[Gallagher]

It had been long since the human-young had been slain, longer now than the time it had cared for him. The woods were not home, but like the human-young when it lived, home was a memory farther than it was near. Today, like every today, all that was left was the woods. The woods were safe against dangers he did not know yet feared all the same, and provided food that he could catch with strength he had not yet grown into, but the woods were getting smaller with every today that passed. Soon, they too would be like home and like the human-young.

But that was for a different today than this.

This today he needed to feed, and his eye was on a large rodent he had seen leave its den. As it scavenged for food, he crouched up in the branches of the trees, his wings folded tight against his sides and his claws digging shallow gauges into the bark as he found traction. Then, a sound, something large and heavy. The rodent stilled and he tilted his head, flattening himself against the branch. A human-male had found the human-young. Not a worry for one such as himself, but for a rodent -- his prospective meal ran and set the human-male off into its own pounce. So much for that, it seemed. Still, a human of any sort might have an easier meat. Shaking off the failed hunt with a flutter of his wings, he climbed back along the branch and down the tree's trunk, scraping and thumping loudly along the way.