by T Hearts
IO smiled at the excitable voice of the radio host, picturing the Preternatural spinning wildly in his chair from the comfort of his tin-can motorhome.
She cast a look over to one of her walls which had a huge map of North America pinned to it and traced the various pins and ribbons, and the photos of her sisters and where they dwelt in the country. If he was talking to Sept then it meant that he had taken the roadshow radio out to Colorado, either somewhere in the Rocky Mountains or at Mesa Verde. Next week – she noted to herself, following the ribbon trail of his usual circuit– he would likely be in Arizona to talk to Ashta before coming out to meet IO herself in Texas, then on to Tennessee and Florida to see Zes and then Cinco as he pinballed around the country.
She sighed loudly, walking her fingers across the map to measure the distance between her and her sisters.
San would be visiting her soon, and she hoped that she would stick around long enough for them to be on the show together. It had been so long since she had seen her, and she was flying all the way from California just to visit her in the desert, but she knew that San would get homesick being away from the Zion for so long. If Turtle was coming like she said he was going to, then maybe she would stay a little longer, but it would only be for him.
Relaxing as Cipher rambled on between songs, she let her wild hair down, brushing the pink and black strands back over her wings. Sheading her flight suit, she exchanged it for a single pashmina which she crossed over her shoulders and around her waist, fastening it with a single belt.
Breaking out the pots and pans onto the grill that she had made for herself, she poured in some water to boil for spaghetti and began preparing herself some food for dinner, dancing along to the songs.
She danced her way across the floor and checked on the hydroponic wall which grew of all her vegetables and herbs, making sure the aphids weren’t back and infesting her plants again.
“Hello again my delicious little ones.” She chirped to the tomatoes and bell peppers, examining the fruit to see which was the ripest before taking them to make a sauce from. Chopping up onions, basil, and several chili peppers to dry out so that she could make more powder, her dinner soon began to steam as it simmered away.
As soon as it was all done, she swung on her hammock-bed and began slurping up the spaghetti, humming away to the music on the radio.
Her ranger radio crackled, interrupting her peace.
“Calling in IO, over.”
IO froze mid slurp then wrapped her wings up around her head and waited.
“This is Peyton, calling in IO, over.”
No pretending that she didn’t have her radio on. She always had it with her, and it was always charged. Swinging out of her hammock she picked the radio up with a sigh.
“IO responding, over.”
“Callout for you to attend. Panther Junction. Visitor reported seeing mystery ostriches, over.”
“Ostriches?” IO laughed, “I’m eating dinner and you want me to roll out to look for mystery ostriches?”
“Please IO.”
“Persuade me.”
“I’ll order in tinned pineapples for you again.”
She thought about it for a moment and glanced at her pantry door. There weren’t many tins of sweet fruits left in the shelter’s old storage room. Of course, Peyton would go straight for her weakness.
“Okay, okay, where are they?”
“They were last seen on the basin road, on the east side.”
About forty kilometres away, she calculated. Half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes if she took it a little slower to let her stomach settle.
She sighed and took another bite of her dinner.
“Give me an hour.”
-x-
The Chios mountains were abuzz with life both wild and human, as hikers and tourists took advantage of the good spring weather and walked the pathways, horse riding parties trekked on the bridleways, and mule deer stood grazing on berry bushes.
IO surveyed the landscape, lazily gliding in the warmth of a thermal.
Coyotes, whitetail, jackrabbits by the thousands, even a lone mountain lion prowling along the north after a troupe of javelina that were snuffling through a gorge. She chuckled a little, wondering if it was the same lion that gave her the scar across her nose from her attempt at single-handedly freeing it from a trap. It hurt like hell at the time, but she wasn’t mad about it, seeing how frightened the cat was.
Tilting her tailfeathers, she broke out of the circle and flew on a little further, triangulating her position between the familiar peaks and dents in the landscape.
With the sun setting in the west, it began to turn the mountains rosy-pink and gave the brush and grasses shadows that stretched far across the desert and into the hazy lavender distance. The evening light always messed with her vision. In the daytime everything was perfectly clear, even when staring down something two miles away, at night under the bright backdrop of the stars and moon, everything was illuminated in shades of white and blue. But anywhere in between pure night and pure day, she felt half-blind.
The long shadows and red rocks played havoc with her eyes, In the north of the basin however, what looked like initially as a heard of whitetail stood grazing caught her eye as a distant sound startled them and set them off running. Only then did their outlines become more defined and she became certain that she had located the ‘ostriches’ and powered on to glide above them.
Keeping above the lower clouds to mask her silhouette to anyone watching the sunset, she did her best to count and track them all. A crowd of them were sprinting across the flatter terrain that lay between the mountains and small plateaus between the gorges, kicking up orange dust in their wake. She almost thought that they were ostriches from the way that they were running upon two legs, however, from what she knew, ostriches didn’t have long tails or broad slotted wings.
A buzz of excitement gripped her. They were familiar, but it had been so long since she had seen them.
