded, for so satiated now were the swiftlets that they would not hunt again today. Nevertheless, the female must now pick up the slack feeding the chicks.

It will be a difficult task in the best of circumstances.

~~~

After some time, when the carcass had been picked to little more than a rib cage and both mother and child are stuffed to capacity, Dawn's mother decides it's time to move off again, before scavengers come to find the remains. With a full stomach lift-off is a bit difficult and requires a running start before a quadrupedal vault, making use of both the immense forelimbs and the small hind legs, launches the adult swiftlet just high enough into the air to manage a half wing beat and gain a minuscule amount of additional height. Her second wingbeat hits the tips of the grass, but by her third she has lost contact with the ground all together and begun rising into the heavens. She does not wait for her chick at all - if she has managed to leave the nest on her own, she can keep up now. Dawn panics at the sight of her mother leaving again and runs after her, crying as if to say "no, wait up!", but her mother doesn't wait. Soon she is thirty feet above the ground, gaining speed. Her panic-stricken offspring sprints after her, calling out plaintively, until she can run no faster.

Faster... faster...

Higher...


Coming to a creek, she leaps into the air and flaps her wings, finding that she gains enough lift to glide several meters and overcome the obstacle. She can still see her mother but she is high in the air, now circling her, responding to her calls but not returning. Why isn't she returning?

Dawn jumps again and flaps her wings, takes three strokes, and rises off the grass. She flaps frantically and gains a little more altitude... soon she finds herself in the air, the ground many meters below her. As she gains height, moving in an upward spiral, she finds that the warm air rising up from the plains below begin to help her, and she slows her wing strokes to compensate. As she gains her bearings, she sees her mother drop down from above and level herself just ahead. She leads her new young pilot through several more circles, gaining height with each lap, until gradually turning away and gliding off over the plains, further away from Dawn's mountain nest. Having officially received her pilot's license, she will not return to her childhood home again.

She follows closely behind her mother, lining herself up in the larger adult's slipstream to lessen the air resistance ahead of her. They are now level with the lowest rain clouds that cast lumpy shadows that run along the ground beneath them. They've climbed now many thousands of feet above the plains below, yet Dawn finds she can still see sharply every shape below her in such clarity that they might as well be just below. Between the immense rolling shadows gallop the herds of bronkjirds, while groups of quarbirds gathering to drink near watering holes and smaller swiftlets moving in flocks just above the grass. Above her, she sees an endless blue sky, broken up only with a few fair weather clouds. The sun is warm and pleasant on her feathers, the wind gently parting the feathers on her head like it did as she stood on the edge of her natal refuge, the very last time she'd ever do so. She's done it. She's flying.

And it's brilliant.

But for all she's experienced so far, her story still is only just beginning.

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The Gaiaverse

| Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands |


Other Spec Evo

| Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur

A Wholesome and Good Thing

| Sam |
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