52 When a Bird Worked Together with a Snake (1/2)

The sun started to tilt towards the west slightly when another 'strange' team moved forward from the stream's region. As a yellow colored bird with puffy white chest and black speckles dusted over it flew swiftly in the air in a circular motion at the top of the seemingly never-ending tree canopy, a small inconspicuous black snake was keeping up by shooting at the middle branches of trees in between the understory layer of the rainforest. Once a while the presence of the emergent tree layer made the bird flew higher to prevent unwanted trouble.

Years of living in these parts made the little bird to be more cautious and alert towards danger. The emergent layer of the rainforest was usually the home to large predatory birds who has no qualms to catch her as a snack.

Markisah was trying her best to comb the top part of the canopy carefully bit by bit from the stream's area outwards. She divided the location into imaginary blocks and flew above them in a clock-wise route. This method was suggested by Hana. She said by doing this, Markisah won't miss a single location. Since her new friend said there would be some, she would try to believe her this time. After a significant amount of interaction, she noticed that Hana was not as clueless as she thought. Maybe her spirit fruit had finally done its job to help her new friend significantly. She felt good thinking that she had increased the survival chances of her new friend.

Since she flew in a methodical manner, she had come across several trees with similar-looking crown as was explained by Hana easily. However, those trees' fruits were different in shapes and size as the ones drawn to her. From there, she knew that those were not the 'coconut' she was looking for. She needed to complain to Hana later. Evidently, Hana's description was a tad bit too inaccurate. The little bird didn't know that the 'crown' drawn by Hana was a feature representing the palm tree families. Hence, any kind of palm trees might have the same kind of crown, including a coconut tree.

After flying for quite some time, she had seen a likeness which conformed to Hana's explanation!

Due to the canopy being quite high and dense, the crown of the tree was partially covered by other trees snugly. Only a few strands of leaflets jutted out from the top.

Markisah chirped loudly, ”Little Snake! I think I found it! Over here!”

From between the branches, a pair of predatory eyes were gazing hungrily at the 'plump' yellow bird.

...

Kuro was tens of meters away from Markisah's present location. Hence, he could barely hear the faint chirping of the bird as she descended straight towards the tree she mentioned. After all, the top of the canopy and the middle understory was quite far from each other. He tried his best to slither as fast as he could towards the sound.

Once he was near, his sixth sensed blared loudly as he detected the presence of murderous intent. Although the intent was not meant towards him, he knew it was directed at the yellow bird high above!

At an obscured tree branch, he saw a black shadow flashed by in the direction of the descending bird. Kuro similarly pounced forward in a hurry to intercept the creature. In his mind, he could already see the aftermath of letting his mommy's new friend died on his watch. Most probably she will ask him to stop dangling on her arms for good, or even worse, disown him.

...

Being in elation had dulled Markisah senses for once and made her noticed the incoming attack slower than a fraction of a second than usual. From the corner of her beady eyes, a large predatory dark brown bird approached at a high speed!

Markisah reflexively dodged upwards as a black snake shot into the sky at an even higher speed and bit on the neck of the attacker accurately. The large bird managed to catch a few of her prized tail feathers as Markisah chirped with pain laced with unwillingness.

Simultaneously injecting a paralyzing agent into its bloodstream, Kuro generated a small amount of electricity to finally knocked the bird out before they naturally plunged downwards following the pull of gravity. The little black snake expertly landed on a large tree branch with his new prey in his mouth. He placed it nicely like hanging a piece of rag on a clothesline. The bird twitched periodically while it lay fainted on the tree branch, most probably due to reflex from its muscles reacting to the mild electrocution.

Markisah sweated in fear.