Twisting her long forked tailfeathers, she spiralled towards the ground. Flourishing her bold wings to break when she was mere meters from crunching into the dust, she hovered above the ground just as the flock raced over the crest of a dune straight at her.
Chapter 3
With a single wingbeat and a shriek, IO shot up above the flock just before they collided with her. The dust they kicked up blustered into her eyes and she rose a little higher blinking quickly to get the grit out so that she could see the creatures for what they really were.
Drake Raptors.
An entire flock of them.
Whoever had called them in as ostriches sorely needed their eyes tested, as there was nothing whatsoever ostrich-like about them. If anything, they were more akin to her ten tiny Easter Eggers with their feathered bodies and scaly scutes along their legs from the knee down. They were as varied in colour too; deep maroon brown and black to a tawny mottled pattern with spots and spangles and iridescent scallop-feathered chests, one being slightly different looking with tufted ears and a broad fan of feathers that ran down its tail.
They called to one another, purring whistles and short little throaty barks. IO couldn’t help but mimic the sound to herself as she flew behind them.
Banking left around the bend of a stack of rocks, they opened out their broad wings and as a group streamed off the outcrop. They soared gently for a good hundred meters before landing gracefully to run once more. With a laugh of amazement, she flew a little faster, eager to catch up with them.
In the open wilderness, they were almost lost within the vastness of the space, and yet they fit in so perfectly with the environment that IO was confident that if she let them run free that they would effortlessly survive for years to come.
But they weren’t meant to be out here.
The outside world wasn’t meant for them, but why were they so far away from the old house? The thought of why worried her, as did the idea of humans finding out about them and hunting them down or
harming them for being strange creatures that they’d never seen before. She had to round them up and contain them before anything happened.
With a deep breath, she dove in close and flew alongside the big female leading the charge. A fantastic maroon-black creature with short yet broad wings. It eyed her, keeping its pace going as she drew close to it but seemed unafraid.
“Hello beautiful!” She called across to it, followed by a purring whistle, just as she had heard them make. The feathered crest on several of the Raptors behind her flourished up, their pupils growing wide. They began nudging one another with their wings as they ran a little closer, trying to get within the shadow of her wingspan. The big female chuntered, and IO mimicked it back, sweeping in low in front of her and reaching her hand out to her sides. It was risky. She knew that a Raptor this big could snap her fingers in a bite, but it wasn’t showing any aggression.
The big maroon-female ran a little faster and nudged its finely scaled muzzle against her hand, blowing and letting out a purring whistle as it did so.
A friendly sign.
Whistling again, IO soared on ahead, keeping low to the ground and steadying her pace so that the critters could keep up with her.
She arced steadily around into an old riverbed, the Raptors following behind her like chicks.
-x-
Peyton whistled and shook her head in disbelief upon seeing the flock of dinosaur-like creatures, preening and resting in the corral as the night drew in.
The little whistle garnered an echo whistle response of purrs from some of the ones at the back who hadn’t seen who had made the noise, while the ones closer to her snorted disapprovingly. Obviously, they didn’t like her accent, she chuckled to herself.
“Well this is not something you see every day.” Peyton mused aloud, “Fancier than ostriches that’s for sure.”
She had seen many things in her seventeen years of service as a ranger, but this was a first, though less surprising than encountering an Avio for the first time.
“They’re called Raptors. Drake Raptors.” IO explained to her patiently, “As in ‘small dragon’ since they have wings and arms. Like me.”
“Really?”
IO nodded and gave her wings a little wiggle which caught the attention of a few of the ones closest to her. They looked up expectantly and even stretched their own wings.
They were broad, but nowhere near as long as IO’s nor as beautifully patterned. Only useful for gliding and short bursts of flight like quails, Peyton noted. Even some of the markings on their sides with the eye masks, and the iridescent grey-gold feathers on their throats that looked almost like scales reminded her of quails, though the deep maroons, blacks, and tans along their backs and wings were far more hawk-like.
She did like the one extremely fluffily feathered one though.
It stood out among the rest with its feathered trousers that covered its legs and feet. And unlike the rest of them, its long tail was one long fan of feathers whereas the maroon-hawks had a fan only at the ends of their tail, though one smaller grey one had two long streaming accessory feathers that fluttered lazily about in the breeze.
Watching her admire the Raptors, IO puffed her chest out proudly and with a delighted tone explained; “The red-black ones are Harriers – they’re the most common, and the fluffy one with the ear tufts is a Padfoot.”
“Huh. I like the Padfoot. It’s like an owl. I’m assuming that he stays awake at night?”
IO smiled brightly and nodded. “She.” She corrected for Peyton.
Peyton nodded sagely.
“She then. How can you tell?”
“How can’t you? The girls are all bigger and have yellow eyes, all the males have brown eyes, and they have those orange spangles- oh wait…you can’t see it. I forgot.” She bit her lip apologetically. “Well…if you could see ultraviolet light, there’d be bright orange-red flecks on each of the feathers on their necks and around their eyes…or at least when the sun was up you could.”
“Well I can hardly see anything in this light anyway.” Peyton assured her. She was used to IO doing her best to not appear superior or so strangely different.
