Spotted Eagle Mountain i hear the birds singing in their cage

merrick had meant to be over the mountains days ago, but his shoulder was annoyingly, agonizingly uncooperative. having determined he’d torn a tendon a week prior, the boy had nevertheless traveled laboriously into the shadow of another mountain.
here could be heard the screaming of eagles far above, but for once he was not held in thrall. merrick was beginning to starve, held together by berries and bitter leaves and once, the flea-bitten carcass of a mouse, half buried beneath the leaf litter of the lofty forest’s floor.
too weak to go on, he lay at the unfeeling base of an oak tree, panting gently in the warmth, and thought of indra. what would she think, upon returning to the hollow to find him gone? what if laurel had found his worthless cousins; what if his mother had paid the price of her own child to see her sister’s spawn back into the fold?
lips curled with a cold smile, something mad and feral and unfit for the eyes of any living thing. his death, merrick decided, would be greater punishment than he could ever hope to mete through his own cunning. and maybe he deserved to die, for the blackness in him taking the form of something he did not recognize. thin, bedraggled merrick, come to a fair and fitting end.
a choking bit of laughter gravelled weakly in his throat.