Chapter 18-2

It was a deer... or at least it looked like a deer. The odd thing about it was that it was nearly as big as he was. As far as Zakhin'Dakh knew, that was a very unusual characteristic in deer. Of course, that meant it was probably too big for him to hunt, which was unfortunate. It seemed like something he should investigate, though, and so he started looking around the area more closely.

All the animals he found seemed to be similarly giant compared to their normal size, which meant that a rabbit or two was just about right for him. Zakhin'Dakh rather happily verified this fact. His belly full, he explored more, finding a couple streams and more signs of giant animals, including some terrestrial predators—but he saw no sign of aerial predators of his size, much less bigger. And so he started searching for a good nesting site. 

He found a good-sized cave in a cliff not far from one of the streams that seemed just about right. It even had a nice ledge for launching off of and landing on. And so he decided to settle in and make it his territory.

Hunting was rather... difficult at first, as he had to go for different kinds of animals than he was used to, but Zakhin'Dakh was a fairly clever griffon, so he adapted. After a while he started really feeling at home, and slowly, to his delight, he found himself growing to match the size of the other inhabitants of the valley.

Zakhin'Dakh was quite happy in the valley. He enjoyed being big, even though everything else was big, too. Sometimes he'd think a bit gleefully about meeting one of those big two-legged things again, but for the most part, he was content living in the valley, feasting on giant prey. The only thing that disturbed his contentment was a nagging curiosity about what the two-legged things were doing and how they were heading toward his lair. And maybe just a bit of general curiosity, too.

That curiosity was awakened full force one day when he saw a two-legged thing in the valley. Even considering his now much greater size, the two-legged thing seemed smaller than the other ones, and it was all bronze-colored, while the bigger ones had been whitish-bluish. Not only that, but this one had wings. He seemed to be looking at the ground the way the others sometimes had before, though. Zakhin'Dakh stood up and got ready to take off when it looked up at him. For some reason, he just looked back at it. Then it started walking toward him. Curious, Zakhin'Dakh settled back down to watch.

It took the winged two-legged thing quite a while to get to Zakhin'Dakh's ledge. Even when it got to the cliff, it didn't use its wings, but climbed up, instead. Zakhin'Dakh thought that was really weird, but it seemed like a weird kind of thing, so maybe that made sense. Finally, it reached the top and looked at him.

“You're pretty big,” it said, and Zakhin'Dakh was surprised to find he knew exactly what the weird sounds it was making meant. He screeched an enthusiastic agreement.

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So, I felt rather bad about how... rushed chapter 17 was. So I'm glad we'll have the opportunity to see much of it from Zakhin'Dakh's eyes. It'll be fun to see the difference between his and Almonihah's viewpoints, too, so I'm looking forward to writing the rest of this chapter.