Wapun Meadow No Admittance (Except on party business!)

@Merrick

The darkly winged thing did his due diligence from on high, tilting with the wind one way, then another, low enough to be safe from cloud and cold; high enough to be out of sight.

The tremors did not bother him. He knew sometimes his roost was fickle, but up in the air he was safe to watch and hunt for signs of life. He was not interested in life. A living thing was too much hassle; better yet to wait and then to pick apart the death as it came, to feast upon it.

This presumed death eater had found such an offering - the bodies were chilled by morning, and in the light the red of blood was like a beacon. He was silent; to reap this bounty he would need stealth, and came to alight upon the uncertain earth by the dead thing's face.

He glimpsed a thin, frozen smile upon the lips. A greying of the vitreous humor. The skin was still pliant and fresh enough for him to pincture with a stab of the beak, and as he pulled back his bald face, away came a cheek. Then one of the eyes, skewered, tossed with a still-wet gleam, caught and swallowed. 

He would take his time - there was much to be done.

merrick woke to the clicking of the creature’s beak.
all of him ached — the boy blinked muzzily, thirst tightening as the events of the day prior flooded back.
indra; dead.
he had lain beside her beneath twilight and nightfall, and they both were dusted in a gentle covering of snow.
that clicking again.
merrick glanced across his mother’s lifeless form
she was not dead could not be
and his copperlight stare alighted on the massive, filthy form of a carrion-bird come down to pick over indra.
”get away, you fucking bastard!” merrick snapped, lunging toward the vulture with a harsh gape of his jaws.
he had killed her
she had deserved it!
but he would not allow her to be consumed. not in this way.

He was a learned leech when it came to the disposal of the deceased; they were afforded little honor as he scraped them to pieces, pulled the meat from their joints, or the soft tissues - his favorite - before they spoil. The living had no use for eyes, livers, hearts; but he had all the need, he required it. It was his purpose.

So when one of the bodies rose, waking out of death, baring teeth, exposing a lucious tongue which he would have eagerly pulled free from its casing — the sawbones skittered backwards in revolt, hopping off-kilter out of the beast's nimble reach. It did not waylay him for long; he did not call out, but clattered his beak like a set of castanets, flaunting the sharp curve of it as one might brandish a scalpel.

Look what I can do, he was saying as he tumbled around the body. Look upon the face! The face! He reached for it, for what was left of it, and tugged playfully at a stiff ear only to withdraw the long neck upon itself should the wolf bare his teeth again. His role was inevitable — certainly the beast would understand this and let him work.

merrick was not left alone; he was taunted. the dead weight of indra shifted beneath him as he rose to guard her with the pillars of his legs, bristling with a murderous luster as the bird continued its brazen assaults.
it was the way of things, he knew, but merrick could not let his mother sour in the belly of such a filthy creature. there were still things to do, to say. 
the ground heaved, spilling the boy to the cold earth alongside the corpse that had once been indra. silently he gazed upon her, eyeing her flanks as if waiting for them to suddenly rise once more.
”listen, you thing,” he snarled, infuriated that he must end his vigil earlier than he would have preferred. ”can you understand me?”

In all his years he had been contested by bigger beasts than this, and was undeterred when the wolf came for him again, again, again. Ducking back from the teeth when they came, or hopping, reaching with a half-open wing as counter-balance; always lingering somewhere close to the corpse.

When the wolf spoke to him the bird fanned its wings out, inflated itself with a lift of its shoulders and angular tilt to its face, as if to make itself bigger; he was big, he knew that, success bred strength in him. Intimidation aside, his bald red face gleamed against the swarthy backdrop of feathers and he clattered his beak — clack clack, for yes.

Then he lunged; lifting those wings as if he meant to herd the dark hound, thrusting his breastbone towards the gap between the bodies living and dead. Out of him poured an animated laughter the likes of which grated on the ears as he tried to warn away the wolf, so impatient was he for a meal.

If he did not get his way now, he would wait, but it would be done. Best to let him get on with it before the flies set in, he thought.

merrick’s jaw clenched as the bird sounded off a long and raucous noise, but it seemed his words would not fall on deaf ears.
the boy held his ground, lip circling; he was cold, cold; he felt nothing beyond the deepening bite of rage. how difficult would it be to reach out, to grapple the bird’s huge and hideous neck, to snap it?
”you can’t have her. i want to make a trade,” merrick offered in a cold voice. ”i’ll hunt for you until the debt is paid. in return, you let me bury my m —”
oh, how the word choked him
” — bury her. all of her,” he added with a dire glint to his copperburn eyes.

The cur began to circle him; almost vulture-like, the bird would think with a sneer, a clattering of his beak. The closer the wolf got the wider the bird opened its limbs, fanning dark feathers, puffing the chest—hopping, with a scree, closer to the body.

The offering was appealing if only for its newness. In all his many years—so many more than any hound had access to—none had tried to barter; he thought the creatures too stupid, to be honest. This one thought himself to be cunning. The bird inhaled and chuckled, the sound made more dissonant, charmless, but he clacks his beak and folds back his wings.

A tilt to the narrow face, a blink; Cadaver ducks his head ever so slightly, almost a bow, and again comes the confirmation: clack! clack!

yes, yes — would be and it was. merrick gazed quietly at the bird, mind churning with what he could offer instead of his mother's stiffening corpse.
"if you let me bury her now, i'll hunt you rabbits after," the boy muttered. it would be a poor substitute for the meat that could be prised from indra's delicate bones,
but
a hitching sob rose finally in merrick's throat; he stared with a new horror down at the lifeless form, as if for the first time comprehending the enormity of what he had done, the first time again and again and again again again again 
salt tang crept into his mouth; merrick lurched forward, gesturing violently at the bird to follow
he must get away away away away