the cave of glass.
in all of merrick's recent dreams, the boy had been there, dark fur aglow with the strange blue light. a breath come brokenly in the night, it roused the young killer over and over again.
silvertip reared close; as cold rain poured down upon the meager shelter where the vagabonds had made their bed, merrick lifted himself, crept away from @Astara and caiaphas, trotted into the very mouth of the storm.
the cave of glass.
where he had recognized indra's sin and finally acknowledged her wrongdoing. where did she lay now? had the wheeling vulture plucked her to bits all the same, or had his mother gone to ground in peace? 
a morbid smile flickered onto his curled mouth; merrick knew that place was near, hovering like some obelisk of void sensation.
a rough grunt; merrick paused, dripping, upon the threshold.
a pained bellow that echoed again the stones, bounced back against the yearling's ears.
he stole forward, scarcely daring to breathe. a heavy musk choked his nostrils, and instinct lifted high his hackles. 
but merrick did not run, simply remained tense as his single eye blinked rapidly with awe to see the massive hulk of a scarred bear crouching in the gloom.
the animal growled a low grunt of warning, but it tapered into a pant. death rattle in the throat, and it drew the boy closer, closer still.
a wetness on his paw, sudden, lukewarm. merrick did not need to glance down to know what it was, and finally beheld the long ragged length of wood sticking from the bear's side.
a sapling, crushed into one desperate javelin to spear the fleeing bruin, who had dragged itself here and was now breathing the last rainwashed air of this final night.
it pattered down in velvet rhythm, flickering shadows across the heavy parted jaws, the single eye that roved and blinked and finally fixed on nothing, fading too quickly and too slowly for merrick.
death here now, collecting its boon. the boy felt the cold presence and then the sudden emptiness of realization that he was again alone.
merrick drew a shaking sigh, lips suddenly trembling as the air seemed to warm around his very soul, and he heard the stony tone of the bear's voice, vibrating deep inside the tomes of his soul.
"you're here," he marveled aloud, his lone eye flying wide. within me. within this place. a sacred place. "i hear you," merrick whispered, staring toward the cave's hard-arched ceiling. 
he forgot himself there; weaving, weaving, breathing, committing himself to the dictations of the bear that now thrived within his young marrow.

a pack of coyotes could have roved into the glowing cave, and merrick would not have noticed them. he was riveted to the glassy eyes of the great dead thing, how the spirit appeared to linger as thin smoke near the leathered nostrils of the bleeding brute.
he dipped low his muzzle and tasted of the cooling liquid; its richness quickened the beating of his heart, and the boy marvelled as he drew closer, at the huge square paws and half-exposed fangs of the still bear. i see you, came the whisper merrick knew surely, surely, he did not merely imagine.
the ether called, but you came in its stead.
a glint of young teeth in the darkness.
perhaps i am what comes after, merrick thought fiercely back to the rumble of the bear's voice.