Feral Creatures by Kira Jane Buxton

Author:Kira Jane Buxton [Buxton, Kira Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538735244
Google: c_73zQEACAAJ
Amazon: B08PV4K8XZ
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2021-08-14T23:00:00+00:00

Footnotes

1Rohan and Neera were Ghubari’s beloved MoFos.

2Like scales, but way cooler.

3Her hair was not like the MoFo band, but rather a literal flock of seagulls wrestling over ramen.

Chapter 17

Matias

Griffon vulture

Añisclo Canyon, Spain

Death tells us a lovely story. You know this, don’t you? Pay attention, my son; hear it in the snapping of sinew, see its slippery elegance in the bubbles of blood that escape from an open throat. These canyons have always been our home. The limestone cliffs, the icy retch of glacial waterfalls. Here the sun beats the faces of rocks. Tattling turquoise rivers mock the lush greenery. They claw at rock and swallow soil, a steady and stony slaughter.

The One Who Hollows as well must return.

We must always listen for death to tell its next story. It may sing a twisty song, percussive panting, and final notes. Undersong of the Underworld.

Kettling in great warm loops under a cloud kingdom, Death summons us with a smell. The smell of a heart in stop. Snapped bones. Beatless blood. Last exhales. Shiny rivulets of freed fluid. A spill of soft, glistening organs. Escaped tongues. There is bluing, delicious dampness, new holes become new homes. An exquisite swelling. Brave, billowing gas and a piebald rainbow pleasuring the skin. Stiffen and soften, repeat. Death is the most impossibly beautiful transition. There is no sweeter smell. There is no greater calling.

Falling in flight, we touch our talons to tenacious mountain grass. Among its gentle blades—sibilant sighs—it tells us the story of a rabbit. The grass knows what happened. The grass always knows. The rabbit has not been in Death’s lung long. Death’s sweet, sweet scent has called the others to her bidding. Blowflies—always female, happily ballooned—entrust the rabbit’s fulvous fur with their precious eggs. Bacteria mimic the river’s confidence, drenching themselves in glowing glory, changing Rabbit’s inner climate and welcoming the mighty families of Web. An army of ants has arrived, a great black river, invading the rabbit’s frozen eye, a sightless delicacy. We all dream of juicy marrow and the full-flavored strings of the heart. We wait to hear the birth of maggots, who buzz and shriek with joy, delighting in their great Feast Of Meats. They are at home in a palace of worms; they know they will go on to greatness. Below us, the greatest power of all—the fungi network, that great tentacled wonder. Pulsing with pleasure. We honor the almighty connectors of Web, the secret messengers of the soil, with the richest of the feast. And then we admire what is left, an astonishing art of bone, cartilage, and fur. Rabbit sustains a tiny Universe. An homage to life, the masterstroke of death. We all play our part in the music. Life and Death hold hands and dance.

Death is certain, my son, as certain as your father and I knew you were ours when we found you, the lone porcelain sheen in a nest of crushed shell and yolky slime. Your father and I knew you were ours. A lady

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