Hunters of the Sky

Polly worked her way up to the brink of the mountain, where the rock simply stops and the sea begins several hundred dizzying metres below. From that height the waves were reduced to faint white stitching on blue cloth.

Warm air streamed up the face of the cliff in an invisible river. Polly spread her wings and the updraft took her at once, lifting her as effortlessly as if the mountain itself had exhaled.

An eagle slid into place beside her, white-bellied and utterly unhurried. It never once beat its wings; it simply leaned on the wind and let the cliff carry it, a hunter so at home in the air that flying looked like standing still.

Then a falcon came down past her like a dropped blade, cutting the air apart. Polly laughed into the wind and let it sweep her higher, one more hunter of the sky for a morning.