drowned in moonlight

<center>(font: "Lucida Sans Typewriter")[drowned in moonlight]</center> **Warnings:** Animal death, Some amount of gore; Moderate description of animal processing [[START]]

They say it’s hard work, digging a grave. You wouldn’t know, of course. Burials are sentimental and pointless - the body doesn’t have a consciousness to appreciate it anymore. It’s just a sack of meat. You don’t even know what a grave is. You were never taught that, and neither was anyone around you. The concept is purely alien. Everyone around you knows better than to partake in such strange actions that are nothing but mourning someone long gone. Everyone takes what they need of the body and moves on, because there’s nothing else to it. [[The living, after all, have no need for the dead.]]

His killer carries (link: "Midnight")[a limp, hollow corpse] in his [[arms.]] He almost looks asleep, if you didn’t know better. If you couldn’t see his (link: "eyes") [empty little stare, forever caught in the rictus of defending you,] you might be able to lie to yourself. But you’re not going to go down that path. You didn’t think Midnight would ever leave you. Sameface had left, and you had split up with Z-3894 yourself, and no one else had ever really been your friend - but Midnight had always been by your side. You knew he always wanted to be, anyway. You had just reunited with him, after a month alone, and now he was gone without even a final farewell. [[At least it was quick, you guess.]]

Of course your blessing just makes everything worse for others by comparison. That’s what the Limbo Gods do, isn’t it? You struggle to remember the details, because it’s been so long since you heard the stories. Back when you were younger, back when the N-classes humoured you, even if they didn’t like you. (link: "Back when no one knew you were an anomaly.") [But after that gwech - Midnight’s mother - killed you, only for you to return…] Your memory of all the stories has faded with [[time.]] Maybe the gods are trying to spite you for not helping it. The thought might make you feel better, the idea that you haven’t unwittingly assisted them, except. [[It just makes you think about the N-class that suggested Midnight was a cursed creature here to help you.]] [[Well, look where it got him.]]

You remember that the I-class pair called Midnight a thing. You think this would have been easier if you had thought of Midnight as the same. [[back->The living, after all, have no need for the dead.]]

You pull off his skin with the expert efficacy of someone who already [[knows.]] It comes off in sluices, and it feels like it should be bloody, it feels like it should be messy, but it just isn’t. When you’re good at skinning, it just isn’t, and you’re not that great at it but you’re good enough, and it just feels like you’re pulling off his hide while he’s asleep in your lap, docile, trusting you above all else. (link: "Except he’s cold.") [Except he’s dead.] You start cutting his head off, and now there’s blood, and you think that shouldn’t make you feel better, but it (link: "does.") [does, and it doesn’t, and at least he actually looks more than just resting with his eyes open.] Carving through all the muscle in the neck, severing a skull from its spine, isn’t something you’ve done before. There was no point; but now there is. Because you don’t want to just leave Midnight like this. It’s a lot harder work than you imagined, and you have no practice here like you had with peeling back flesh from skin. You hack at vertebrae, again and again, trying to wiggle your knife so that it slips between two of them - but the notching slice of the bone glances off, [[and the bloody blade slips against your finger instead.]]

And isn’t that funny, when the god that tries to govern you is the Mirage? <img src="https://i.imgur.com/ORod5My.png" alt="i. the mirage."> [[back->At least it was quick, you guess.]]

(link: "You") [You don’t make a sound, despite the pain rapidly sinking in, because you’re already so blessed numb, and] pull back, assessing the damage done to the side of your thumb. Your hands are already covered in red, so it’s hard to tell what of this mess is Midnight and what of this mess is yours. You guess it doesn’t really matter. There’s not really anything you can do about the cut right now, especially when you’re still in the middle of dissecting Midnight for his best parts, his useful parts. (link: "What was it that the N-classes whispered?") [If you got sick and died, you deserved it for not being strong enough to fight it.] [[You don’t see why it doesn’t apply to you, too.]]

It just makes you think about how Midnight has stuck with you since you first got him. It makes you think about how much he loved you, and how much he missed you when you had to leave him, even for a little while. [[back->At least it was quick, you guess.]]

What do you know? You’re not sure. Maybe you know what death is like now. Death of someone you care about, anyway - you’ve known what it’s like to kill and what it’s like to die since you were 5. Or maybe you just meant that you know how to skin things like they’re nothing. Even your best friend. [[back->Well, look where it got him.]]

You go back to work. There’s no thinking involved in the actions, in hacking bone loose, in wrenching Midnight’s head off of his corpse. It’s just muscle memory. It’s your strength flexing its talents, because this is the only thing you’re really good at. You’re strong, and that’s all there is to it. You’ll never amount to anything more, because you’re not smart enough - that’s what it felt like E-4 had implied of you, what you would have implied of yourself if you’d stayed there. (link: "*Play to what you’re good at for the team <:)*, is what they’d said.") [*If you want to be more than just our beast of burden, then learn to be more useful like you simply can’t <:)*, is what they'd never voiced.] You can’t help but think about it, because you have nothing else to think about. You wonder if Midnight would be still alive if you’d joined the E-class swarm like you were supposed to, like a good little E-class might have. You wonder if you’d really be willing to sacrifice your "could"s to settle, if he would. [[You don’t know the answer.]]

