Kavala had been right to say that a great many eggs wouldn’t survive the storm that was coming. If it was as bad as that, it would wipe out a whole year’s worth of birds, and Eywaat knew what would happen to population. It would be devastated. While they certainly didn’t have time to scour the whole of the grasslands, Raiha had a very good idea about where to go around here for the eggs - she had encountered plenty of osprey, hawk, and eagle nests while on her hunt for owls, though she hadn’t made it a practice to raid those nests while she was slowly building her flock. If she got lucky, she’d find some nests for ducks and geese as well. She doubted it, but one never knew. She’d already looted the quail and pheasant nests for all that they had, crawling through the underbrush and the mud and emerging absolutely filthy, the numbers of eggs, location, and specie noted in a notebook, the eggs padded and wrapped in cloth and brought back to be kept warm.
Now it was time for the next step - the ones that were much further away from Sanctuary. She had borrowed one of Kavala’s Striders - they were simply faster than Yakini, though her Firemane mare was sulking at this fact, even though Raiha had brought her nuggets of carrot with molasses and sugar to try to explain why. They just had too much ground to cover. The mare had promptly eaten the treats, then turned her back and farted at her in dismissal. Horses had feelings too, and the young Akontak had hurt her mount’s. But Strider it was, and it was taking the girl some time to get used to it. But the speed was invaluable as packs prepared for their delicate, fragile cargo, and she wanted to cover the most amount of ground that she could.
Raiha was not able to ride by Yvas, so she was lucky that Kavala had one that would allow a saddle. They’d gotten out of the deep snow that circled Riverfall, and hit the green grasses. She was prepared for confrontations, and only hoped that she would be able to capture a number of healthy adults as well. She doubted it, especially with the big birds, but it couldn’t hurt to try. She was armed with suvai and mace, with plenty of leather protection, hoods, and jesses. She was heading for the west to start, traveling up along the coast for where she had seen those osprey nests along the grassy dunes. She slowed the strider down with gentle pressure on the reins to a trot, and breathed, letting the horse do their thing while she did hers, clearing her mind and focusing on Auristics to scour the banks, looking for auras that denoted a nest. “Found one,” she announced, stopping the Strider and climbing off, grabbing her gloves.
She didn’t even feel bad about raiding the nests, keeping an eye and an ear out for the parents as she checked the contents of the eggs, looking for healthy ones that held live chicks. She withdrew four eggs from the covered nest that hid in plain sight, white with bold reddish-brown splotches over them. She held them in her hands, and focused on the auras of each, one at a time, scrutinizing. They were newly laid, young yet - one of them was 12 days old, another nine, then five, and three. She would have liked to have weighed them, but that would have to wait until they got back. “Four live osprey eggs from the first nest on the south-western coast,” she told them, bringing them back to her bags to mark each one with a pencil, being very, very careful not to damage the shells before passing them to be packed and stored, and getting back on the Strider to head for the next nest. Notes could be made on the way.
