08-07-2020, 09:32 PM
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It's nothing to kill a child, a simple thing, and one needn't be a god to do it. It does not require magic, nor any great force, and if it is not extravagant or devastating the way the other deaths are, there is a cruelty and a coldness to the simplicity of the way he kills her.
But that isn't starting at the beginning.
At the beginning, she is lying tucked against the warmth of her mother, strategically separated by the mare's body from her older brother who sleeps peacefully beneath one great red and black wing. The mare sleeps, too, though she rouses when they hear His voice. Manikin does not look to see if Avocet awakens, too, her goldenrod eyes open into the deep blue of a night giving way to the sun and they search fruitlessly for the black shadow of Him propped against the dawn.
Nothing.
She trills a sleepy question and her mother replies, a soft guttural sound, the mare's black-rimmed ears flicking back and forth as the Speaker speaks, and Manikin knows that Popinjay hears the summons but her mother remains prone and murmuring, her nose pressing into the soft earth of their flowering nest. The sickness holds her firmly in its grasp, she will not leave the Pampas today.
Manikin stirs though, because she is not sick, and because she does not know gods or magicians. She does not understand that they can be fickle or careless or cruel, and if she did know those things, she would not care, because the promise of an adventure is enough to pull her from the already-dubious safety of her mother's warm side. She stirs, and she stretches, and then she leaves them without looking back, following the tug in her heart from the safety of the flowering fields an impossible distance. There is no time, there is no weariness, the child finds him at the beach having crossed an insurmountable distance for one so young, she finds the grey stallion where the waves crash dark and thick as blood onto the oily black sand. The sight of so many around him sets her to growling, her voice high as a kitten's, and her yellow eyes flicking from one face to the next.
Some are already dead. A white mare vomits panicked rats onto the beach and when one passes by her, Manikin pounces on it with beak and claw. Even its blood on her claws is black - so unlike her own, startling and red, pulsing from the puncture wound on her paw where the rat bites her just before being snapped up in a sharp beak and shaken to its death, the soft <I>click</I> of its spine breaking almost imperceptible. The little chimera drops the stilled body and, grumbling, inspects her paw - little hurts, little wounds, but toes bleed like rivers. The rat bleeds as if it is filled with oil when she plucks its head from its body, and when she picks it up again, the taste of the black blood that smears across her teeth is strangely sweet as though it is already rotten.
More faces arrive. They are rent and burnt and bludgeoned. She ignores them all except for the angry way her young feathers stand up along her crest, tufted black at their tips and the rest still sheathed, itching to be broken free of their keratin shells. When she finally reaches him, the child does not stop, not in awe or fear or respect - she has none of these things in her - but she drapes the cooling body of the black rat across his fore hoof and presses her bleeding paw to his forearm leaving a crimson stain.
"Locusts."
Manikin snaps her beaks and smiles her strange smile. She loves locusts, they make up a significant portion of her diet.
<I>You'll have to die first, of course.</I> She thinks that death is like sleeping, and the filly is suddenly weary, suddenly so tired. Black eyelashes flutter like moth wings and she lowers herself to the ground beside the grey, beside the headless rat, and lays her head upon the foul sand with a sigh. Manikin sleeps and thinks that she is dead, but she isn't. Not until a weight falls like stone upon her ribs and her yellow eyes fly open in panic. She screeches and yowls and scratches at him desperately, because like the rat, she will not die without fighting, but she can do nothing to shift the grey hoof that presses, presses, until her lungs scream for air that doesn't come, until their hunger becomes starvation and their starvation becomes darkness.
It is the smallest effort, on his part. Like a snake, he simply outlasts her bodies need for oxygen, and without it her vision goes dark, her limbs limp, though the right paw remains hanging a moment longer where one lion-cub claw snags in his skin, and from the stage of her small body he can still kill those that follow, unperturbed by clacking of her hind hooves striking violently against each other in a cadaveric spasm.
Manikin, dull and dim, her edges blown blurry by a wind unfelt by the mortals still living, swats at her own feet as they rattle together.