*Go ahead and prepare your capture creature. (;* There’s nothing else to turn over, in your head or in your hands, so you twist the words the I-class left you around and around instead. It glints in your mind’s eye like a knife, twice as sharp and just as dangerous. They didn’t mean anything by it, obviously. Why would they? There was no need for antagonism between you and that [[pair;]] it was just a simple encourager, a notail’s practicality. When a tool can’t be useful anymore, you toss it away. And there’s only one possible thing of use left in a dead capture creature. It’s just notail practicality. You carefully cube the (link: "meat") [last thing left of Midnight that any other notail would consider of worth] away from the rest of him, little tiny uneven squares that will be easy to spit on a stick and roast. Some of this won’t be worth the effort it takes to get off, too thin under the skin to be more than a little nibble, and some of this just won’t be safe to eat. There’s no poison in a gwech, of course, but it’s not like you’re good at this. For every tenderloin or haunch or other meat term you used to idly see without knowing, there’s a wrong slice that leaves too much meat on the bone or an accidental puncture that leaves something foul you know you wouldn’t be able to stomach. And you don’t even know how to get off the scraps of flesh that stick stubbornly, still. [[Some things just cling too hard to do anything about.]]

Doves always came in twos, was what the T-class had told you. You wonder why. What did their village teach them? What kind of upbringing leads you to stick like glue? You guess you could answer that last question. But you couldn’t stay a pair forever. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/mX0F3S1.png" alt="ii. the doves."> [[back->You don’t know the answer.]]

All things considered, you think you did okay in the end. It’s hard to reconcile how much meat you have in your hands with the half-dissected form limp before you. You don’t know what percentage you managed to salvage and what percentage you didn’t - and you’re sure other notails your age probably could tell by this point, at least form a rough guesstimate because they can apply those numbers to a solid reality, but (link: "you?") [of course, you can’t.] Maybe it’s 50%. You think it might look like half. Maybe. But again, like you keep thinking over and over, you guess it doesn’t really matter. It’s not like you could go back and redo it, after all. You couldn’t go back to save Midnight, and you can’t go back to cut him up properly, even if you wanted to instead for some sick reason. You can only go back to save yourself, and your life wasn’t on the line this time. That was just like the Past, really. That was just like the *gods*, really. Blessings, even ones people asked for, never gave you what you wanted. They just gave you what you thought you wanted, and that was a terrible difference to mistake. [[You could forget all the stories from the Book of the Neo as much as you wanted, but you would never forget that.]]

It’s wet. That’s all you can think as you carry it in both your hands, cradling it like you cradled Midnight once when he was just a screaming baby gwech, blood still dripping and thumb still throbbing. You carry it over to the I-classes, and the fire they’ve poked into life, and all you can think about is [[that.]] You can tell that you’ve been standing a few beats too long in front of your cohorts because of how they shift. They don’t say anything, but you’re observant enough to notice the way they cock their heads just the slightest in each other’s direction, like they want to bring their faces together side-by-side. You can’t stand that, suddenly. Their closeness, their partnership with each other - it’s overwhelming, in a way, too much to bear. You want to say it’s disgusting, but just because it makes you feel sick doesn’t mean that’s the same thing. Without any outward indication of hastiness, you hand over the chunks of meat for them to cook. You’re fine. There’s no other reply or thought you can give. What’s the point of being upset, anyway? It wouldn’t bring Midnight back. He was still dead. He would always be dead, and you would just have to deal with it. No one else would care about your stupid gwech, anyway. He was just your capture creature. You turn away, to deal with what remains of your friend. [[You’re fine.]]

Why do they call it bringing to life? It’s just fire. It isn’t a creature; but still, people talk about letting it die and flame roaring to life. When you think about it, that’s really funny. Fire is brought to the same level as an animal. After all - just like a capture creature, it’s a tool. It only makes sense. It’s only fair. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/ZuhMREN.png" alt="iii. the fire."> [[back->You could forget all the stories from the Book of the Neo as much as you wanted, but you would never forget that.]]

They say it’s hard work, digging a (link: "grave.") [grave. You wouldn’t know, because you have never even heard of graves.] You flex your bloody claws, and you look at his bloody corpse. There’s no such thing as a garbage dump in the Woods, even though that’s the appropriate way to deal with the dead. You know there are things that scavenge through the trash, just as there are things that scavenge through this forest - but leaving him out in the open, without even a metal lid or plastic flap to cover him… It doesn’t feel right. It feels like… You wouldn’t be giving his body a fighting chance. And you know that’s [[stupid,]] but you guess that makes sense because you’re stupid too. Midnight isn’t just some animal, and he wasn’t even supposed to die like this. It’s not fair, but you’re starting to realise a lot of things (link: "aren’t.") [aren't. Or maybe you already knew.] You can feel the eyes on you, the I-classes and *that* notail, as you reach up and begin pulling leaves from the bushes and lower-hanging branches, stripping them by the handful and dumping them on Midnight. The stares bore holes into your spine, in your face, but you ignore them and keep pulling. It doesn’t matter what any of them think, really. You can’t save him, but maybe you can at least make those animals work for what’s left of him. You can at least bury it all down under these layers. [[You don’t want to see him anymore.]]

Because he’s already dead. Because he’s already lost his fighting chance. Because that Hawk-born Hawk-raised *animal* broke his neck in a second, for no reason at all. [[back->You’re fine.]]

(link: "You shrug off their words, his fear, your feelings.") [You shrug them all off, because it’s not important. Maybe it’ll never feel important again. You hope so.] You can still feel the way his bones creaked when you squeezed them, the way he fell silent like he should have stayed after you talked to him, because he doesn’t deserve to ask you questions when he did what he did, and you can still feel the strength you had when you held him at bay. You can feel the knowledge that you could have broken the Hawk kid’s wrist, and there was nothing he could have done about it. It feels *real*, more real than the cut on your thumb or the nothing by your side or the conversation you’re carrying out. Maybe the only real thing that’s left. You sit down cross-legged on the grass, and reach out to grab one of the sticks; nicely crisp, sweetly charred. The meat is done, and done well. You don’t look back. ''“Let’s eat. =3"'' <img src="https://i.imgur.com/26oIPoy.png" alt="iv. e n d">