The owlish-vulture swooped down. Its beak poked around at the meat, before kicking it away and scattering it onto the floor. It took to the air, charging closer and closer until it arrived at the carcass of the first dead panther. The beak slammed into the dead creature’s eyeball and plucked it out of its head, swallowing it whole.
I chuckled. Even a vulture had pride not to accept something given to it freely. The red-winged vulture enjoyed its meal, my sole companion in the campfire-illuminated night.
Despite possessing [Duality], the world was vast. Perhaps it was larger than earth. The only thing supporting that assumption was the presence of multiple moons. Multiple satellites revolving around a planetoid object often meant the object’s mass and gravitational pull was enough to enable it. This depended on whether I was recalling my astronomy correctly. Astronomy was one of those things one had a fascination in passing, and something I never gained a tutor for. Father’s voice was clear: Why be bothered about other planets and galaxies when you are yet to make a difference in your own?
The vulture reared its head sharply. Looking in my direction. “How does it taste?”
The vulture slammed its beak back into the dead panther’s face and ripped off a portion of flesh. A laugh almost escaped me.
“I can’t relate. Don’t have a tongue you see.”
The vulture turned its head. Three hundred and sixty-degrees like an owl, it was something unusual to see on a creature that was not supposed to have that feature. Especially how its neck would imitate a braid when it spun. Its eyes were still on me. On me, and then back to where it came from. Where I sent it the chewed rabbit.
“That?” I said. “That was me reimagining fine dining. I used to be rather well-off. Relatively speaking. It was father’s wealth, not mine. A fact he ensured I never forgot.”
The vulture turned its head a second time. The tongue of the panther was now slowly being gobbled up by the creature. Its eyes remained on me, then to the campfire, then to the skies, and back to me.
“How did I get here?”
Another three-hundred and sixty-degree turn of its neck.
“I died. I was trying to save this woman who was enraged at me for laying off her father, you see, and she sent me off a building. I met a cosmic being and he offered up heaven or hell, but I turned him down on both accounts. Didn’t see the merit. He sent me here, to Alamir. As a worm. A worm.”
The vulture worked its way down the panther. The eyes were plucked clean, the tongue and flesh on the face were gone in a remarkably short amount of time.
A diamond dagger formed in my hand and was tossed towards the carcass. The dagger morphed into a gnome golem via [Golem Creation]. Turning the dead panther on its belly, it sliced straight down the throat of the beast to the genitals before vanishing.
The vulture gave me a tepid stare. Swiveling its head with another three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, it waddled with its talons unto the opened carcass and went to work on the panther’s red intestines. It marveled me how much one tiny bird could eat.
“He turned me into a worm, but I crawled my way to a skeleton. Pardon the pun.” Stretching my hands in front of my face showed me white hard bone deprived of flesh. “Most men would have been driven insane, I tell myself. If they woke up as a worm, most men would go mad. I remind myself that I’m not insane despite it all. I’m better than the average man in that regard. Superior.”
Gobbling down the panther’s heart, the vulture’s throat expanded to allow the heart to pass through it. Almost like an old-timey Saturday morning cartoons where beings swallowed objects twice their size and took on the object’s shape. Nothing like that happened here, but the vulture kept gobbling up food without end.
“That’s enough about me. You, on the other hand, are far more interesting. Do you know you’re eating at least three times your body weight?”
Gulping down the panther’s heart, the vulture with the elastic neck burped. It burped.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
The vulture’s response was to flap its wings and go down and further to the panther’s genitals, before opening its beak and tearing directly into the testes.
“You know, there are some things you should not be eating.” I chastised. “Not that I can judge. I’ve eaten mosquito larvae, eaten my way out of a snake, snacked on rabbits and ants. I suppose I have no right to condemn panther balls as cuisine.”
The campfire was beginning to flicker in intensity. I created another tiny gnome Golem. The gnome gathered wood and other flammable materials, placed them into the flames to increase their intensity. The vulture was preoccupied enjoying its meal, picking off and scraping all the flesh from the dead panther’s ribcage.
“Tell me, bird, are you aware of Maslow’s hierarchy?”
The vulture’s head tilted at an odd angle.
“Of course not. Well, simply put, it’s a rather nifty motivational theory. Useful for benchmarks. Picture a pyramid if you will and at the bottom, we have the physiological needs of food, water, warmth and rest. Most of these are rendered moot for me as a skeleton, as I neither eat nor drink nor sleep.”
Reaching for a stick, I drew a pyramid on the earth.
“Above the physiological is the need for safety. Shelter, employment, personal security and property. I have none of these. Even if I’m to be a nomad, I’d prefer if I could rest without having to worry about panthers stalking in trees.”
I separated the pyramid into lines.
“Above the physiological, is the social need.
