Harpy, The Beginnings
.... by D. Grant DeMan
Ariel 
As the capybara scurried for the water's edge, marauder Ariel thundered down and broke its back. She relished the fatal squeal of momentary struggle, and with great satisfaction felt its fur and plump flesh tear beneath her steel talons. She ripped into the belly, her tongue savoring the salt sweet rich dark blood, a fine meal for her fledglings, Celaeno and Okypete, waiting high in the nesting tree, tallest of the forest canopy. Survival discipline had been difficult since her mate failed to return from a spring hunting foray. Indeed many times Celaeno had viciously attacked her sibling in jealous rage. Razor claws then clenching the animal in a vice grip, Ariel flexed her wings, carbon steel feathers unfolding - spreading, fanning like playing cards - and exploded into the air for home.
The noise was louder than anything ever heard before in the forest. Distant rumbles pulsing. And then they came down the valley like giant condors, devouring alligators, one following the other, relentlessly they moved. Roaring closer and closer a din and a danger, ever onward they came. One, then two, then more and more in the air above. Unimaginable horror. Black they were. Steel vultures of hell. Birds from the bowels of The Inferno. Coming down the valley. Burning hell, smelling of fire and death, they spat as they moved. Sheets of flame rose and burst and crashed into the trees, through the jungle. Death. Debris flying, fire consumed the world. Brimstone!
With her dying eyes Ariel saw Celaeno circling high above. Fly, pretty one, fly from here, she shrieked.
* * *
Smiling proudly at the helm of his new Comanche helicopter, Commander Ferdinand Alonso led his armored birds of death into the valley. Finally they possessed the machinery and ordinance required to intensify the war targeting cocaine cartels and their communisto protectors, whose evil serpent heads augured deep within the forest. Perhaps this year he'd become major or even colonel. Like a big ruffled hawk he directed this invincible armada, a winged platform of twenty eight Apache Longbows, Super Cobras, and Kiowa Warriors, spreading white heat before them like devouring dragons. Guided by Digitized Acquisition Systems the iron birds' chain guns spat thirty millimeter exploding rounds into buildings, through trees and hills, followed by an inferno, igniting fields with napalm, boiling pond and stream, vaporizing even congealed incandescent cinder with Hellfire - Fire and Forget Rockets - the Hydra 70 II system. Sixteen separate targets per minute per helicopter. The most powerful imaginable, he smiled.
* * *
Ariel's Fledgling
CelænoSoaring aloft, Celæno flew like her mother The Wind. Onward and onward she flew. On wings still tender she took flight from the flames of death, and into the night. Higher and higher feeling the wet mists of mountains. Such was her instinct and her power, tendons and muscles steeled to new challenge, reaching for the stars and the moon, and then, finally the sun and the cooling and the scrub of the hills. She descended, perched and rested. The Alto Paraná Valley seemed alien; for hours she nestled high in a matamata tree. With the setting sun, when pangs of hunger gnawed deeply, the young Harpy pounced down in the midst of a flock of tapaculos, feeding among grasses. Her ineptness allowed the birds an easy scurrying egress, and she was left sitting, beak open, chest rising and falling in big gasps, exhausted, so forlorn and hungry that she failed to see el tigre tracking tapirs. The big jaguar, a formidable foe who took opportunistic prey - even eagles upon occasion - pounced.
With some inner strength, a corsair born of wind, Celæno fought back with talons superior to el tigre's claws and teeth. Feeling a sharp pain in her right wing, she exploded with rage and faced the cat head on, her eyes glowing with hatred and fury. Issuing a banshee shriek that filled the valley, she tore its left eye from the socket, and with it a shredded piece of ear. The jaguar feinted timorously twice more, and retreated into the brush, while the eagle pulled herself behind a tree, and when night fell discovered she could no longer fly. Thus hobbled and bloodied, Celæno welcomed death there on the valley floor. She felt the sting of ants piercing her skin and flesh, the crawling gnaw of beetles into her body. The end was nigh.
Above, the sky began to lighten when she heard voices in the distance. Now too weak to struggle, she lay prone, still awaiting death, expecting it. The din became louder and she heard a rustle and opened one black eye. A strange creature bent down and examined her: "Morales. Morales, come here and look closely at this bird? This bird is strange here. I believe it still breathes, no?"
"The bird still breathes, Senhor Ricardo. I see that clearly."
"We shall take it back to the house."
"You wish to take it home with you?"
"I have not seen one like this before. We shall get a look at it." Thus they carried Celæno to the balcony which became her home, her healing base. There, as her young bones knitted, she returned to flight, hunting once more, fetching animals and fish to share with Ricardo, like the durukuli monkey he dismembered and cooked with eggplant. Ricardo, her medic, her friend, her compatriot. Ricardo, the senõr, the patron. Her mate.
And then came the crystal haired one reminiscent of Okypete, her lost sister. She arrived with her chatter and laughter, frequently preoccupying Ricardo. Feathers ruffed in anger, Celæno viewed their embrace. Ricardo favored this new one, and thus the bird tactfully tolerated her presence at El Raptor. Though increasingly unpleased, she did not respond well to this conflicting challenge, and so sulkingly forayed further into the jungle, down into ponds and waterfalls to fish. To maraud. To raid and kill. And with each execution she pictured an image: the painted face, the throat of that one named Linda, ripped, bursting into a fountain of scarlet beneath her talons.
When it came to pass that yet another such, Loretta, had made its presence known upon her balcony, fear became panic. She barely restrained her fury, awaiting an opportunity to scourge the home of intruders. Thus she gripped the rail, hoping and watching.
While her eyes glowed like ruby firebrands from Hell.
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