Virgil was warned never to leave the desert: that the world would snatch her alive and her sight- such wonderous gift would blind her to all by misery. It was a rouse; Virgil had discovered the border where the great sands spawned savanna and from the edges the war path of the red god’s wraith and his followers- the Pitt. Virgil was left drunk on the echo of bloodlust: aware of the foreboding sense of death that worm must have felt in his last moments. Phantom pains lingered under her fur, itching as maggots festered, burrowed deeper than they should have been. Under flesh and in the crevices of bone. Such a mar of love was demure.

Worm was not one of love, attachment came as infatuation and his narcissistic need to have the sole attention of a hive of bugs ended him, or maybe it was the battle? Worm’s injuries were hard to spot to the untrained eye, and the gift of gave the feeling of selfish hoarding, brutal victory and the slip into death a quick, pitiful affair. Virgil knew her father died in vain, killing his enemy and leaving his body for the maggots, for the rot: he gave no care for his offspring and Virgil could grow accustom to that feeling: it was a curiosity, the pursuit of the Pitt. A distant wonder.

After a while, traversing back: Virgil wondered the merit of returning. But the corpse of her own kill was long gone, and the markings of her burrow as a savage was erased by the time of sands: mother was absent, a worrying thing. Virgil would return to the Pitt, there was nothing else for her anymore. She wasn’t fond of the feeling of being left behind, but it was something she would grow accustom to in time, surely?

So Virgil mad the track, it was long and grueling, and fending of the carrion that wished to pick at her father’s waste of a corpse proved a exhausting endeavor, it was only in the squeak of life that erupted one night: the moon high and it’s screams cutting Vir  from her slumber: did she realize the fruits of her labor.

In the light of the full moon, sickly green eyes watched a a from wriggle away from a downed bird. Small pitiful black form wrapping against the ground as Virgil- instinctively moved to scare off the bird that had pinned it but- no it would fly off with the thing: something Virgil instinctively claimed as her’s, wanted with a sense of there was nothing else left .

So she killed the bird. Bit it’s wing and tore until the pop-scream of the thing silenced into pitiful cries and left it there as a warning: not that much heeded her warnings: the animal’s around clans were usually very dumb.

She tucked the creature she had rescued into the shabble of a sled that carried the corpse of worm. As the night progressed to day, and the cycle contenied, Virgil could feel the thing’s eyes on her. A bat of some kind: she wasn’t sure. But it was stained with blood and maggots too writhed along it’s wings, burrowing in the small crevices. Virgil took nights before her sleep to tend to it. plucking them off the bat’s fur and cleaning it with a rasp of her tongue. She allowed it to fead from the only source of food she had, until the waning jaw of her own father lolled with a yellow stain towards the sun.

When she returned home: it was quiet, and the little pup were tired: she wanted to rest, but there was one thing left to do.

So she pasted the border without fanfare: took to the place that she had been called too all those moons ago, and discarded her burden. Along a pile of stench and rot crowned a king of bone and maggot. Worm was returned to his rest. His daughter hummed with a silent satisfaction, the small creature she claimed wound securely around the mane of her fur. Virgil felt calm, more calm than she had since before


/// ahh excuse the mistakes it's late i want to s l e e p