Amber's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

By dusk Amber had not chosen. She crouched by the hidden nest until her legs shook, and the shake was not from fear. It was hunger. She had not eaten since the day she split the clutch. Two days. Her tongue felt thick. The edges of the ferns blurred when she turned her head too fast. She could smell the tyrant's sour trail on the west wind, and under it she could smell her own weakness. A raptor who could not see straight could not guard anything. She left the nest before full dark and ran east, away from the scent line, toward the lean-to she had built two seasons ago at the base of a split rock. It was only branches lashed to four posts, roofed with bark, but it broke her shape against the trees and gave her a place to crouch while she watched the low ground. From there she had taken three kills last spring. She slid under the peak and waited. The ground in front of the shelter still held the marks of her last hunt. A scatter of gnawed bones lay half buried in leaves where she had dragged a small ornithopod down and eaten it through the night. Past the bones stood the marker she had built after that kill, four leg bones lashed crossways to a longer one, driven into the dirt. Her mother had taught her to set markers at good ground. Good ground was rare. You did not forget it. A hare came out of the brush at moonrise. It stopped to sniff the old bones. Amber's legs were stiff and her vision swam, and she almost moved too early. She held. The hare took two more steps. She came out from under the bark roof in one push and caught it against the marker post before it could turn. The neck broke under her foot. She ate where she stood, fast, swallowing fur and all, until her stomach pulled tight and the shake in her legs eased. She was licking blood off her claws when the ground moved. A slow, heavy thud, then another. Not close. Across the low ground, maybe two hundred paces west. She flattened against the split rock and watched. Between the trees a shape passed, taller than any tree trunk she could see around it, head low, tail swinging level with its spine. It was not following her. It was walking the river line, north to south, steady. It had not smelled the kill yet. The wind was with her. Amber waited until the thuds faded. Then she ran east, back toward the hidden nest, full-bellied and clear-eyed for the first time in two days. The tyrant was walking the river now. By morning it would be south of her ground, or it would turn and come straight up through the ferns to the false nest. She had fed herself. She had bought one night. She had not bought more.