Dawnlark Plains I dreamt about you nearly every night this week

she'd pulled most of the prey from the cache, which was, all in all, not very much at all. they gorged themselves on fresh kill when a hunt was successful; maggots infested anything left in the ground too long, and decay occurred much too quickly. should they be desperate, the carrion could be eaten; but they were not, not yet. 

she dragged a mangy, half-rotten hair away from the rest, planning to bury it when she'd poked and prodded through the rest of the contents. the fawn had been placed near the rendezvous, and she expected it to be gone, mostly, by morning. 

she kept waiting for guilt to descend like a cloud of blackflies, and yet, her brief union with the male did little to bother her. she felt nought for him, nor did she care to repeat what she'd done. but she did not regret that she had, at least not entirely, the experience and the brief pleasure it'd brought her. 

she set back to work, ignoring the maggots that writhed on the ground; the way she saw it, they were an add-on that made a lukewarm, stale piece of prey a bit more palatable.