-Shadow Haunters- (Canyon)

Nearly all of Ember's focus went to the delicate little egg clutched between her beak. Shifting her weight, she briefly brought a boldly yellow foot up to her mouth, but thought better of transferring her cherished prize. Her talons were simply too big, and the egg too small. One wrong move, and it would slip between her toes or be crushed by them.

Keeping the egg where it was, Ember utilized her tongue to help cushion and maneuver her newly won treasure as she scooted back down the bough and then launched into the air. She looked once to her father, now besot by three angry crows, but what could she really do? Ember did not want to risk breaking her egg, and the crovids weren't a serious threat to her dad.

-Good luck- The she-eagle thought, the only response Cedar would get from his daughter, before she turned tail for the mountains and headed back home.

Cedarwood was too busy enduring the onslaught of harsh beaks and even harsher insults to notice his abandonment by his own daughter, until he caught a glint of sunlight reflecting off her quickly departing, cinnamon-red tail.

"Ember! Ouch, hey!" The loss of a few shoulder feathers snapped his attention back to the fight at hand. The distraction meant that his snap at the crow wasn't likely to hit, but he did follow it up with an equally heated rebuttal, "Caw and cackle all you want, you can't stop me from getting what I came for." Deciding to try his luck, Cedar attempted to push through the dense branches to reach the nest, regardless of the crows' heckling.