Fortune Favors the Bold

290 million years post-establishment

In the far west of Serinarcta, on an almost-island connected by only a narrow string of land, is a place called the Crescent. Its western half is forested, but its eastern half is grassland. For hundreds of thousands of years, the wooded side has been the domain of the southernmost population of kelpies, known for their unusual social behavior. These are the only kelpies to live in packs, formed from several generations of offspring from one dominant pair, and their unrelated mates which marry-in to the group over time. And they do this here because they reached this not-quite-island very early on, before most land carnivores, letting them become apex predators. By staying together in uncommonly large groups, they now repel their competitors from taking a foothold in these woods and maintain their dominion. They hunt their prey more like wolves than unicorns, racing through the forests and cutting off the escape of loopalopes and trunkos that might have evaded them, if there were just one or two. Though they do not look drastically different from the nightforest kelpie, this population represents a distinct subspecies: Retortunus murmurendax acer, meaning "keen, whispering-liar, twisted-together-horn." Separated by several hundred miles of grassland across the expanding polar plain, the two populations no longer meet. These keen kelpies can't keep up with their prey in the open, for they rely on cornering it around obstacles and outmaneuvering it. Anything that breaks out of the trees and flees onto the plain will escape them.

The plains of the Crescent, meanwhile, have long had their own rulers. Western imperial skystalkers, Grallacheiropteryx polydactylus littoreus ( meaning coastal many-digited, stilt-handed wing) are the dominant ecotype of their species along the west coast, from the polar plain down to the firmament. There they intergrade with central imperial skystalkers that look similar, though this subspecies is slightly smaller, has no colorful patch on top of the wing, and has a narrower black face stripe extending further past the eye. Though they do feed along ocean shores, they prefer open grasslands, and they are the only resident population of their species to breed on the Crescent. Here they stalk the plains, always in lasting pairs. They swoop and strike the fast animals of the plain, carrying away victims in their talons, and bringing back such meals to nests on the island's coastal sky islands, where they rear their chicks. But where the grass meets the treeline, they are often foiled when their would-be dinner bolts for cover in the forest, where the densely lined trees prevent the skystalkers from following. It's been this way for a very long time, so long that to any individual animal, it must always have been this way. The crescent is two worlds divided lengthwise, each ruled by its own predator. In between, a no-man's land, where prey gets the upper hand, and no hunter can reign supreme - a place neither hunter thus favors.

One pack of kelpies has been forced to live along the margins of the forest for several months, their old territory usurped by a larger rival pack, and here they are constantly struggling to catch prey that often manages to slip away into the grass. Their unwilling proximity to the plains has put them next to the skystalker pair which haunts the adjacent tract of grassland. Unbeknownst to it, they too have been pushed to the margins by rivals physically larger than themselves; this pair is young, and not very experienced. Most of the kelpies stay out of sight, smart enough to recognize a bigger enemy and know when to fold. But one particular kelpie is different. A little less cautious, in another lifetime it might die young from an overly reckless action; such is the way most such outliers in a population go. Nature often favors conformity. But fortune sometimes favors the bold, and occasionally, that extra tendency to try something new can mean an individual becomes fitter than its rivals, and will have more young. Evolution, too, can sometimes favor the bold... but only if the environment is a changing one. Only if the alternative - to do nothing - is already not leading to success. The kelpie pack is going hungry. If they do nothing, they may starve here on the fringes of their woodland.

The bold kelpie watches the skystalkers every day, and it observes their successes and their failures. When they succeed at the hunt, it only feels jealousy. And at first, when they lose, it feels a sort of joy at their misfortune - they are enemies, competitors, rivals for resources. And it does no good to have them around, eating the food that could sustain the kelpie pack instead. At first the bold kelpie is ignored by its fellows, and it wanders alone to the forests' edge to watch the drama that no one else has any time for. Then one day, the skystalkers make a big mistake; they fumble, strike each other in the air, and tumble to the ground as a whole herd of loopalopes dash to safety in the trees out of their reach. Only today, the bold kelpie sees it, and it sounds a loud war cry that gets its pack's attention. They block the path of the herd, converging around the panicked prey from all directions. Almost every individual catches one. The pack is fed for days... and the others begin to take notice of their former outcast. For the coming days, the bold kelpie notices one of the skystalkers has a limp from its fall and doesn't take to the air. Its mate is reluctant to leave it, but if it doesn't hunt soon, both will grow weak. The bold kelpie listens to their murmurs, an alien tongue spoken by vastly different creatures. For days, it watches and listens, unseen and unknown. Its pack grows weary; the need to hunt again is growing, and they look to their unlikely new leader who last led them to success for instruction. The bold kelpie looks to them, and back across the plain to the skystalkers. It has had an idea, but it's an odd one. No kelpie has ever done this before. It leaves the safety of the forest, and steps confidently into the light, as its fellows stare on in abject horror, certain in that moment that it has chosen its own death.

