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.