The dawn arrives wrapped in the bruised, sweet scent of fermented apple shisha and the dark, bitter smoke of roasted cardamom. It slips through the tawny dunes of Fujairah, seconds before the spring sun crests the jagged horizon. After week-long episodes of hefty, violent rain showers—water that fell not as a blessing, but as a heavy, drowning omen—orderly, dedicated Fatimah awakens.
For forty days, she has been glued to the nest. It is a stolen crown, a structure of dry twigs and desert scrub hijacked from a careless raven. But this morning, perched on the precipice of the majestic, copper-veined mountain that has been her permanent home since birth, Fatimah’s soul is illuminated. The valley below is choked with a never-seen-before, unnatural lushness. The wild greenery is breathtaking, yet terrible in its sudden, aggressive bloom. Everything is as nature intended, Fatimah reflects, the thought a desperate prayer. It is a perfect day for my little ones to step foot on this earth.
Miraculously, The Plan is holding. Well, perhaps not all of it. Her partner had vanished into the Sharp, Swallowing Air only days after she announced the clutch to their extended flock. But Fatimah is a creature forged in abandonment. She is not fazed by the vast, echoing loneliness of single motherhood. She had watched her mother, and her aunties, navigate the treacherous skies with ease and poise long before he had ever clipped his wings to hers. So many single mothers. So many fierce, hollow-boned females who had paved the wind and prepared her for The Great Sitting.
She admits, in the quietest, darkest hours of the night, she had believed he was different. To her, their bond was an electric, humming thing. It felt as though she had known his flight patterns her entire life. They had spoken of growing old, of filling the mountain with a great, sprawling family. Even though her biological clock was winding down—a frantic, ticking percussion in her chest—they possessed high hopes to fit as many chicks into the sky as possible before the mechanism stopped. She had raved about him with adoration to her sister, Faaiza.
But as always, Faaiza was right. Like so many males before him, he went out hunting one afternoon and was simply erased from the sky.
For a while, Fatimah told herself he was caught up in the violent, swirling business of the thermals. He would return. Then, she convinced herself he must have been killed in a horrific, unrecorded accident. A natural disaster. But no blood was found on the rocks. His family was alarmed, but soon they offered the bleak, hollow excuse of the era: These absurd times change even the best of our kind. She violently rejected the theory her sister asserted— that he had simply left her for another bird. He was not like the faithless companions of her youth. Fatimah had been brainwashed from the egg to believe that since The Beginning of Time, once her kind found their soulmate, they flew as one entity until death. He was her soulmate. It was a horrific accident. It had to be.
It would have been beautiful to find eternal love, but in these rough, tumultuous times, Romance is an impossible, rotting dream. Since the Earth commenced its corrosive decline, happily-ever-after is no longer a female's destiny. The Purpose is singular. Reproduction.
She is here to drag her children into the safety of the sky. The very survival of her species depends on her body. With her clock ticking its final, desperate rhythm, she had only one intention left: to be a mother. She would not feel guilt for being alone. She gently shuffles her breast feathers over her little ones, assuring herself one last time. This time it is different. I am alone, but I am blessed. Triplets. No complications. No bloody, heartbreaking miscarriages. All three are thriving, tapping softly against their calcium walls. It is a perfect day. She refuses to dwell in the graveyard of past horrors. She must be a fortress for her three little chicks, who are only seconds away from the harsh light of the sun.
Upon her high rock outcrop, armed with her miraculous, terrifying vision, Fatimah surveys the earth for miles. A bob of the head. A sway. A violent, mechanical twist of the neck. Two hundred degrees to the left. With precise, slow movements, she investigates the unexpected camp sprawling like a metallic infection in the valley below.
Usually, she enjoys watching new prey. But this day is no ordinary day. She has been starving for this moment since she matured. The yearning to be a mother had mutated into an overwhelming obsession, an uncontrollable, clawing desire. But years of treachery had rolled by without luck. One horrific tragedy following another. The heartbreak. The endless tears. The precious, unformed souls that never took breath.
And so, with her wide, hyper-vigilant eyes, she polices the wretched human settlement below. The air smells wrong. She senses a painful, jagged edge to this glorious day.
She calls upon Faaiza, who is resting on a nearby crag. Something isn’t right.
