The Story of Tiberius

Chapter 79

"I honestly can't tell anymore if you're a hawk or a cat," Alfred remarked quietly when Tiberius caught a mouse near the pansies. Picking up the dead rodent, the old hawk tossed the limp body up in the air and caught it in his mouth. Going down head first, he managed to swallow the rodent whole. Stifling a belch, the red tail padded over to his owner and squeaked. Smiling softly, Alfred gently stroked the feathers on his head. Getting up to his feet, the old man commented, "I'll be back sweet boy. Behave yourself."

Watching his owner headed down to possibly grab something for him to eat, Tiberius sighed heavily. Now thirteen years old, he was starting to feel his age a little bit. His head often hung low and there were a few days where he would wake up with pain in his spine. It was slowly turning towards winter at the moment and he could already feel the chill in his bones. A few years ago, he began to develop a headache due to someone down in the apartment building playing their heavy metal music at full volume. But that wasn't the only thing that aggravated his migraines. He could hear someone's dog barking and then that number increased when some people moved into one of the apartments in the building across the street. They had brought along with them a young small dog that looked like a cotton ball but yipped about as annoyingly as a fox. It drove Tiberius nuts.

Heading over to one of the empty flowerpots on the rooftop, Tiberius peered down at the rainwater that it had collected during the last rainstorm. The water was crystal clear and placid. The flowerpot had almost overflowed. Bending his head down, Tiberius drank a little bit of it before dunking his whole head in. Pulling it back out, he gave himself a good shake while the feathers on his head were cleaned. Inside the flowerpot, the water became still again. Peering down at it once more, the old red tailed hawk noticed something he never noticed before. There was a tiny scar running down his right eyelid, too faint to see unless one looked closely or a light was shone in just the perfect position, which was how he saw it because of the sun. Surprised to see that there was a scar there, the hawk noted that was where he had been struck during the fight with the hairless cat so long ago now.

Backing away from the flowerpot, a question was on Tiberius's mind. Just how many scars did he possess now? Opening his left wing, he spotted a few along the edge of it. Examining his right wing, he found it pretty similar to what he saw with the other. But where his wing bent was a scar hidden well underneath his feathers in the exact spot where the hairless cat had bit down and broke his wing. He had an angry looking scar on his right flank from his duel with Striker while he had some long ones on his shoulders from when he had first met Flash. There was a very long one that ran along where his spine was. He had no idea where he had gotten that. The red tailed hawk had two little scratches under his chin from when he and Rosa had their fight and, after looking back down at the water filled flowerpot, a thin one running across his forehead from when he had been really young and still lived in the apartment.

"Every scar tells a story..." Tiberius mumbled quietly to himself, recalling one of the many things that Sleet had ever told him. Glancing up at the clear blue sky high above the city, the old red tailed hawk wondered what she was doing in the Tribe of the Heavenly Stars. Sighing, he was about to head for his shed when he heard something very small behind him. He turned around.