Wind blew at the Northern rock face, pitting Chenoa and Memdi in between a wall of snow and a sharp mountainside. Little relief was found in the narrow crevice Memdi had scooped out, and soon they would have to move again.
“Wait,” Che mumbled with her lips closed, “don’t move.”
Memdi chose to see this as a warning, not a command, and kept perch on Chenoa’s back. Lucky for both of them, for if the white Teratorni had chosen to fly, Valris’ scouts, just below them, would have seen the two and been at their throats within seconds.
The Frostcreek sabers were getting closer though, as was the bad weather. Trying her best to make a fast decision, Che’s knees were locked and her head was racing. They were cornered. Within the shadows of the ridge, not even the glowing, weary blue iris of Chenoa the Keeper could be seen blinking. She didn’t think she could win against two scouts of the Frostcreek pride, she was famished and tired from traveling so long with Memdi to find where the caribou had wandered to. Needless to say, the two didn’t find them.
Memdi was apparently thinking about the same thing. “Don’t you start again”, she whispered, “it wasn’t my fault we didn’t find them, I told you they were probably to the east, you just wouldn’t let me go check!”
Chenoa’s whisper was a little harsher. “I told you they couldn’t be in the east field, they weren’t in the east field three nights ago, why would they be there now?”
“Well, I-“
Che cut her off. “It was rhetorical, you idiot!”
“Shut up!”
Memdi closed her razor beak over Chenoa’s right ear, nearly tearing it off in one dreadful snap. They had always fought like this. It had been Chenoa’s father’s dream, and Memdi’s father’s dream, that these two would live up to the honorable reputation the two of them created when they scouted for the Fallenstand. In fact, Chenoa’s feather, which she wore at all times, was a wing feather of Memdi’s father, given to the duo before their fathers’ death, as a symbol of peace between the two.
The father’s strong bonds with each other was passed down to their daughters, but a lot more fighting goes on between sisters than brothers. All their childhood, Chenoa and Memdi fought like siblings. Che, the eldest, trying to assert her authority over Memdi, and Memdi, the most stubborn, doing everything in her power to make Che look bad. Now they were falling together off the side of a mountain, one biting at the other’s ear, and the other snapping at legs.
Caught off guard, all the Frostcreek pride members offered Chenoa and Memdi was a perplexed glance as the couple zipped past them, falling hundreds of feet into an abyss of a snowstorm.
“You always tell me what to do!”
“You always screw things up if I don’t!”
It took about thirty seconds of bickering before Memdi realized that she had to, once again, save her friend’s life before they splattered into an unforgiving rock edge. Piercing the skin of Che’s back and neck, Memdi’s talons gripped the heavy beast, as her wings pounded at the air. The graceful, but painful fluttering eased the drop into the slate mid-ground for the Saber. She was bleeding a little, but grateful.
A period of silence passed between the two, and then a second moment, for over the ridge on which they had landed, was a mass herd of caribou. They gave each other a look of awe, before Memdi sprung into the air to rush back to the pride. The window of opportunity to hunt was closing, with Valris’ scouts so close by. Chenoa got ready for what could turn out to be a fight for survival.
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