<center><p class="manalive_quote"><a href=https://www.deviantart.com/shevy-art>Image by Shevy-Art</a></p></div></div></center>
It's nothing to kill a child, a simple thing, and one needn't be a god to do it. It does not require magic, nor any great force, and if it is not extravagant or devastating the way the other deaths are, there is a cruelty and a coldness to the simplicity of the way he kills her.
But that isn't starting at the beginning.
At the beginning, she is lying tucked against the warmth of her mother, strategically separated by the mare's body from her older brother who sleeps peacefully beneath one great red and black wing. The mare sleeps, too, though she rouses when they hear His voice. Manikin does not look to see if Avocet awakens, too, her goldenrod eyes open into the deep blue of a night giving way to the sun and they search fruitlessly for the black shadow of Him propped against the dawn.
Nothing.
She trills a sleepy question and her mother replies, a soft guttural sound, the mare's black-rimmed ears flicking back and forth as the Speaker speaks, and Manikin knows that Popinjay hears the summons but her mother remains prone and murmuring, her nose pressing into the soft earth of their flowering nest. The sickness holds her firmly in its grasp, she will not leave the Pampas today.
Manikin stirs though, because she is not sick, and because she does not know gods or magicians. She does not understand that they can be fickle or careless or cruel, and if she did know those things, she would not care, because the promise of an adventure is enough to pull her from the already-dubious safety of her mother's warm side. She stirs, and she stretches, and then she leaves them without looking back, following the tug in her heart from the safety of the flowering fields an impossible distance. There is no time, there is no weariness, the child finds him at the beach having crossed an insurmountable distance for one so young, she finds the grey stallion where the waves crash dark and thick as blood onto the oily black sand. The sight of so many around him sets her to growling, her voice high as a kitten's, and her yellow eyes flicking from one face to the next.
Some are already dead. A white mare vomits panicked rats onto the beach and when one passes by her, Manikin pounces on it with beak and claw. Even its blood on her claws is black - so unlike her own, startling and red, pulsing from the puncture wound on her paw where the rat bites her just before being snapped up in a sharp beak and shaken to its death, the soft <I>click</I> of its spine breaking almost imperceptible. The little chimera drops the stilled body and, grumbling, inspects her paw - little hurts, little wounds, but toes bleed like rivers. The rat bleeds as if it is filled with oil when she plucks its head from its body, and when she picks it up again, the taste of the black blood that smears across her teeth is strangely sweet as though it is already rotten.
More faces arrive. They are rent and burnt and bludgeoned. She ignores them all except for the angry way her young feathers stand up along her crest, tufted black at their tips and the rest still sheathed, itching to be broken free of their keratin shells. When she finally reaches him, the child does not stop, not in awe or fear or respect - she has none of these things in her - but she drapes the cooling body of the black rat across his fore hoof and presses her bleeding paw to his forearm leaving a crimson stain.
"Locusts."
Manikin snaps her beaks and smiles her strange smile. She loves locusts, they make up a significant portion of her diet.
<I>You'll have to die first, of course.</I> She thinks that death is like sleeping, and the filly is suddenly weary, suddenly so tired. Black eyelashes flutter like moth wings and she lowers herself to the ground beside the grey, beside the headless rat, and lays her head upon the foul sand with a sigh. Manikin sleeps and thinks that she is dead, but she isn't. Not until a weight falls like stone upon her ribs and her yellow eyes fly open in panic. She screeches and yowls and scratches at him desperately, because like the rat, she will not die without fighting, but she can do nothing to shift the grey hoof that presses, presses, until her lungs scream for air that doesn't come, until their hunger becomes starvation and their starvation becomes darkness.
It is the smallest effort, on his part. Like a snake, he simply outlasts her bodies need for oxygen, and without it her vision goes dark, her limbs limp, though the right paw remains hanging a moment longer where one lion-cub claw snags in his skin, and from the stage of her small body he can still kill those that follow, unperturbed by clacking of her hind hooves striking violently against each other in a cadaveric spasm.
Manikin, dull and dim, her edges blown blurry by a wind unfelt by the mortals still living, swats at her own feet as they rattle together.
<center><p class="manalive_quote"><a href=https://www.deviantart.com/shevy-art>Image by Shevy-Art</a></p></div></div></center>