The Kes'trekel and the Lirr. A Dark Sun Fable.

One hot morning as a lirr was using his sharp senses to track prey through the rocky desert, he saw a kes'trekel on the lip of a large boulder overhead. This was not the first kes'trekel the lirr had seen. What caught his attention this time, and made him stop for a second look, was that the lucky kes'trekel held a fat dead rat in her beak.


"No need to search any further," the lirr thought slyly, "Here is a delicious meal for my breakfast." He trotted up to the foot of the boulder, where the kes'trekel was sitting. He looked up in admiration and cried out, "Good-morning, beautiful creature!"
The kes'trekel cocked her to one side and watched the lirr suspiciously. She kept her beak tightly closed on the rat and did not return his greeting.
"What a charming creature you are!" said the lirr. "How your feathers shine! What a beautiful form and what splendid wings you have! Such a wonderful bird should have a very lovely voice, since everything else about you is so perfect. If you could just sing one song, I know I would call you Queen of Birds."
Listening to these flattering words, the kes'trekel forgot all her suspicion, and also her breakfast. She wanted to be called Queen of Birds very much. So, she opened her beak wide to screech, as kes'trekels do, and the fat rat fell out of her beak and straight into the lirr's open mouth.
"Thank you," said lirr sweetly, as he walked off into the desert.