Garuda

Garuda is a Deity of the sky: a vast, leonine-eagle figure that moves like a living sunbeam across the horizon. Field-naturalist notes record a body of braided muscle beneath bronze-hued feathers, a hooked beak like a carved crescent, and eyes that reflect cloud and fire. Smell: a sharp ozone tang braided with warm, honeyed saffron. Sound: the rolling, low thunder of wingbeats and the distant clatter of wind on metal. Temperature: the air around it carries the dry heat of high noon, as if a patch of clear sky has been warmed and Set down. Encounters are brief but unforgettable — a shaft of gilded plumage, the shadow of a silhouette large enough to block the sun, and then a radiance that lingers where it passed.