She looked up into a clear blue sky and saw one solitary cloud heading east. Its smooth white surface was edged in grey to give it an appearance of heaviness riding in the air. A hawk flew across its white expanse hovering briefly in the middle like a motif to scan the surface below for some unlucky creature. Finding none it resumed its soaring, gliding flight.

She felt so akin to the hawk; free and yet desperately searching for sustenance. For the hawk it was a piercing need to eat and for Asthralain a hungering, craving sustenance for her very soul. She sat upon a small flat topped sandstone boulder rising from the meadow and watched the world around her.

From this island on a green ocean she saw here was a land of incredible beauty; rolling hills, flowing rivers watering arable lands. It was populated by a hardy rustic people; fell and stern but also incredibly kind. Why would anyone seek to harm this idyll? At that moment a shadow passed over her and she looked directly up to see the hawk hovering above. Suddenly it plummeted to earth like a weighted arrow and snatched up a viper from the grass close to Asthralain’s feet. Clever hawk, it gripped its talons in the centre of the snake and rose high into the air. The snake was unable to counter gravity or the hawks grip and lay motionless. High climbed the hawk till it was but a speck in the air and then without remark it let the snake go; to fall and smash upon the rocks in the distance. She knew nothing could have survived that fall. The hawk flew off into the distance.

This spectacle baffled Asthralain and then at last she understood. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ It was a pre-emptive strike against a foe that had taken place. In part because the hawk had seen Asthralain’s imminent danger but also because perhaps the hawk’s eggs would be safer in the spring. Though there could be no winner in this battle the preservation of balance and order was always the intrinsic goal of all survival.