In the harsh winter, another snowstorm swept across the land.
Soaring over the boundless snowfield, a male eagle had but one aim: to find food.
With keen eyes, the strong eagle scanned the landscape, yet all he saw was endless white.
The temperature plummeted. His once-thick feathers now seemed thin and weak. Uttering a helpless, hopeless cry, he landed on a cliff.
The eagle had flown for an entire day without success...
Time shifted to the day before. After watching her mate fly from the nest, the female eagle gently gathered her two nearly frozen eaglets to her bosom, sheltering their small bodies beneath her broad wings.
Perhaps they wouldn't survive until spring, but she clung to a sliver of hope: what if their father returned with food?
One eaglet let out a feeble cry; the other was too weak to make a sound.
Nearby lay the skeleton of a rabbit—the male's last successful hunt before the snows came. This prey had sustained the family of four for ten days, picked clean to the bone. As the short day, which felt like a lifetime, drew to a close, the female still saw no sign of her mate. She felt one eaglet, huddled beneath her lukewarm feathers, growing colder.
Rather than watch her young die one by one, she decided to act. With her sharp beak, she tore open her own chest. Feathers, plucked by the icy wind, scattered around her. With her last strength, she whispered to her surviving eaglet: "Eat me..."
Outside, the male eagle, who had been standing watch, shook the snow from his wings. With a piercing cry, he mustered his strength, spread his wings, and launched back into the sky. He scanned the vast, white expanse below. Suddenly, a dark shape caught his eye.
He nosedived for a closer look. It was another gray rabbit.
The eagle swooped down upon it.
The rabbit did not flee or hide but remained crouched tightly in the snow.
The eagle seized and killed it with his sharp talons. As he prepared to fly off, the sight beneath the rabbit's body startled him: there lay four stiff, frozen baby rabbits.
Love is vast and profound, yet also cruel.