11-24-2015, 12:09 PM
what turns up in the dark
It grows feral.
It was always feral, of course – a creature apart, an alien bred in magic and mayhem. But it had been Hers, previously – it had been made to guard, to hunt for her. She had spoken to it in its language, a series of birdlike chirps and trills. She had guided it to meat, had set it to hunt.
But She had left it, whispering things it did not understand, leaving it alone with a hollowed belly amongst a world of meat that it feared to touch without Her telling it.
(Some of the meat was Bad, She had said, it will make you sick.)
It subsists mostly on carcasses, disgusting meat tasting of rot and maggots. It keeps it alive but oh, it misses hunting, it was made to hunt, made to guard, and it does neither, now.
It is near gaunt, now, the skin drawn tight across its bones. Its body is ridged and strange, teeth clicking in its protruding maw. It is bred to hunt, body armored. It is bred to kill, its tail a knife and its very blood acidic, burning sizzling holes into the earth.
And it is here, feral, alone, adrift.
It makes a noise, a birdlike trill (it finds the meat’s language mushy, hard to imitate, much prefers the sharpness and directness of chirps and trills), though it does not expect answers – no one has answered it in a long time.
But, there is something.
Meat, brown and boring, but the meat watches him with a soft gaze that feels too kind and makes its stomach twist. It trills again, a bit of a warning, but meat does not know its language so instead the meat speaks, that stupid mushy language.
Hello.
It knows that word – it knows many words. Knows it is a greeting. It always feels strange when meat talks to it (meats scream, they do not talk, talking is strange).
But it is lonely.
So it tries. It does not hunt.
(Yet.)
“’lo,” it manages back. The noises are hard to imitate, its maw cannot bend around the words the way meat can.
CTHULHU
reference here