AUTHOR'S NOTE: thank you TheRanger101 for the review. Glad you liked last week's chapter :)

Chapter 65: The Ultimate Sacrifice.

"Have all come and prayed to me

"Please take my life instead" is their plea"

-Patchwork Poltergeist, The Black Rabbit Makes No Promices [sic]

Violet cautiously nibbled the carrot, while keeping an eye around her. Despite having been captured by a hawk, she was still alive, and this was not a good thing. Life had become a nightmare for her. The younger hawk stubbornly refused to eat her, much to his mother's dismay. Instead, he frequently flew away, and whenever he came back he brought fresh flayrah with him, no doubt an attempt at fattening her up before eating her. Violet refused to play along with his scheme, eating just enough to stay alive, and only when nobody was watching. Hopefully, this way, they would soon give up and kill her.

Until then, at least she wasn't in too much pain; after the hawk had removed the glass from her paws, she felt much better physically. She remained under intense mental torment, however.

At the end of the branch, she could see the younger hawk, sleeping. He seemed to be doing that a lot. Suddenly, she heard the other hawk approach. She hurriedly kicked the carrot off the branch; it landed in a puddle on the ground.

The mother hawk seemed unusually agitated, and soon woke up her son. The two had a short argument, that ended as they both turned their heads towards the same direction. Violet also looked, and soon saw what had caught their attention: fire. The flames were already consuming several trees a short distance away, and were rapidly coming closer. The older hawk hurriedly flew away; her son, however, remained on the branch, looking at Violet, then at the fire, and back at Violet.

The older hawk returned and shouted at her son again. Despite all this, he stubbornly refused to fly away. In a desperate attempt at saving him from the fire, she pushed him off the branch, hoping he would fly. This had the exact opposite of the intended effect: he simply fell to the ground, and cried in pain. She flew down to take a look at him. His wing was clearly broken; there was no way he would be able to survive. She had tried to save his life, but instead she had essentially killed him. There was nothing more she could do for him. She flew away, before she too were to perish.

Violet had stopped paying attention to the hawks. By that point, she didn't care anymore. They would not kill her, but the fire would; a much more painful death. The flames rapidly came closer, and soon the tree she was in also caught fire. The smoke was making it difficult for her to breathe, and it was only a matter of time before her fur caught fire. She looked down; maybe, if she jumped, she would fall unconscious before burning alive; that would be less painful. She thought back about how she should jumped long ago, before closing her eyes and stepping off the branch.

She suddenly felt a sharp pain in her back, and her paws could not feel the ground. There was only one possible explanation: she had broken several bones, but would remain fully conscious while the inevitable happened. A few moments later, she realized that she could move her paws; if the bones were broken, that wouldn't be possible. She carefully opened her eyes, not sure what to expect. There was fire all around her, and it was moving at an alarming rate. However, there was a shadow overhead. As she raised her head, she saw the younger hawk, holding onto her, flying unevenly between the burning trees. He had grabbed her before she could hit the ground, and was now carrying her away.

There is a limit to how far a hawk can fly through a burning forest, with a broken wing, while carrying another creature. He knew he would not be able to make it much further, so in a desperate attempt at getting clear of the fire, he raised his altitude, and was soon flying over the burning treetops.

After a few minutes, he suddenly lost all his strength. Each flap of his wings brought considerable pain, and the while he was clear of the fire, his lungs were still full of smoke, making it nearly impossible to breathe. His altitude was rapidly decreasing. He would have to make one last attempt at saving Violet's life. Just before he was about to crash, he let her go. She softly landed in the grass, while he painfully collided with a rock further away.

Violet remained motionless on the ground for a long time, attempting to figure out what had happened. The hawk had grabbed her before she hit the ground, and carried her away from the fire. He had saved her life. Why?

Hawks are elil. Why should he risk his life to save that of a creature he was supposed to kill? No matter how hard she tried to think of a logical explanation, there didn't seem to be one. For unknown reasons, this hawk cared about her. This could also explain why he had been trying to feed her. Elil befriending rabbits was not unheard of, but was extremely uncommon, and she had been fortunate enough to be dealing with one of these friendly creatures. Why her, and not another rabbit?

She chased these thoughts away. The hawk had saved her, she would now try to save him. She ran over to the spot where he had crashed, and what she saw was even worse than she expected. He was lying on the ground, one wing folded under himself at an awkward angle, the other trailing further away. His beak had been smashed to pieces by the impact with the rock, and he was bleeding from several parts of his body.

Violet hardly knew anything about healing. To make things worse, all of her limited knowledge was only applicable to rabbits, completely useless for birds. Judging by the way he was breathing, it was nevertheless plain to her that he was dying. He had saved her life, but she was powerless to save his. There was nothing she could to to help him, except keep his wounds clean. She tried licking the wound on his wing, but he let out a dreadful cry of pain; perhaps it would be better not to touch him then.

-"You saved my life," she said. "I shall be eternally grateful."

The hawk slowly turned his head, and stared at her. He remained silent.

-"I'm sorry I judged you wrong."

He still did not reply. Violet wondered whether he understood what she was saying.

-"What's your name?"

Finally, the hawk finally uttered a sound, so low that Violet could barely hear it, but it nevertheless sounded more like a word than any other sound that he had uttered since she had first met him.

-"Skreeeeeeeeeeee..."

The sound seemed to keep going forever, until finally it stopped, and so did the hawk's breathing. Violet closed her eyes, and remained besides Skree's body. Apparently that was his name; it was quite an unusual name, by rabbit standards.

She wondered what would happen to him now. Surely hawks must have their own supernatural figure to harvest their souls. What would the afterlife would be like for him? According to ancient legends, some hawks get the privilege of tormenting rabbits in the shadowlands for eternity, but Skree probably wouldn't be happy doing this. Violet also ignored what would happen to his body; another creature would come and devour him, probably. Until then, she closed his eyes.

-"GET AWAY FROM THAT THING!"

Violet leaped back as she heard the loud voice. It sounded like it came from another rabbit. She slowly turned around, and saw the other rabbit, a buck, standing close to a large grey rock. The rabbit's sudden appearance had left her startled and unable to speak.

-"Come underground, before it attacks you!"

She was still unable to reply. The other rabbit leaped over to her in an attempt to bring her with him, but as he got closer he saw Skree's wounds. He carefully placed his paw on the hawk's back.

-"Oh thank Frith it's dead," he said. "Nasty creatures, aren't they? Look what he did to you."

As she heard this, Violet was filled with sadness. This rabbit was completely misjudging Skree, just like she had done herself.

-"He didn't do anything to me."

-"But what about your fur?"

Violet was confused.

-"What's wrong with my fur?" she said defensively.

-"No offence, but it's...falling apart in a few locations."

-"That wasn't the hawk. It was the fire."

-"Well, whatever it was, you need rest. Welcome to Redstone Warren. I'm Hickory-rah. Do you want to come underground?"

-"But what about Skree?"

-"Skree? Who's Skree?"

-"The hawk, who..."

-"He has a name?" Hickory could not understand how the doe knew the hawk's name. He eventually came to the conclusion that she had imagined it; it was most likely a side effect of the deep mental strain she had gone through as a result of the attack. "Oh, well Skree...we can just leave him there. There have been many elil around the warren recently, and that's one that won't be causing any problems anymore. You coming underground now?"

Violet did not know how to react. Hickory was so disrespectful...she weakly nodded, and followed him underground. Eventually, she would have to set the record straight, but for now, she was too exhausted.