Flying Eagle Creative Writing

David Velonà
We cannot belong without understanding our identity

Through the hot, cloudless days in the back of North Queensland there is always something beside the sun watching you from the sky. Over the line of the hills or above the long stretches of plains, a black dot swings round and round: and its circles rise slowly or fall slowly, or simply remain at the same height, swinging in endless indolent curves, while the eyes watch the miles of earth below, and the nine-foot wingspan remains motionless in the air. You know there is nothing you can do that will not be observed: that the circling eagle, however small the distance may make it, however aloof its flight may seem, has always fixed upon the earth an attention as fierce as its claws.
But the eagles watch the sky as well as the earth.
The eagle came around in a curve at the bird, the slots on the ends of the wings clattering above him; and then, just as he ducked his head to avoid the shining curved beak, the braced black and brown feathers, the sky was amazingly empty in front of him. The eagle had flicked over as lightly as a swallow, with no sign of panic or haste. He looked down and saw it below him, circling as quietly as if nothing in the morning, in the sky or in the land, had disturbed its watchful mastery of the air. As he dived toward it and followed it around again, he saw his friend drop his wing and come down, steep and straight, to make the attack they had planned. He could see that the eagle, for all its apparent negligence, was watching him and not the diving eagle. The eagle shot on and began to pull out of its dive; the eagle recovered again into its slow swinging, a few hundred feet lower.
Yet it had shown a little concern. For the first time a fraction of dignity had been lost: momentarily the great wings had been disturbed a little from the full