Having absorbed Fatimah’s anxieties every day since they were fledglings, Faaiza sighs, a ruffle of sharp feathers. It’s just your nerves, my dear. Today is the big day. I feel it in my wise beak. After everything you have been through, the fear is natural. Faaiza, always victorious, always the pragmatic hunter, finds Fatimah overly cautious. But she gives her sister the highest respect. Fatimah had raised Faaiza after their own mother was caught by trappers and imprisoned for life in a leather hood. Fatimah was the mother Faaiza never had. If it wasn't for her, Faaiza would be bones in the sand. She will fight for Fatimah until the end of time.
Many Bedouins had come to this oasis over the centuries. They had offered the smells of roasted meat and sweet smoke to gain Fatimah’s favour. They believed the falcons' eyes were the doors to the souls of their dead ancestors. They worshipped her. Faaiza liked to watch Fatimah's eyes bewitch the men; Faaiza simply laughed at their terrestrial stupidity. Those ancient men built small, respectful establishments, hoping Fatimah would award them a home under her shadow. But those who disagreed with the falcons' fierce laws of truth and justice succumbed to the desert and departed.
Looking down at the unexpected visitors now, Faaiza does not see how they are different from the rest. The old ways are dying. Faaiza is accustomed to the New Order and does not register a threat.
But Fatimah, older and scarred by the world's decline, knows this gathering is unnervingly offbeat. Nature is gushing out frantic, invisible signals. The wind is screaming that these men are to be feared. They did not come to worship. The site is charged with Western Filth. Western Greed. They worship nothing but the reflection of their own metal. They have struck greasy gold. They are here to destroy. To dig and drill. To drill and dig. Deep down below, hunting for the thick, black substance that, in the end, ruins all souls. Fatimah had chosen this noble rock for its three-sixty view. North, East, South, and West. Up and down and all around. From here, she could drop like a stone, striking at unimaginable speeds. But for the last forty days, she has not left her royal nest. She has not moved a muscle. Day and night, lovingly and cautiously, she has burned her own body heat into the three speckled eggs.
Her hollow bones ache. Her slim, aerodynamic feathers are crisp and dusty. Her lethal legs are numb.
The only time she permits her inner eyelids to close is when Faaiza sits by her side. But when Faaiza hunts, Fatimah is a statue. Even when the Girlfriends visit—a flock of hardened, cynical females—Fatimah never takes her eyes off the clutch.
The Girlfriends have been brutalized by their own misfortunes. They lost their faith in miracles when the world began to warm. They cannot comprehend that Fatimah is going to give birth at her age. They come driven by jealousy, bringing questions and toxic, discouraging advice.
My mother says only one ever survives, they whisper, their beaks clicking. Two will die.
My grandmother says, even if they hatch without deformities, as soon as you leave to hunt, the oldest will eat the younger ones. It is the Law of the Rock.
Fatimah ignores their dreadful prophecies. She has done the incubating alone, and she knows if she stays by their side, she can protect them from the cannibalism of survival. Yes, she itches to fly. To feel the cold whip of the wind. To hunt. But she made a promise to the universe to stay put.
To counter the horrors, Faaiza had laid out a battle plan. Faaiza has done all the hunting so far, but hunting for five mouths will be impossible without a stockpile. The hot, suffocating summer days are coming. Faaiza proposed they hunt together as a team for the first week. The eldest chick will be too weak to cannibalize the others in the first few hours. They will leave the nest for just a few hours a day, filling the larder. After the first week, Faaiza will hunt alone for them all. Fatimah dreads the thought of leaving them so soon after birth, but as always, Faaiza is right. It is the only way to cheat death.
Dawn breaks. The little ones are seconds away.
The three eggs Fatimah has worshipped for forty days begin to vibrate. Shaking. Rolling. Slowly fracturing. One by one, the calcium walls give way. Three little heads pop out, wet and exhausted. Covered in fluffy, blindingly white down feathers, they bounce and squeak with blind delight. They chirp lovingly at the massive, terrifying shadow of their mother. The sight of their tiny, open beaks is overwhelming. Tears of pure, unadulterated joy—a joy she thought the world had permanently stolen from her—run down her feathered cheeks.
But the clock immediately restarts. The hunger is here. Fatimah recognizes it is time to take flight. She is weak, trembling with exhaustion, but she must leave them right now to secure their survival.