It walks toward the skystalkers, and the stronger of the two at once sees it and turns to face it with a threatening bellow from deep within. The other kelpies shudder in terror, but this kelpie has always been a little odd. It doesn't give any indication it is afraid, and its brazen, idiotic confidence is confusing to the giant birds that could kill it in one strike... so odd, they find it, that they can only stand and stare. Is it mad? Could it make them ill? The skystalkers raise their feathers, an instinctive response to a threat - boldness has worked in the kelpie's favor. They don't immediately kill it, and they are unnerved enough by it that it has made them wary. Now the kelpie has the upper hand. It stops a few paces from the uninjured skystalker, which stands guard before its mate. Very hesitantly, the bold kelpie's packmates have followed it onto the grass, though they aren't sure why they have gone along with this. And then a very strange, warbling sound begins to bubble up from the kelpie's throat. It is the voice of both skystalkers, but not as either has ever spoken. The bold kelpie has not simply parroted the sounds it has heard, but stitched together several sequences, combining both birds' voices to speak a new phrase. The bold kelpie has combined sounds that it suspects have meanings to the skystalker based on context, something that a kelpie naturally does among its own kind when learning to communicate in the pack as a foal. And though the words of a skystalker do not necesarilly fit well into the syntax of a simple kelpie language, if we could speak skystalker, the kelpie's message would sound - very roughly - like a trade offer.

You. Chase to woods. We. Chase out woods. Both catch. Both eat.

The giant birds look to one another, and back at the kelpie, unmoving in its confident pose looking up at the apex predator not of this island, but the world, an animal with no predators, that crosses continents unrivaled. They speak together, quietly. What they say we cannot know for sure. Their banter goes back and forth before the kelpie receives a reply, directed to itself through an uncertain voice that makes its own bold decision.

Together. Can try.

From that day, the bold kelpie led its pack along the edge of the grassland, and the lone skystalker, leaving its mate for as briefly as possible, flew along the edge of the forest. The herds didn't know how to respond to this; they ran to the trees to flee the great bird's approach and were met by the jaws of the sinister horses, or they leapt into the grass to flee the kelpie's pack and were snatched into the air by the skystalker's surprise swoop. Every chase, it seemed, now guaranteed one or the other to make a kill. Their success rate had increased dramatically, and on the margins of their worlds, once not suited to either, now they thrived. The female skystalker healed as her mate brought back each of his kills to share with her, and when she recovered she joined him hunting with the kelpies. Their trial run, born from mutual desperation, became a permanent arrangement to both of their benefit. Rivals had become allies, and boldness paid off for both.

A few years have now passed, and the kelpies' pack has become one of the biggest on the Crescent, and the skystalkers are joined by two young that are beginning to learn to hunt with their parents. The younger members of the alliance do not recall a time before it - to them it must have always been this way. Something new has been born on the Crescent, something new, something good. A way of life for two far-flung branches of the tree of life has changed forever, their stories now interwoven together. In the generations to come, long after the first members of this alliance are gone, their lineage will persist. They will, one day, leave the Crescent and cross the continent together. Stronger together, they will both prosper. An unbeatable team at the very apex of the food chain, they will influence the direction of evolution across ecosystems across the world in the generations to come. These kelpies will one day be the only kelpies, when the world has otherwise changed too much for most to hold on. But one day, still far from now, the skystalker's rule of the skies will fade out. The kelpie's descendants will have to go on alone, but they will have gained an incredible advantage from their time with their partners. One day, when the hothouse is over and the skystalkers are gone, those who will arise from the kelpies of today will inherit the skystalker's crown. They will cross continents to reach every corner. They will remain unrivaled, the world's apex predator. And they, too, will find their wings.

Even if it happens long after the memories of this distant beginning have faded away to time, a long and storied history begins in the late hothouse from a small moment of connection. It is the first time in the kelpie's history that it uses its manipulative skills to work alongside another being rather than to take a life for itself. In this shift from selfishness to cooperation, in their learning to rise above the nature that once bound them and become something greater than the sum of its parts, a new and richer chapter in their story is just beginning.