Fidik, the feral falcon gryphon looked at his anthro flightless avian counterpart and pointed to the Grumman Goose that was on the sandbar they had staked camp in overnight.

“We need to move now” Fidik urged sternly “run it up now!” He said as Christopher grabbed a couple things from their campsite and ran over to the plane and flumbled with the door briefly before it opened… He threw what he was carrying into the aluminum flying boat and ran around the plane and snatched off the various remove before flight blocks and guards and threw them inside and with a clatter of his talons the metal floor made his way to the pilot’s seat looking back as Fidik dropped a couple more things in there.

“Get it up… I’ll be in the air right behind you we’ll land and regroup a little bit further north…. Go… get out of here” Fidik said slamming the door closed and locking it with a thunk that left behind an audible silence as the cold and dark airplane did little to drown out the crashing of trees and forest hopefully still far behind him.

Chris dropped himself in the left seat and went through the checklist in his head that he’d done a million times before but never… never under these circumstances.

He spoke out loud to himself as he went “Battery… on” he threw the switch with an audible CHUNNGGGGGG and the sounds of instruments came to life “Generator… on, carb heat cold, Props low RPM… fuel both… cutoff on…… crossfeed … closed… wobble pump until 3 PSI” he reached down and pumped the manual primer on the floor as he looked out of the window and saw another track of trees come crashing down and shook his head with a snap of his beak

“Emergency ignition… on” FLIP

“Mixtures cutoff” he said pressing his hands on the red handled controls

“Throttle… pump to prime” He shoved and pulled back the throttle levers a few times… “open 1/2”…”Mags… both” CHUNG “starter…. Crank left” He shoved the switch over and finally the big radial engines were turning “Sorry girls…… come on…. Come on…..” The engine sputtered to life “when starts mixture, rich….” “Right side….” He watched as the engine slowly turned with the starter then lit to life after what felt like forever….

He pushed the propeller levels full… then the throttles full forward and eased the flying boat into the lake in front of them and looked around…….and shoved the throttles full forward… the engines roared to full power… and he looked down at the gauges… well out of the proper temperature range but…. He clenched the throttles which he pushed forward on his mind thinking just maybe they’d gain another half inch of more power but…. In time the flying boat gained speed and eventually lifted off the lake…