Bearclaw Valley eight seconds

;;; ily

merrick had spent the night in contemplations. he would make a meet between tuur and avicus; he would reacquaint them with the idea of one another, and see that his red girl bent the younger boy to whatever whim she might entertain. that would be the way tuur might repay the milk and meat that had been spent to rear him in ursus. merrick possessed the young life; he was god in the valley, as he had told the handsome easthollow wolf that day. he was god to this boy.
but merrick knew better than to be god to himself, and yet it did not stop the rising shard of hubris that sparkled in his chest to have ursus return slowly to itself. small, shaven down to the core of what they had always been. 
and so he moved through the beautiful ageless forest that had stood in the valley before them and would stand after; 
the chilling cry of the scarlet cub rising through the trees.
merrick's mouth dried; he stood silent and wondering at the sound of it, and then unbidden his body began to wreak havoc with a speed that ripped the bear-king between the trees and sent him skidding to a halt at the juncture formed by his son and by his daughter.
the pull of her body brought the fur up sour like bitter stone-spires from nape to tail.
evien evien evien evien ev —
the snow churned by bear paw and the air filled with bear scent and the drifts stained with wolfblood in a wide puddle where the healer's body lay disconnected from his unseeing head.
merrick roared, and for a moment the anger that choked him was so great he was forced to fight bodily the insistence he might whet his teeth upon his son;
sacrifice one of them to the spirit that had been left unfed, and so had come for 
flanks heaving; mind splitting along the coils of serpentine that only burned his single eye with a near-fatal malevolence,
and yet he did not know where to place it — one step and then another, his children fading behind the vacuum of focus created by his splintering; merrick strode forward grab the healer's body. 
evien's blood leaked through his teeth;
merrick swallowed some part of it, mutedly recognizing the reality of taking such essence and holding it within his own cells.
he dragged and worked until head was reunited with corpse as closely as he could manage,
and all the while he dared not aventus nor avicus to approach him, ignoring them both until he stood over the two dead halves of a man he had loved — loved in ways known and yet unknown to himself — flanks heaving and jaws smeared with vermillion he would not bother to wash away.
the bear had done this.
"ursus must be fed blood. always. we did not give it enough." merrick did not know if he could say evien's name again in this moment.
his voice a harsh plain of ice studded with unconcealed rage. "bury his body."
an order; he extended a hard paw and dragged evien's head toward himself, thinking only in red wordlessness and the altar of bones his beloved raven had always kept.