In the swirling of one’s mind, it may seem like one’s self is the most important of all creatures. The immediate needs and wants of the individual rises above the collective, establishing their presence through tangible effects on the physical shell.
The future does not hold them dearer than the next. Whoever seizes the chance, wins the reward or pays the price.
Of course, each life is not separate from the next. The presence of the tiny gnat allows for growth of the flower fields.
Even death maintains existence. Without the corpse’s sacred dissolution, how would the soil be nurtured for the next cycle?
And so evil begets good. Only in connection to the rotting perfusion of the neglected soul may the purest and most blessed of them be found. Goodness reveals itself as a light amidst the pitch blackness of evil. Alternatively, perhaps the degradation of one allows the imperfections of the next to be seen as lesser and thereafter forgotten.,
To Silnarion, the Master’s perfection only magnifies the weakness of thine own flesh.
Now, of course people other than Silnarion still exist. Magpie, for one, exists.
Magpie exists in the glory of his own mind, relishing in his own type of moral mire.
Like the gentlest of kin sip on tea and nibble on crumpets, the lord of birds currently stares into the mirror and dabbles in a tasting of his own poisonous self.
Stretching his face, ruffling his own feathers, trying on different emotions, Magpie resembles the rich, unwed spinster trying on wedding gowns to be delivered to another.
Anger, hatred, annoyance are all too familiar to be entertaining for long.
A stretched but honest smile feels unnatural but titillating. It quickly slips off the face.
A frown, accompanied by the glistening of yet unshed tears, moves Magpie- or at least it would, if Magpie was capable of being moved.
‘Again, too familiar.’
Moving spindly hands to his cheeks, Magpie attempts to regain the joyous expression lost. However, like all things lost, Magpie struggles to recall where the fleeting feeling went.
Perhaps in the shadow of the devil’s wings an alternative theory will ring more true: Evil, as absence of good, is a truer substance than all else. When one cannot imagine a way to be better, one can almost certainly devise myriad ways to be worse.
Abandoning the gentler version, Magpie manifests a manic delight. His maw stretches open, jaw flinging wide like the motion of the starving bird’s beak. One could easily imagine many an insect being snatched up and gobbled down the next moment.
So passes the morning.
So passes the afternoon.
So passes the evening.
It is only under the cover of darkness that Magpie emerges from his room, face so stretched with the mighty populace of himself that he seems to forget what emotion it once held. Now it seems to himself that he possesses but a skull, loosely draped with the moldable fabric of puppet fame.
In this feeling, Magpie finds the closest thing to contentment that the Goddess allows.
The moldable self rearranges the feathers and fluff into an enigmatic villain as a clawed foot-black boot crosses the threshold of the little cafe.
Crumbs spattering the floor show the remains of a successful day. Stalking past empty tables, worn out sofas, and empty trays, Magpie reaches a small dusty storage room.
With a violent grab and pull, bags of root vegetables and legumes are thrown aside, revealing a dirt covered wooden slat floor.
Claws dig in to the corner of a particularly warbled piece of wood, while wriggling fingers pry twist at the smallest of the many knots.
With a groaning impressive to even to the most vocal of elder arthritic men, the dark circle twists. Angry muscles and wood together twitch as the knot is smashed down and the corner of the plank lifted up.
Magpie is greeted with a triumphant click as he falls backwards in an unceremonious mound of feathers and cloak, coming to lie among potatoes and turnips and rutabaga.
With much shuffling, Magpie regains a crouching position. With a bird-like hop, he comes back to face the square of floor.
Excited scrabbling can be heard from through the floor now, much like a dog tying to reach his owner. The stench of something wrong is vaguely smelt, like when one’s socks are worn when still wet.
Maggie chuckles in the the back of his throat as a malicious glint sparks in his spinel eyes. A sly grinsweeps across his face before returning his lips to neutral.
A great leap places him on top of where the floor once was. The trapdoor now swings downward from his weight, throwing aside the human figure beneath it with a violence to which the root vegetables would relate if they could.
Magpie triumphantly sails downward and lands in a crouch, not unlike Silnarion’s temple exhibition.
A rock attached to a chain attached to the trap door falls to the ground without his counterbalancing force, plunging the hidden room into complete darkness.
Lighting a flint, Magpie illuminates nothing but himself. The spark of fire reflects in only the wet, shiny eyes of the living.
Although he remains still, rustling surrounds him. Creaking and groaning of bones and dried flesh resounds in the cavernous space.
Deep beneath the café lies the cage in which the dead ones wait.
Mr. Bones had met with much despair in that cold cellar of corpses. Croissants and such cafe faire were not delivered in any sort of desirable fashion.
With the return of Magpie, salvation seemed at last within grasp to the poor confused creature. Soon, however, the old skeleton’s hopes are dashed.
In the manner in which corn kernels may be distributed among the chickens, teeth of all things are cast out by the awful reverse scarecrow.
Having already seen- or better phrased, sensed, enough, Mr. Bones clambers away into the furthermost corner of the devil’s unfinished basement.
With clicking and clattering, ivory and black, clean and blood-coated teeth collide. The hungry creatures lap up the pointy treats with the zealous of a cat first tasting milk.
The teeth fuse with the dead things, creating beasts mimicking a child’s worst nightmares.
Tongues become coated with fangs, resembling wriggling flails and morning stars.
Where rotten flesh makes contact, the teeth become implanted in the skin. Calcium phosphate roots dig and wind into the body.
Spiky, crevice-covered molars gain new life as thick, jutting pauldrons. Incisors grow from wrists, cracking the existing bones, warping the hands into uselessly curled and shriveled reminders of kinder form capable of creation rather than simple destruction. Already jagged jaws become horrific mandibles protruding an arm’s length in front of disfigured skulls.
Grotesque mockeries of the human form surroundMagpie with alien chittering. The most terrifying sound of all, however, emerges from the thin form of man. An eerie, crackling laughter explodes from within him, ashe covers his eyes with his hands.
No emotion at all can be deciphered from the central figure, but from the monsters arises a roiling hunger, searing with intensity, demanding to be recognized by all.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bones curls even tighter into a protective fetal position, skeletal hands clasped over where ears once resided.
