12. Teaching the Fledglings to Hunt: In the Time of Indigo Cloud's Return to the Reaches

Moon always took the Sky Copper clutch out himself. Not that he didn't trust the Arbora and warriors, but he hadn't been much older than Thorn when he had first learned to hunt and he thought that insight might make it easier to teach the clutch.

Also, he didn't actually trust the Arbora and the warriors.

At the moment, the hunters were stalking grasseaters on a lower section of the multi-leveled platform. Moon was perched on a fallen fern tree with Balm beside him, watching the clutch. A short distance away, Frost, Thorn, and Bitter clustered around the Arbora hunter Bramble, who guided them along the grassy ground, teaching them how to track the herd the hunters stalked on the lower slope of the platform. A few hunters wandered nearby, and a scatter of warriors sat up in the mountain-tree branches above, keeping watch. It was warm day, water dripping down onto their scales from the heavy green canopy high above. The damp air was laden with a heady blend of scents, from the sweet blossoms on the flowering grass to the scat of the grasseaters, all woven through with the fragrance of the mountain-tree.

All three of the fledglings were behaving pretty well, even with distractions like the brightly colored flying lizards flitting around the grass. Watching Moon watch the clutch, Balm poked at some moss with the stick she was holding and said, "You don't trust us with them, do you."

"Of course I do," Moon lied.

Balm's spines angled in amusement.  "Very convincing."

There was no reply to that Moon could make without it becoming even more clear that Balm was right. He watched Bramble flick a scrap of moss aside to show the fledglings a faint mark in the grass. Thorn pointed out another even fainter mark further down, and Bramble's spines moved in approval. "Bramble's a good teacher," Moon said, by way of apology.

"You learned from a warrior." Balm's glance at him was thoughtful. "Was that different?"

"Probably."  Moon shrugged his spines.  "I didn't know it at the time."

"Jade and I learned from Bone," Balm said. "I'm not sure I learned it well enough to teach."

"Sorrow didn't have a lot of choice," Moon said. After a moment he realized Balm was still watching him. He asked her, "Is this your way of working up to asking me what it was like to be raised by a warrior?"

"That too," Balm admitted.  "But I wanted to ask... Bone was worried when you wanted to teach the fledglings how to hunt.   He thought they were too young.  But you haven't let them try to take anything yet."

Moon twitched his tail to shake off an overly ambitious beetle. He had wanted the fledglings to start to learn how to track and stalk, just in case. He was also letting them help with gutting and preparing the carcasses for transport back to the colony, which usually resulted in them getting covered with guts and blood. And he had wanted to make sure they had an appreciation of how dangerous the suspended forest was and how to survive in it before they were old enough to explore with less supervision. "I want them to learn the right way, not the way Sorrow had to teach me so we could survive."

"I think Bone was afraid you'd send them after grasseaters eight times their size."

Moon had taken down grasseaters eight times his size at their age, but he wasn't sure anybody in the court believed him when he said things like that. "They can learn a lot just by watching the Arbora."

Balm nodded, her spines indicating understanding. "So what was it like being raised by a warrior?"

He eyed her.  "Just because warriors can't have babies doesn't mean they can't take care of them."

Balm snorted. "The teachers would disagree."

"If you were stuck somewhere with fledglings and Arbora babies, you could take care of them."

Balm shook her spines.  "I wouldn't have any idea what to do."

"Feed them, wash them, get them to go to sleep. You wouldn't be able to do any of that?"

"Sure, those things."  Balm flicked her spines in reluctant agreement, but said, "The warrior who took care of you didn't talk to you about being a Raksura. You didn't know anything about us."

Moon had found out from Opal Night why Sorrow might not have wanted to talk about her court. And he wasn't entirely sure she hadn't. There was so much he didn't remember, details of their day to day life that had faded with time. He thought Sorrow must have talked about what had happened and why they were there, when she wasn't working to keep them fed and safe. It seemed now that the moment when her and the others had been killed had made everything that had happened before it harder to remember. He countered with, "How do you tell someone how to be a Raksura?"

"I don't know, I'm not a teacher." Balm added, "Maybe that's why she didn't tell you

anything."

Moon shrugged his spines.  "Maybe."  

After a moment, Balm frowned and said, "You're really good at not answering questions in a way where it sounds like you're answering questions."

Down the slope of the platform, one of the Arbora was waving, signaling that the hunters were ready to strike. Moon hopped off the log.  "Time to move closer."