Megaera

Tallsun had come to the Throat with an unexpected fury. All across the desert, the mighty sun beat down and by midday the heat was almost unbearable anywhere outside the shade of the oasis. Perhaps wiser creatures might have been content to remain home and hunker down to beat the heat but, Megaera still had some wising up to do. Just a sweep of the northern border was all she intended when she had risen in the early morning. Just a quick check and she’d return to the shade, she told herself, but the sun had reached its peak and Meg still flew lazily along the coast. Where the canyon once had been was now mostly a stretch of sandy shore, but there were placed the old red rocks rose high above the water, a jarring cliff between land and sea. It was at one of these craggy cliffs that Megaera found a life-changing pile of mud and twigs jammed onto a jutting rock, and on that wide nest (for a nest it had once been) was a scene of carnage.

Meg had been listlessly floating on thermals, enjoying the cooling breeze of the ocean when the nest had caught her attention. It was an awful sight, about forty meters in front of her. The structure of sticks was half torn away, hanging over the crashing waves below and there were feathers everywhere, some white, but others of black and a rich brown that matched her own wings almost exactly. Not carcass had been left, but there were smears on the rock of a darker red than earth. In the center, a pile of speckled white eggshells lay, crushed, their contents long sucked away by some nasty predator. It wasn’t a pleasant sight overall, and it had been a while, from the looks of things, since there was anything Meg could have done. Shaking her head in pity for the departed family there, the mare decided it was past time that she be headed back to the oasis. A shift of feathers and she altered course to head inland, passing directly over where the nest had sat.

If she hadn’t looked down again at the exact right moment, the warrior would have missed the smooth pale curve of the unbroken egg. It was a second before Meg realized exactly what she had seen and she finally came down into a skidding landing (though she was getting better at those) Already 50 feet from the edge of the cliff, she immediately about-faced and marched back. Using a good deal more caution than she normally did and not enough as she probably should have, Megaera stood at the precipice and craned her neck over the brink to look down again. It must have been nudged, rolled away and then forgotten about in the activity that had crushed its two fellows. The egg was not even as big as her hoof, and it lay tucked in a shady corner of the cliff face half-covered in feathers. Surely whatever life insie of it was gone by now, the mare thought with a twinge of sadness. It the trauma of the attack hadn’t dome it than surely this heat, it had been exposed to long. With a sigh, Meg made to turn away, already shuffling her wings in preparation to return to the sky.

She stopped.

Even in the years to come she would never be able to describe what had made her hesitate. The strange feeling that her conscious mind could hardly sense, that… tug upon her heart that mad her turn back. The darkly crowned head lifted and black eyes caught a swife glimpse of the wonferful and terrible sun that ruled this land as she considered. Reason told her to go on, to find some shade and some water…Meg rarely cared much for reason at this point in her life. With almost an exasperated sigh, she turned and peered over the edge again. The little white thing was only about three feet down, could she reach it? Well, no reason not to try now, she told herself. Slowly, carefully, the rough and tough fighter settled herself delicately on her knees above the cliff-face. Flakes of sand and small stones crumbled away as she leaned her neck down and over. Behind her, her massive wings stretched back for a counterweight.

This was a really stupid idea.

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Notes: Egg Finding!!
Tags: @[Hertz] because semper said she wanted to crash <3

faithful like a soldier