Worth More Than A Halfpence

Hajime perched on the castle parapet. Above him were two hawks; as soon as he took flight they would be upon him, and he would be a small lunch for one of them. He had to move, and quickly: He could hear guards coming up the stairs and they had been ordered to kill anything they found, especially sparrows. He chuckled to himself: I sort of asked for that one. Someone had seen him enter the treasure vault as a teenage boy and exit as a sparrow. Bloody Shapers Guild should have remained secret; now they were looking for us shifters everywhere. He had snatched the ruby; now he just had to escape.

He looked around and saw a bailey an arrow's flight away. He traced a path back to his perch and smiled. He threw himself into the wind, tweeting as he went. The two hawks were on him in a heartbeat.

They were sort of magnificent to watch in action, if he had had the time to watch them. They dove down to his level, then flew like the wind with little flapping. They were avian arrows.

He was not.

He was flapping for his little life with his heart threatening to beat itself out of his tiny feathered chest. The hawks were cooly majestic, predators in their element; he was flapping like mad hoping they would fly past him. He also couldn't just close his wings and drop; the hawks had mastered diving long ago and he would be easy prey.

He couldn't even play his trump card: Sure, if he shifted to his human form he would be too big for the hawks, but if shifted at this speed, at this height, he would be dead before he could shift back.

He had to hope the hawks were focused on him. His sole advantage was his wild flight; if he flew in a straight line, ever, either hawk could just swoop in and snatch him. Their talons would pierce his heart before he could shift to a bigger form, but that would also cause him to fall to the Earth below.

So he kept his eyes on the bailey. He was tiring rapidly; his small form didn't have the energy stores he needed for sustaining the twists and turns needed to save his life; he passed the halfway mark on willpower alone. The hawks had already passed him once. He had caught a small pattern of feathers on their backs and smiled: These weren't true hawks but shifters as well. That gave him a small chance.

That hope also gave him a small burst of energy. He would hit the bailey, but he didn't want to. He ducked around the bailey and brought his wings in close. This caused him to spiral.

The hawks would have smiled if they could have. They dove after him, quickly catching up to him. Then the sparrow shifted into a boy and grabbed. He fell just enough and with just enough momentum to swing on a branch of a tree that appeared in their path. They tried to stop but the tree was too close.

They collided with it. Then, they fell into the bushes below, cushioning their landing but entangling the two.

The naked boy smiled. He leaped down into the bushes and twisted the necks of the two hawks. He then produced the ruby from his mouth and looked at it. I can't believe I had to kill two birds for this one stone…..