the sun has begun its dip in the horizon and scarab is out later than he suspects he's supposed to be. a glimpse at the darkening sky currently painted in muted pastel colors of a sunfall bid him instinctually to return to the den but he's not yet ready to ...and within the swaddling safety of rusalka's borders he is over-confident. rusalka is his home, his birthright and it is the ignorance and nativity of youth that leads the arrogant dahomey to assume that he is safe. there is nothing and no one within rusalka that would dare harm a hair on his head ...not without facing the wrath of the suns of his life.
there is something small sticking out of the sand and he nearly walked past it. in fact, scarab had strolled on past it during his 'patrol' of the beach as he scours it for more seaglass and driftwood but something about the odd shape — a thin, tiny bird-like clawed foot — that draws him back. carefully, scarab displaces the sand around it and the more he digs, shifting sand beneath his belly where it piles up until he switches then to the other side and something takes clear shape.
it's a sandpiper, perfectly petrified. he noses drags it up onto the sand and inspects it: hollow eye-sockets and bleach-white. it's unbearably fascinating to him and he ponders how this happened to it. possessiveness swells fiercely in his chest as he takes it gently betwixt his jaws and heads up the beach where it gives way soon enough to hard earth. he isn't sure what he'll do with it, where he'll put it where his siblings would leave it be: it is his after all and he does not want to share what has decidedly become the jackpot of his menagerie.
but the sky grows ever darker and he thinks the best place for the crown jewel of his collection is with him he reluctantly takes the petrified prize back to the den, tucking it into his small pile of colorful seaglass, curling his body possessively around his collection like a dragon guarding its hoard.
there is something small sticking out of the sand and he nearly walked past it. in fact, scarab had strolled on past it during his 'patrol' of the beach as he scours it for more seaglass and driftwood but something about the odd shape — a thin, tiny bird-like clawed foot — that draws him back. carefully, scarab displaces the sand around it and the more he digs, shifting sand beneath his belly where it piles up until he switches then to the other side and something takes clear shape.
it's a sandpiper, perfectly petrified. he noses drags it up onto the sand and inspects it: hollow eye-sockets and bleach-white. it's unbearably fascinating to him and he ponders how this happened to it. possessiveness swells fiercely in his chest as he takes it gently betwixt his jaws and heads up the beach where it gives way soon enough to hard earth. he isn't sure what he'll do with it, where he'll put it where his siblings would leave it be: it is his after all and he does not want to share what has decidedly become the jackpot of his menagerie.
but the sky grows ever darker and he thinks the best place for the crown jewel of his collection is with him he reluctantly takes the petrified prize back to the den, tucking it into his small pile of colorful seaglass, curling his body possessively around his collection like a dragon guarding its hoard.
“it's a quality of the gods
to see a creature with its back broken
and be unmoved —”
to see a creature with its back broken
and be unmoved —”
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