Lost Innocence...

5 MPE

Temperate Forest (Striata)

~~~

It is the middle Hypostecene. Serina is brand new and youthful, like a chick only beginning to get its wings and make its first tentative flights, just as many of its canaries have lost their powers of flight in a world that until now had few dangers to flee.

But now those sweet summer days are gone away.

A mother aardgoose, a flightless herbivore canary, returns to her nest in a forest glade to find her chick has been taken from her by a shrieker, a carnivore that may be small, but is sneaky and intelligent. There is nothing that she can do to help now, for she has arrived too late.

But it is unlikely anything she could have done would have changed this outcome. This murder was premeditated. The sly avian predator had been watching her every moment. It had waited for her to leave to feed before striking. Her chick was doomed from the moment she left it.

Serina is no longer a sanctuary for freed cage birds. Innocence lost, it has become a world of life and death struggles, with no one but yourself to call on for help.

New dangers bring losses, but they will also select for new mutations. As nesting on the ground grows less safe, some descendants of the mother aardgoose may ultimately acquire traits that will free them from the risky task entirely. Though her first young has not made it, she will carry on. She will nest again, and she will succeed. Her lineage will carry on long after her lifetime.

And her descendants will accomplish things she could never possibly imagine.