sometimes I think about the ones that we’ve replaced
all the millions underneath the burnt and waste
He is so lost to his hunger, to his madness, that he does not immediately notice when a second form melts into the shadows nearby. She is small and silent, a perfect predator with those jagged teeth and shining glassy eyes. When he does finally notice her it is only to pin his ears and snake his head threateningly in her direction, letting the fury of his suffering guide the fury of his exhausted movements.
It isn’t until something lands by his feet that he truly forces his focus to sharpen. His nose names it before his eyes do, and immediately he is a flurry of starving irrationality, charging where she had been as though she needs to be chased off, as though the gift hadn’t come from her in the first place. Somewhere deep inside he understands that this is all madness, that she has no intention of stealing it back or else she wouldn’t have thrown it into his reach in the first place.
But he cannot stop himself.
He screams at her, gnashing his beak and warning with his horns, striking outwards with dark forelegs until the smell of warm death is more than he can bear, more than he can resist.
The boy inside him that had wanted to be good and kind, to be someone his parents would be proud of is mangled and mashed down, wilting at this wildness that roars to life beneath his skin. But this is who he is now, this nearly feral creature. There is no kindness left. He is entirely the broken pieces of his best future, all jagged lines and sharp edges, all ruin.
He snatches up the first groundhog, though his eyes never stop roving the dark for that canine threat. He can barely hold still, shifting and moving and unsure of where to keep his eyes, but the growling in his gut is what finally stills him and he gulps the large rodents down in mangled bites until there is nothing left and he is sick with his greed.
He coughs once, his beak snapping in warning again as his eyes once more return to searching the shadow. If he could speak he might ask her why she had done that, what purpose does a wolf have giving up a meal for a stranger. But he is as silenced by his beak as he has always been, muzzled and mute, so the only hint of a question that escapes him is the questioning flicker of one single ear back and then forward again.
and I get sad because, of course, we’ll be the same
@[The Monsters] hello please mess with his beak
@[Ferran]