Chapter Text
‘This was a terrible idea,’ Snatcher thought as he ducked under the talons of the mother roc, one of whose eggs was clutched in his arms. He increased his speed, sprinting towards where the dragons were waiting. After the most recent pirate raid, he, CC, and Conductor had flown to the cliffs on the other side of the island in a last-ditch attempt to find anything to eat. The famine had hit them hard, and times were desperate enough that they had disregarded the old taboo about this place and sent a hunting party. Ahead of him, CC and Conductor reached their dragons, stashed the eggs they were carrying in their saddlebags, then scrambled onto their dragons’ backs.
“Come on, lad!” Conductor shouted to him. His own dragon, Penumbra, growled and shifted slightly, resisting the impulse to rush to his rider’s aid. Snatcher wanted to run directly to them and take off immediately, but he knew if he did that, the massive bird closing in on him would slash them out of the sky before they made it twenty feet. As such, he darted sharply to the left and headed towards a thick cluster of trees situated near the edge of the cliff.
“Take off!” he shouted to his party. “Loop around to the base of the cliff beneath the trees and be ready to escape!” Ignoring CC’s cries of alarm and Conductor’s bellows of confusion, he raced towards the copse, the mother roc hot on his heels. Just before she could close her talons around his shoulders, he dove into the thicket, curling his body around the egg to prevent it from breaking. As he got to his feet, he let a faint smile form on his face. As he suspected, the foliage was too thick for his pursuer to follow him, and he could hear her screeching as she tried to find a way in.
‘Well, I guess there’s one good thing resulting from this famine,’ Snatcher thought. Even with his scrawny frame, he had a hard time slipping between the trunks. There was no way a creature as large as the roc could get through, and the fact that she seemed to be focusing singularly on him led him to believe that Conductor and CC had followed his orders. Refusing to waste any more time, Snatcher tucked the egg between the roots of a tree, picked up a rock that was roughly the same size and shape of the egg, and ran out of the copse, emerging directly in front of the mother bird. “Hey, you overgrown chicken!” he called, lifting the rock in the air. “Look at this!” With that, he sprinted to the edge of the cliff and hurled the rock over the edge.
With a cry, the mother roc dove after it, and Snatcher darted back through the trees, grabbing the real egg as he did so, and pushed his way out the side closest to the cliff. Much to his relief, he saw his party waiting on the beach roughly a thousand feet below.
“Penumbra, to me!” he called, then jumped into the open air. Penumbra spread his broad black wings and flew up to catch him, but before they could meet, they heard an earsplitting screech. The mother roc came shooting around the corner of the cliff and lunged straight at Snatcher. Before any of them could react, her talons sank into his chest, then slashed downwards, leaving three deep, ragged gashes across his torso. Snatcher let out an agonized scream. His chest felt as though it had been soaked in lava, white-hot pain whipping along his nerves like lightning. Warm blood poured out of the wounds, saturating his shirt in a matter of seconds and leaving disjointed trails of crimson droplets in the air behind him. The egg slipped from his slackened grip and plummeted towards the earth. The roc darted towards it, seized it in her talons, then soared away, presumably heading back to her nest. Snatcher landed heavily on Penumbra’s back, and would have slid off had the dragon not extended his wings to catch him. He groaned softly, but his consciousness was fading fast, and the last thing he heard was CC screaming his name.
As soon as Penumbra landed, CC ran over and gently lifted Snatcher off his back and laid him on the beach. She gasped in horror when she saw the full extent of the damage. The cuts had to be at least an inch deep and were gushing blood. His skin was even paler than normal and she could see a hint of white bone in one of the wounds. Behind her, Conductor was shouting obscenities after the roc, his tone soaked with anger and fear. CC pulled several rolls of bandages from her bag, then turned to Conductor.
“Lift him up a little bit,” she ordered, pushing down her panic. Snatcher needed her to keep her head straight if he was going to survive. “I need to wrap the bandages around him.” The gruff man, startled by her ironlike tone, hurried to obey, kneeling beside her and slipping his hands under the thinner man’s back. He lifted his torso a few inches off the sandy ground. She carefully bound the strips of clean white fabric over his wounds, passing the roll from one hand to the other behind his back. As she worked, her dragon, Honeybun nuzzled her way under Snatcher’s legs and crouched there, keeping his feet elevated in an attempt to increase the circulation to his heart. Finishing, she secured the end of the bandage and settled back on her heels, her hands and coat smeared with his blood, which was beginning to dry.
CC knew that her slapdash patch-up wouldn’t be enough. Snatcher’s wounds definitely required stitches, but she didn’t have the materials to repair the deeper damage with her, and the last thing he needed was internal bleeding. Looking at him, her heart clenched. Even unconscious, his face was twisted in a grimace of pain, his breath was coming in short, sharp pants, and he was beginning to shiver.
“We need to get him back to the village,” she instructed, getting to her feet. “I don’t have the supplies here.” Conductor nodded and picked up their unofficial leader. Once CC was situated on Honeybun’s back, he passed Snatcher to her, because her dragon’s four wings would be better suited to carrying the weight of an extra person. However, as she maneuvered him into a secure position so that he wouldn’t slip off while flying, she didn’t think weight would be a problem. She hadn’t missed the outline of his ribs against his skin while she was treating his injures, and now that she was holding him, she couldn’t ignore how light he felt.
Making a mental note to talk to Snatcher about his eating habits once he recovered -because he would recover, he had to- she led the hunting party into the air, heading back towards the relative safety of their village.