Having spent the last half-hour herding them this way and that across the basin to one of the old fenced off areas, the Raptors were tired and were settling down to rest for the evening, apart from the Padfoot which was strutting about like a rooster.
They would be awake again in the early hours of the morning as hunger woke them, but she hoped that Peyton had made sure that the generator for the electric wire round the fence would be working. The last thing that they needed was Raptors hunting campers.
“What are they doing out here though?” Peyton asked, brushing her greying auburn hair out of her eyes.
“A good question.”
“They’re not like…you know…”
“They’re not suddenly escaping their homes and going wild. No. These are being tracked.” She gave a little flick of her tailfeathers and nodded to the large russet-coloured female who had led the flock. “Ranger there has a ring on her leg. Riley has a bit of harness around his neck. And nearly all of the big girls have little GPS backpacks glued to their mantles. Tyra, the really big one, has it. Can you see?”
Peyton leant over the fence and squinted. The darkness was creeping in fast, but she could just about make out the small boxy pack with a little antenna sat nestled between the raised arches of its wings.
“Did you name all of them?”
“Why not?”
Peyton chuckled, but backed up as soon as a maroon-coloured Raptor began prowling closer with an intent look in its brown eye.
IO caught the movement and leapt off the fence in a fluid movement, chastising the creature by beating her wings and hissing viciously at the Raptor. It startled and darted off back towards the main flock with a panicked chirp, a few of the other Raptors raising their heads and tensing for a moment, ready to shield away and run but relaxing quickly when they realised what was going on. The big russet one, Ranger as IO had named her, gave the other Raptor a throaty growl and grabbed at its tail with its foreclaws until it dropped to the ground with a defeated whine and tucked its head under its wing.
Even though they looked somewhat dinosaurish, they reminded Peyton a little of crows or chickens, except hawk-coloured and with a mouthful of teeth and a pair of grasping taloned arms, but they more immediately reminded her of IO.
She had never revealed much about where she had come from, or what she was beyond the superficial details – sometimes it was akin to drawing blood from a stone, with her sisters being no better – but Peyton had come to realise, you couldn’t push IO to do anything that she didn’t want to do.
“So, who should I contact about picking them up?” Peyton prompted, side eyeing IO as she gave her long forked tailfeathers a little flick with curiosity as a darker feathered Raptor approached her with a calm demeanour.
IO didn’t respond immediately as she watched the approaching creature with curiosity. It lowered its head to the ground, a low purring sound from deep in its throat, tilting its head from side to side and regarding her with a solid yellow eye. Mimicking it, IO echoed the sound back, fanning her wings out either side of her then dropping down onto the ground where the creature lay, and began preening and petted the raptor’s short crest of feathers upon the back of its head, and checked it over for injuries and equipment.
Contented, the Raptor closed its eyes and gave a deep rumble from deep within its throat that came out as a whistling purr. The purr was so loud that Peyton could feel it from where she stood. Part of her whispered enviously to leap over the fence and pet the creature, but reason and sensibility was stronger.
“I’ll call Satu about it.” IO eventually said, finishing the grooming getting up and lightly bouncing out of the raptor’s temporary accommodation with a beat of her wings. “Satu always knows what to do and can probably find out where they came from and where they need to be.”
The d
ark-feathered Raptor gave out a throaty growl and rose to its feet again, padding over to the fence it clawed at the slats with a taloned forelimb – more of an arm than the wing that Peyton first thought it to be, with its long digits and what looked like a thumb. It looked as though it was ready to climb over after her, until IO lightly pushed her palm against its scaled muzzle and forced it back into the corral.
“Right.” Peyton said nervously, suddenly very aware of how large it was and how many teeth it had. “But what do we do with them until then? Have they eaten do you think?”
IO shook her head. “I doubt it, but…”
Peyton gave her a suspicious side eye.
“What are you thinking of doing?”
“Well…” She rolled her shoulders and gently shook off her wings. “If they stay with me, and they should do, I could take them hunting for food. A full stomach should keep them quiet for the night.”
Peyton gave her a startled look at the idea. Immediately IO regretted even touching the subject of hunting with Peyton, knowing how strongly she felt about any form of killing. However, they were animals, they couldn’t choose to live off vegetables and fruits as a human such as Peyton could.
She shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably until Peyton looked away to the Raptors once more. The big Padfoot Raptor was by the fence, head bobbing about as it watched prey in the distance. Peyton sighed. Reluctant, but accepting of what they were, then turned to IO once more.
“I thought you couldn’t see as well at night. Wouldn’t you need to see what they’re hunting?”
“I don’t need full colour vision. Oh! They could eat the feral hogs! You wanted a natural way to get rid of them, right?”
“But if they’re like you, doesn’t it make it a synthetic way of getting rid of them?”
“Ugh.” IO rolled her eyes, letting the membrane flick across. Peyton laughed half-heartedly, looking back at the Raptors with uncertainty.
“Well I guess it’s better than eating the tourists I guess.” She grimaced but backed up, gesturing for IO to go forward with her plan.