rivercrow

I watched Doug wind his way through the magazine racks and leave the store, the I started pawing through the hemp knapsack I drag with me everywhere. I keep a Moleskine pocket notebook and a click Bic pen with me at all times, just in case of inspiration. And to aid a lapsing memory. I drummed the pen on the table top.

When confronted with a blank page, my first instinct is to doodle. Usually the doodles end up as drawings of critters. Today was no exception….

And so the story started.

Lorida relaxed on the broken branch. She’d evaded the pack of dogs that had driven her into the first tree, but trees connect to trees and she’d easily moved far enough away and up that the dogs had lost her scent. The more tenacious of them were still at the base of the tree, clawing at the trunk, attempting to follow her. No matter. She stretched out across the branch and dangled all four limbs downward and considered.

She’d lost contact with her travel party the night before. Being groundborn–a bad birth defect for a flighted species–she’d always had trouble keeping up with her peers. Migrations were especially difficult. The groups moved fast, driven by instinct and seasonal change, and groundborns usually died off within a few years of becoming too big to be carried by concerned family members. At her age–twenty-three years–she was a veteran, a long-timer, she’d fended for herself for eight migrations, and her odds for survival increased as she got older and bigger. She was strong enough to take on a smaller pack of dogs, but the group of thirty or more had been too much. She shuddered off the memory of the snarling, frothing jaws and raised her head enough to gaze around and get her bearings.

The Morid River wasn’t too far. She could see the closer side of its broad, red expanse. That the water was still so muddy suggested she hadn’t gone far enough to the tidal flats to use the coast as a guide. She’d feel better on the open sand where she could see attacks before they came…still, being in the forest gave her an upward escape route. Until she was well away from the fresh water the open sea wouldn’t be safe. Too many dangers lived in the brackish waters of the estuaries and surrounds, protected by the reeds and mud.

So. The safest path was arboreal. Once Lorida got to the Morid River, then she needed to wait for the hot part of the day to swim across. With any luck, she’d find a log that could support her. Any closer to the river’s delta, and the crossing would take that much longer and be that much more dangerous.

She plotted a route through the trees, as straight as could be, to the river. She guessed she’d reach the banks near midnight and would need to wait for another twelve hours before starting the swim. No matter. The trees were filled with nesting birds, so she’d snack along the way. Lorida pulled herself onto the branch. Might as well start now. She made the leap to the trunk of the next tree.

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