Wapun Meadow grind to a halt

that accusation. always so obvious. always so glaringly devoid of the sense it took to understand merrick in a moment. he had taken the corrupted sense of normalcy and wore it proudly about his shoulders. 
"no shit," he lipped toward his cousin, laurel's words descending like a curse upon his torn ears.
for a long moment merrick only stared impassively at the aunt who had dragged his mother away, but the inward seethe began and did not end until he had clicked the lopsided stare to avicus.
she wore indra's colors, bloodstained, autunnal. but never, even despite her young age, had the girl ever evinced such weakness. such denial. 
yet laurel leant so heavily upon the lever of merrick's ever-present paranoias that it shifted a minute click and he wondered for the first time if the wretched spirit of his mother indeed listened.
and waited.
his aunt, consumed by some devil that churned her voice to ash and carved her into flint before his very eye as she shifted it back — and merrick saw the serpent in laurel as well, not in the brave, stupid boy who sought to intercede on behalf of a mother who was so 
"— worthless," came the reeling weathervane of his voice toward riley, the note of his own threat in the hardening of his stance.
laurel, retreating
her blood would be acid eating through his gumline — he swing his battle-rent muzzle around and grabbed for laurel's son, teeth clicking toward shoulder.
had the bitch not taken indra from merrick in search of her own brats? then thrown another litter — ah, the woeful mouldering corpse of his sainted mother had at least not done that to him. or perhaps he had only taken the choice from her. 
he knew not how laurel had come by her brood, nor the etchings it had left in her mind; merrick saw only the opportunity for a revenge long-basted in soured wine. let her now be ripped from her son as she had bid indra do to him.