Suddenly, a loud, diabolical mechanical roar viciously echoes across the valley. The stone mountain shudders. The nest shakes. A terrible, primal panic rises in Fatimah’s throat. They need to hunt now, but how can she leave when the metal camp below is erupting in such alarming violence? Every living cell inside her screams to stay and cover her chicks. This noise was not part of The Plan. It was meant to be quiet.
Perhaps I stay today, Fatimah thinks frantically. Tomorrow at dawn, we fly. If we don’t go now, there won't be enough meat for all three, Faaiza commands, her voice cutting through the panic. I know you want to stay. But they cannot move yet. You’ll be the first to fly back.
Hesitantly, painfully, Fatimah nods. She regurgitates a precious, stored piece of meat, dividing it among the three to occupy their tiny minds, and tenderly brushes her beak against theirs. Farewell.
She throws herself off the cliff.
Faster than she has ever flown, refusing to peek behind her lest the sheer agony of separation force her to abort, she touches the heavens. Her wings slice the air. Because of her obsessive determination, she knows she has secured her place in the sky. Three healthy chicks. The species will prevail against the dying of the light.
As they ascend, the sisters look down at the stunning, rugged mountains nestled between the massive golden dunes and the silky turquoise Omani Gulf. They remember the Godforsaken Period. They remember the poison the Westerners released into the air thirty years ago to protect their crops. Di-chloro-di-phenyl-tri-chloro-ethane. DDT. The Egg- Thinner. The Silent Death.
It was the only time in history the falcons could not rise to their calling. Fatimah remembers the agony of the endless miscarriages. The eggshells that broke down under her own weight during incubation. The desperate move to the glass-and-steel skyscrapers of the city, hoping the urban nests would save them, only to find the same tragic, crushed shells. The fiery sisters had refused to surrender. They had moved back to the Ancestral Rock, trusting the untouched desert. And today, they are triumphant. The DDT is banned, the land is healing, and three pairs of tiny feet stand on poison-free stone.
In the distance, Fatimah’s hyper-vision locks onto movement. Her first victim in forty days.
The sisters sweep high above the desert floor with elegant, terrifying grace. Then, the Stoop. Their bodies morph. Necks elongate. Wings pull tight against their flanks. Feathers stiffen into a rigid, aerodynamic missile. The transformation is absolute. One moment they are birds; the next, they are gravity weaponized.
They plummet in a vertical arrow dive. Whoosh. Thud.
Fatimah rakes the quarry with her outstretched, lethal talons. Her sharp claws sink into the spine of a rabbit large enough to last the week. The electric thrill of the kill surges through her hollow bones. How could I have forgotten this?
She banks hard, turning for home at the speed of light, leaving Faaiza to circle the scattered pack.
But as she beats her wings against the altitude, the sky changes. The wind, suddenly saturated with shooting, biting sand, picks up. Killer weather creeping out of nowhere. Sandstorm season is six months away.
Then she smells it.
Why is there smoke?
The newly lush, green valley is screaming. It is up in rushing, towering flames. The Greasy Gold has ignited. Thick, black, oily smoke clogs Fatimah’s fragile lungs. She thinks only of her white, fluffy chicks. She pushes through the heat wall, shrieking and crying as she flies over the ancient site.
The human campsite has disappeared entirely, replaced by a slaughtering blaze. The men of the West are running for their lives; viciously being eaten by the hell they drilled from the earth. They were greedy. They ignored the Old Ways. They believed they could exploit Mother Nature, assuming she would constantly retreat. But the Earth is pushing back in fire.
It is too late.
The final inferno has scaled the mountain. The blasting flames bring her worst, most unbearable nightmare. Fatimah frantically howls into the smoke. The royal nest is in flames. The dry twigs of the raven's crown are a bonfire.
Through the searing heat, she sees it. Only one babe is left untouched by the fire. There is still a sliver of hope. She desperately roars, diving into the choking blackness. One could save them all.
Fatimah coughs. Her lungs fill with toxic soot. The heat scorches her aerodynamic feathers, curling them into useless ash.
With one last, agonizing gasp for air, she shrieks for her sister.
She chokes. The blackness takes her.
As the flames swallow her body, Fatimah’s burning eyes slowly close. Her final vision is the silhouette of Faaiza, swooping miraculously through the wall of fire, snatching their single, surviving babe in her talons, and flying out of harm’s way into the bruised sky.
Smiling through the agony, Fatimah drowns alone in the smoke, burning to ash upon the valuable, golden-black stone she once called home.