Bonesplinter Ravine who thought she was a nightingale

✹☾❂

 

These days, Eleuthera lived less out of intention and more out of whim, folly and sloth. There was nothing to do and nothing to worry about. No pack to work for and no family to seek. So she roamed the lands as she was won’t to do, chatted with fair strangers as she came across them and enjoyed a swim if she came across an appropriate body of water, but for the most part she slept and let the edges of the days blend together in an amalgam of time that no longer made sense.

So when she came across the ghastly sights and smells of a boneyard, Eleuthera didn’t immediately turn and avoid the place. Instead, without anything better to do, she entered the diseased ravine — carefully so that she did not become one of the corpses herself — and began to pick over the bones as if they were shells on the beach. Whenever she found one with something resembling a face, Eleuthera found herself wondering what the creature’s story was, and how they came to find themselves here, dead and broken and decaying… and then, she wondered grotesquely, if her mothers had suffered a similar, dismal fate.

With that thought fresh on her mind, Eleuthera continued to peruse and imagine the lives that had once been lived, but now, had been ended.