Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 315

This week's picture prompt was created by hungarian born, Sarolta Ban. She doesn't give this a name, but it is located in the fabulae category.  It's not the first time I've used one of her images. I used one on Week 31, Week 304, Week 28, and Week 24 . She has some exceptional images, I would probably pic a different one every week to use they're so good. 

A brief one as I keep exploring some ideas for Tricky's tales. Last time I wrote one for her was Week 314 - just last week.

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.


Spies

“It was huge, it came at me out ofnowhere!”

“It was just a bird, Dimitri. It wasprobably as frightened as you!”

“No, it knew what it was doing! It had beensent by her.”

“Who?”

“Tricky, that thorn in our sides.”

“But talking to birds is not one of hergifts, that belongs to Dufray.”

“It definitely wasn’t one of his, Gandalf.I’d have recognised it.”

“I think you’re exaggerating. It wasprobably one of his jackdaws.”

“Oh no, this was much bigger than one ofthose.”

“Probably one of the larger corvids then.”

“Are there bigger ones?”

“Oh yes. I used to have a pet raven,beautiful bird it was, so intelligent. I couldn’t communicate with it likeLucien does his birds, but it was smart enough to be able to communicate withme. There aren’t many of them left now – at least I don’t see them around whereI live. I hope they have managed to repopulate.”

“Aren’t ravens black though? This was brownwith a white head.”

Gandalf laughed.

“That was no corvid, that was a peregrinefalcon. And that means they’ve brought Safa Odeh in.”

“Who’s that? Someone we should be worriedabout?”

“Probably not, though her falcon isdefinitely as keen as any raven. It seems they have their spies out.”

“Maybe I should arrange to have the birdskilled.”

Gandalf laughed again.

“Oh, Dimitri, I doubt very highly you’d beable to outsmart a bird of prey. But no, if they are watching us, we can put ona show for them and lead them on a merry dance.”

Dimitri Stanislav’s thin, hard face lit upwith an ear-splitting grin.

“Oh yes, what a good idea.”