Noctisardor Bypass stergeda

once upon a time, heda had been part of a great hunt.
rivenwood, sapphique, duskfire glacier, and moonglow had joined.
but that life felt as if it had been eons ago.
now she fought for every mouthful and morsel; today no different. beside the lagoon she plucked a goose, looking up toward the same pair of nesting ospreys that mahler had once watched during long hours spent alongside the water.

life grew harder, then the cold set in. 

ava chased its tendrils from her heart by long days of walking, hunting, stalking. never getting more than a hare, but never left to think too long either. 

her mother plucked a goose by the lagoon, watching a pair of fierce stormbirds. ava eyed them warily, but approached with a low wag of her tail and gentle press of her muzzle. 

she nosed heda once in quiet motion; follow me?

heda, seated for longer than five minutes, had started to doze when ava came upon her. the slender muzzle shook; the golden eyes blinked. "baby." she smiled, slowly registering. 
the bird was put aside. heda gathered herself to unsteady legs and took a breath. "lead on. i'm right behind you."
the world was spinning. she focused on counting the pinewood trees that they passed, then turned her attention upon ava.

she smiled, worried by the distance in her mother's eyes. things did not seem right, but ava brushed this aside.

where did happiness go, when sadness made its home under your skin, between your ribs, sinking into your very bones?

this way, ava motioned. her steps took her past the lagoon, up a hill stripped of vegetation. occasionally she paused to glance behind her, making sure her mama was still there.

near the hill's gentle summit was a worn beech tree. its bark was ashy grey. its limbs twisted.

and halfway up the bough was the wind-whipped skeleton of a mountain cat, its tail wedged between two twisted branches as it dangled upside down, stirred occasionally by the breeze.

heda came along, her eyes encouraging whenever ava looked to her.
what she did not expect was the skeleton. a strangled cry broke from her throat; she pushed herself between her daughter and the hanging bones, mouth dry, eyes wide as she stared at them.
caught by its tail, the cat had not been able to free itself. she gazed at this morbidity of nature until she became sick; heda turned away. "when did you find this, baby? just now?"

ava glanced up at the gristly scene. it was morbid, but in a way fascinating. she wondered what the cat's last thoughts were before life left it.

she flinched at her mother's cry, brows raised in concern. no, mama! she did not mean to cause her distress, and so nosed her mama's chest in encouragement.

ava wondered about this thing. there was no meat left to it, so it was of little feeding use -- but maybe what was left of its hide could serve as some paltry holdover. looking upon heda, ava nodded solemnly.

she had only come across it that morning. for a long time, she had been captivated by it. but what did it mean, if anything?

the longer she stared at the dead cat, the greater her hunger and fury became. praimfaya had once left for this reason, a cat. and though heda no longer remembered her face or the sound of her voice, the seed of rejection inside her had been nurtured over the years quite badly.
she reached up for the dangling body, movements ginger; heda glanced back down at ava.
"stand back, all right?" she began to tug on bone and bough, hoping to rattle it down, the lingering musk of feline pricking her hackles.

ava wondered how many met a similar fate. she had never thought a tree could kill her, and yet --

she stepped back obediently, gaze sweeping to the bittersweet expression of concentration on mama's face. when she looked like that, where had her mind gone?

ava's breath held as the winterdry tree began to crack and snarl from heda's shaking.

the branches creaked, swayed; debris rained down.
then twigs, then the remnants of leaves.
she shook harder, and then exclaimed, stepping back quickly and drawing ava with her as the catbones descended in a stiff ungainly way, along with several cracked boughs, and fell to a rattling heap before them both.

the bough did not hold. down went the skeleton, in a jumble so loud it was almost profane. 

swept close to her mother’s chest, ava peered at the settling dust. for something that had been so limber in life, it was graceless now. 

she peered up at her mama with an inquisitive poke of her nose, almost too timid to touch the bones now that they had clattered to the earth in a pile of scree.

it was heda who at last came forward; she nosed the heaped and tattered ivories, feeling almost reverent to be in the face of death.
"it once had life. now it is gone, gone back to god, ava," her mother explained in a low sigh that no longer feared what the power the skeleton had once possessed.

the pair stood in reverence of the fallen. ava’s skin crawled as she stared at the skull — feeling the skull was staring back. 

she looked to her mother and wondered did other creatures have their own gods?  and what shape did these gods take, modeled in the eye of their worshippers?

probing questions once more made their home in ava’s mind. she looked to her mama once more, studying the beleaguered lines of heda’s expression. 

though ava could not articulate why, she noticed age had begun to sink its talons in the pleasing architecture of heda’s face.

fade? they'll need a new one! <3

heedless of her daughter's thoughts upon the age of a mother, heda took a breath. "come along, ava. we'll tell your sister about this, and john. maybe we can lay the poor creature to rest at some point."
the day would pass with one of her favored activities: the singing of soft hymns as they climbed back through the still-new trails of rivenwood.