The sound arrived before the light.
The specific, mechanical thrum of rotor blades cutting air — not the gentle pulse of a distant helicopter but the committed, approaching sound of one that had found its destination and was closing in. It came from the south, over the water, the rhythm of it intensifying from a suggestion to a fact over the course of about forty seconds.
The birds went first.
Every bird in the canopy above the clearing lifted at once — the specific, simultaneous eruption of wings from the treeline that preceded the sound by a breath, the ecosystem registering the vibration before the human ear had assembled it into meaning.
Then it was fully there. Loud. Overhead.
Raven was already awake.
