The Hidden Mountain Pass

You leave looking for a quieter place to rest a while. You find a nice comfortable niche where the wind blew warmly up from the deserts, its scorching heat cooled by the mountain heights. You hadn't realized how high you had come till just now, and your legs were starting to protest. So you watched the clouds for a while, till one cloud, darker than the rest, broke free from the sky and glided down to land beside you.

"Hello, I'm Sira," she said after she'd settled her wings. "I prefer to chasing clouds to watching them myself." At first you thought it was a jibe at your inability to fly, but then realized that she was just honest and didn't mean anything by it. You'd been hanging around too many tricksters lately and were begining to double guess everyone.

A smaller female joined the two of you in watching the clouds pass by. "I'm Ciara," she said to the both of you. You and Sira return introductions.

The three of you lay down on the rocks to watch the clouds for a while. Every now and then one of the carhawoxes giggling about something they imagined they saw, but neither would tell what it was. After a while, you felt a kind of snuffling of your hair that wasn't from the mountain breeze. You look up to see a male carhawox, he didn't look happy to see any of you there.

"Please leave," he said. "This is my place."

The females tittered and giggled, but after receiving a scathing glare from the male they stopped laughing and harumphfed. "Well, we didn't like your stinky old spot anyway." And they flew away.

Of course you didn't have such luxury, even when the carhawox repeated, "Leave." You decided not to argue the point. You'd met many of his kind by now, but this was the first to be so rude and unkind.

You had not wandered far before you came across a silvery female racing about.

She grins when she sees you and veers in your direction. "Hello," she says as she stops, not even slightly winded. "I'm Palma." She blushes...or at least it would have been a blush if you could see through her fur and feathers. "Sorry for running around like that, I was just showing off for my friend Jarmi and my mate Gerris."

The two she spoke of were sitting nearby.

They both turned their heads to you, but neither of the spoke. Obviously they were waiting for Palma to continue doing whatever she was doing. You asked if you could watch, but it was obvious that Palma was embarassed by that, so you decided to continue your journey instead.