Venom

Fleckff Virty's Journal

Is there something wrong with everything I know? How could what I have lived through have been all a deception of reality if I have experienced it? Why must I question what I know from the words of a woman who does not know me or what I have been through? I will admit, I am not someone who has suffered greatly, but just because my pain has not been grand, why should it not be valid? If it is not the person who ignores the truth of another, the real hypocrite? My feathers are ruffled, I can not help but think with agitation whenever I think of Lady Debrouhs and her scathing tongue. If she walked in my shoes, I am sure she would stumble in my footsteps.

And I hers....yes, without a doubt. I too would not wish to walk down her dreary path. There is something unnerving about her. It is not just her chilled eyes that follow everything and nothing at once, nor the quickness with which she spits her poison to those who try to test her or even the manner with which she goes about unfortunate truths with callousness and unflinching forwardness. No. It is none of those things which make me physically uncomfortable. 

If I am, to be honest with myself. There is a memory that comes to mind when I think of Lady Debrouhs. A memory buried deep within my child-like box of memories, with a core that grows as bright as a star in the sky when I brush my fingers along the vague notion of this emotion. It's the memory of one of my first flights, away from the flock, away from my family. I had wished to explore. So sure of my skills, so arrogant in knowing what I had to look out for. The words of warning everyone had given me before I left burned me like the sun on my wings, scaling my back after flying too high in scorching weather. Of course, I knew what to look out for, I thought with ire at the time. I am no idiot, I too am a bird of skill and instinct, with talons as sharp as any that catches its meals and rips into its enemies below.

All of that day I soared and I played and I did as I wished when night came I found the perfect tree high in the sky and after checking for any predators nearby I decided to take a small nap before I returned home. I would show them all their worry was for naught. My beak was high in the air as I danced circles around them. I went to sleep with such childlike thoughts. 

It was the silence that disturbed me first.

Then the puff of air fanned around my head. Not my own.

My heart took off in my chest. I knew. I knew at that moment, I had been very wrong. I waited for it to take a bite of me. To finish me in one golpe. When it did not, I forced my head to turn slowly. Perhaps it would let me see the face of the one that would end me. Nature was cruel like that. I understood my father's warning now. I truly did. I hoped they would not miss such an arrogant little bird. The first thing I was was a blood-orange shade. Glossy and almost never-ending. As afraid as I was I also knew something was odd. Shiny? How could that be? 

Then a line of black. Another shade of blood-orange. Black. More blood-orange and then black. I did not understand until it blinked. It's eye. Its eye was behind me. It was behind me. It blinked again as my heart took off as an eye bigger than all I was, turned sideways before straightening up again, the tree, darkness, a pitch black shadow moving with it. Its head, I realized as the large eye pulled back and it began to fully turn to look at me, eyes larger than anything, a body made of darkness, and a long purple neck looked down at me silently. I shook in a way that made my beak clack. I did nothing as it watched. I do not know if I would have been able to muster to spread my wings. I felt the fright of it all trickle down my legs, my feathers stuck to me like the embrace of death itself. It could have been minutes and not seconds as I awaited my fate. All I could think was that I did not wish to die. A little bird's prayer for my family and quick death.