Lunar Characters: Talks-to-Sky
Sacred Hunt: Snowy Owl
Hunting a bird was a daunting challenge. Oh, not hunting birds, that was a simple enough matter of patience and skill. Talk-to-Sky had all the tools, blunted arrows designed specifically for hunting birds and she'd lived for weeks on ptarmigan alone in her wanderings before. No hunting birds wasn't particularly difficult, but hunting 'a' bird? A specific individual that could fly away to anywhere and left no tracks of its passage when flying? That was an entirely different level of difficulty. Even a hunter of Sky's skill couldn't track a bird on the wing, and she'd picked a particularly elusive prey for her sacred hunt. One of the great white owls of the tundra, a glossy, beautiful specimen. It had been a challenge every step of the way even though Sky herself could fly as well, which might have been the only reason three days into her hunt she was still following the same bird successfully. Now though, now that she knew the bird's pattern, could feel its soul in her pulse, now she could conclude her hunt.
As night fell, Sky's tiny fire crackled merrily while she made her preparations for the morrow. She'd watched Uppik return to his nest before flying upwind to her tiny camp. It was time for meditation and contemplation of her prey, of its strength and beauty, to explain in prayer to Luna why she was worthy to claim the form of the snow-white owl she had chosen. To catalog what she had learned during her sacred hunt. Closing her eyes, Sky knelt facing the eastern horizon where Luna was just beginning to brighten the night sky with her presence. "Sacred Luna, White Bone Shaman, Queen of Hunters, hear my prayer." Talk-to-Sky was no priest and it showed in her efforts, a simple conversation with an intangible deity rather than a carefully crafted entreaty full of respect for the god's station. No, Sky talked to Luna like she would have her father, simple straightforward words. Perhaps they were heard, perhaps not, but she explained all that she had learned of Uppik in her hunt, of his territory, diet, habits, and quirks. A sense of calm came over her, the same sort of calm that came with a drawn bow, the stillness of sighting down the arrow at her target as she finished her prayers and meditated the night away on the secrets of the Snowy Owl, waiting for dawn and the finale of her hunt. Hunger and thirst gnawed at her, but she remained steadfast, ignoring the pangs of mortality as she sought communion with her next meal.
Uppik rose early to begin his hunt and so too did Sky, taking wing in the form of a glossy black-brown eagle, soaring upward until even her supernaturally sharp eyes were having trouble picking out details on the ground below. High enough that the biting cold of the morning air seeped through her feathers as she soared over the landscape, eyes looking for motion on the tundra below. Hours passed, her muscles growing stiff from the cold before she first saw the shadow of the owl below her, sweeping across the landscape on his own hunt. Adrenaline warmed her, sharpening her vision and sending a fresh ripple of motion through the long pinions that bore her aloft. Changing course Alithea began her stalk in earnest, broad wings pumping as she got into position. It would have to come once the hunter himself found prey, when he was on the ground. Wings tucked in and the eagle descended, close enough now to see the tundra, to follow the owl's hunt as it continued until finally, Uppik stooped down on something, probably one of the lemmings that hid in the short grass. That was her moment, and the eagle's broad wings tucked in as she stooped into a steep dive, the wind rushing past her with a building roar as she fell from the sky, claws extended to strike...
Owl, she decided as another chunk of tissue disappeared into her beak, tasted awful. Still, as Uppik's heart was swallowed and with it his form, a little awfulness was worth it to gain the form of the majestic hunter of the white wastes.
