"Nya?" Jay called again nervously.
Walking out to stand beside Jay, Nya looked around. Jay could see the exact moment she saw what he had seen, because she froze in place.
The ledge they stood on was only one of many. The other ledges were sparsely populated with stunted underbrush, moderately populated with various rocks and boulders, and heavily, heavily populated with the biggest bird's nests Jay had ever seen. Lots of the nests contained fuzzy but large baby birds, and lots of the baby birds had even larger parents, and lots of the parents were looking directly at Jay and Nya with the cool eyes of predators glancing over their prey.
"What even are they?" Jay wondered quietly, trying to talk without moving his mouth so as not to startle the scary parent birds.
"Some kind of hawk, I think," Nya responded just as quietly, gingerly sitting down where she stood. "Don't make any unexpected or quick motions. Just sit down as slowly as you think you can."
Jay obeyed, easing himself down to the ground. His heart was beating an even more rapid pace than usual, and it was kind of hard to breathe. All he wanted to do was run back into the cave, but from the way the birds were eying him and from Nya's instructions, Jay figured if he ran, he'd be dead meat. All of the parent birds had talons and beaks that looked incredibly sharp, like they were just made for ripping into birdkid flesh.
"Are we going to-" Jay began.
Nya cut him off. "Don't talk yet."
Jay clamped his mouth shut. He watched the hawks. Some of the parent birds had bits of other animals in their beaks. He guessed they had been feeding their babies before he and Nya had startled them. After a few moments of silence and stillness, Jay was proven right when the parent birds turned back to their fledglings and started dropping bits of meat into the babies' mouths.
Watching the birds go about their business, Jay was kept busy for a minute or two, but only a minute or two. After that, it became boring pretty quickly. Jay wanted to fidget, wanted to chatter, wanted to know what was going to happen next. He slowly turned his head from side to side, trying to find something to look at to interest him.
That something turned out to be a bit of movement from Nya. At about the pace of a snail moving along a leaf, she was moving her wings out and unfolding them.
All of the hawks turned as one, zeroing in on Nya's wing as if it was the most important thing in the world.
"I want them to realize we're nothing to fear," Nya said under her breath. "Put out your wings. They need to know not to attack us."
A little confused but trusting Nya, Jay extended his wings.
After a few moments, the parent hawks turned back to their babies, no longer seeming to register Jay and Nya as threats. Once their eyes weren't lasered in on him and Nya, Jay found them kind of cool. They were huge birds, their wingspans a little over half the size of Jay's own, and they seemed to command the area around them. Their wings were mostly light brown on top with darker brown stripes on the top sides and little bits of white on the underneath sides. They reminded Jay fondly of Kai's wings, and as he watched the parents fly about, leaving to get food and returning to feed the food to their babies, Jay missed the rest of his family.
Still. Even though it was just him and Nya, it was kind of neat to be surrounded by so many birds. It was a little gross too, especially when one of the parent hawks brought back a snake that was still moving as the parent tossed it to the fledglings. Jay made a face as the fledglings swarmed the snake to devour it, and Nya looked over at him and grinned.
After a moment, Jay grinned back at her. This wasn't so bad. He wanted to leave, he wanted Lloyd to get there, and he wanted more to eat, but this wasn't so bad. It was almost cool in a way. It would be okay to just sit back and chill out for a few minutes more.