Climbing the mountain was a difficult task. Onondaga lead the group with a map of the area. Thurgood told the group that the both of them had been raised by humans and get into the wild. Hence, how Onondaga was able to red a map.
Thurgood couldn't read the map, his eyes were always focused on other things like looking around his surroundings scared a snake might devour him whole.
The slope of the mountain was steep and after about fifteen minutes of climbing everyone's legs began to give way. Especially the Sioux, already exahuated from two fights.
There was a little flat spot on the mountain, a flat cliff area with a good view of the surrounding area. Twilight was in the sky.
"Im so tired, can't we just rest here." Seneca asked Tuskee
Tuskee was half asleep and was being carried up the mountain by Huey.
Since Tuskee was asleep Roberto decided that he would be leader. We dropped our supplies (mainly food we collected on our hike and sticks we broke off a tree).
The floor was mainly rock with a thin layer of dirt on it. The rock was black with moss colonies growing on it. We used the moss as a bed and fell asleep.
Roberto made his bed not too far from mine.
"good night Jewel" He said.
"Good night Roberto " I said.
"good night Jewel, Goodnight Roberto! " everyone else said mockingly. What jerks.
The Sioux were the last to wake up in the morning, but everyone overslept. The sun was directly above us. Noon, when we should have woke up early in the morning.
We didnt have time to eat breakfast, so we hiked up the mountain on an empty stomach.
Onondaga still navigating with the map.
After about 3 hours of climbing we reached close to the peak of the mountain. The sun its brightest, there were a lot less trees and more soil, rock and moss. It was much colder up there too. From where we were at the peak seemed to have snow on it. Something I never saw before.
The sound of war drums was heard again, not good. The Sioux looked terrified and began looking for any place to hide.
The nightingales were ahead of us but they didn't see us. Even though they had fewer people than us we were still scared of them.
Tuskee and Onondaga desperately looked for a detour to avoid them.
A small path through dense trees and bush was the only available detour, so quietly we took the new path.
We were so close to the top, only just maybe another hour walk. We managed to avoid the nightingales . The downside is we didn't find the flag yet. The other groups were most likely coming to the mountain peak from other sides of the slope. So the flag had to be at the peak.
Another hour went by and this was the worst. Snow covered the ground and the air was freezing. We took moss that grew on rocks and use that as a makeshift blanket, as we marched on.
Most of the group kept complaining. Most of the group, the worst of this all was Tuskee as he was yelling at Onondaga.
"couldn't you find another way to the top without us half freezing our talons off?" Complaining and whining to mainly Onondaga.
You could tell the whining was getting on Onondaga's nerves.
"My feet and legs are cold!" Naomi said . snow covering her legs and feet.
It was unnatural for me and rest of the macaws.
"I live in the cold, this isn't a problem for me!" Huey said. I never really seen an owl before and its probably because they live in the cold.
"I like the cold"
We reached the peak of the mountain finally at long last. The view was amazing, a view of all of Canarsie. Another mountain want too far from the one we where on. That mountain was much taller, much colder.
However the rest of the kids were at the peak of Erasmus too, looking for the flag and fighting.
The teams fought off other teams desperately looking for the flag. But it was no where to be found.
The Cayuga's (us) tried as hard as we could to look for the flag on the snow peaked mountain. To no avail the flag was hidden well.
That's when people started accusing other teams.
"I bet that team Navajo has the flag!" A brown falcon said pointing a finger.
The entire crowd gave up looking for the flag and started pointing feathers. The fight began as people tackled each other grabbed each other by the throat and fighting.
"Wait WAIT! Stop!" Onondaga yelled to all the rest of the kids. Everyone stopped fighting and looked at him.
"If no one found the flag while they were climbing up the mountain, and its not here and all the other groups have it, that means…"
The entire crowd started sucking their beaks, crying, groaning, and just filled with sadness.
Onondaga pointed to the other mountain. The mountain we were supposed to climb.
"what mountain is this then?" I asked.
"Mt. Skywalker. " Onondaga said looking at a different map. The entire crowd spent the rest of the day crying on the peak of the mountain. None of groups even bothered to try and go back down the mountain.
In the middle of the night everyone slept on the flat ground. A flat piece of land that stretched outnin all directions for half a mile, covered in rocks moss and snow.
I still hated snow and I hate Mt. Skywalker too.