The vulture cried.
“You don’t qualify I’m afraid. Don’t look at me like that. You’re a bird, our conversation topics would be sorely limited.”
The vulture was quiet. Beady sharp eyes gazed into space.
“Continuing, above the social need, we have the esteem needs. That is the need for feelings of pride and accomplishment. Finally, at the top of the pyramid, we have self-actualization.”
The vulture remained still. Each movement of its feathers rustling in the night wind. Almost entranced, the creature seemed to understand me.
“Maslow’s hierarchy lists the things I need in the order I would like to attain them. To cast away this skeletal form and be able to eat, drink, sleep and fuck. To encounter individuals by which I can hold conversations and debates about morality, religion, politics.” My hand stretched out, reaching forward for the stars. “This is a vast unknown world… I want to enrich myself in it. I want to listen to its versions of Mozart and Beethoven, of Jackson and Presley. Lose myself in its cuisine and discover how it’s mysteries and secrets. I could very well be the first man from earth to find myself here, absurd and insane and unlikely as that is. It’d be a tremendous waste not to make the most of such an opportunity.”
“I’m a long way from pursuing that lofty goal however. Can’t enrich myself in the world when I’m too occupied trying to survive it.”
The vulture burped. Its wings went up, as it turned around, attention refocusing on its meal. “I cannot tell if you are mocking me, sympathizing with me, or both.”
One full panther was plucked clean of everything except fur. The red-feathered, rubber-necked vulture took to the air, and began approaching me, began approaching the second dead panther. “My, you’re a greedy one aren’t you?”
[The passive skill [Kataramenos’ Gift] has come into effect]
The vulture dropped from the air and crashed into the ground. Stiff. Frozen. It did not move. There was no motion from it. Its feathers did not rustle.
“Ah.” the words were in my mouth but did not come. The vulture had gotten close to me. Too close to me. There was a reason things were not supposed to do that. “Well, at least you had a grand final meal.”
Leaving the spot underneath the tree I picked it up. The avian creature looked smaller in my hands. Felt lighter than a creature that wolfed down a whole panther. I plucked a single dark-red feather and placed it back on the earth. A shallow pit just large enough came to be under my command. I placed the vulture into it, and filling it with sand.
Retrieving the clay tray, I switched it from clay to concrete. Digging the concrete into the mound, I softened it enough to place the feather into it. “Hmm… this is the first time I’m burying anything, now that I think about it.”
My hands moved and carved on the concrete tombstone: A Hungry, Intelligent Vulture.
“I once killed a woman, you know.” I said, patting the fresh grave. “Her name was Milost. She was a Sage. She once killed me, setting me alight and burning my home, and yet, despite how much my mind tells me I’m justified in my vengeance, I still think about the utter waste it was. Her knowledge is gone, wasted. Her contribution to me remains unknown, unattained. She was a valuable resource, as a sentient person. I sent a bullet through her skull and wasted a life which could have brought me benefit, because it was unavoidable. I didn’t even bother to bury her, there was no time. And yet here I am, making a gravestone and little speech for you. For a vulture who had little to offer me. Odd isn’t it?”
Odd. Odder still that I was still talking.
“You have my thanks for letting me bounce my thoughts off you,” I said. “It’d have been rather sad, and perhaps make me appear a little bit insane if I was talking to myself –”
A laugh escaped my lips at the realization.
“I am talking to myself now aren’t I? Funny how that works.”
“Funny indeed.”
The air went still. Trees stopped rustling. Blades of grass froze in the wind. The makeshift grave shuddered, dirt scattering into the air. Darkness flooded the forest. The light of the campfire was swallowed whole. Sound muffled into an incomprehensible, deafening silence.
Ascending from the earth like a phoenix of the damned, the vulture rose. Neck bent and twisted. Eyes black and hollow. A smile inexplicably crept its way onto the creature’s curved beak as it hung limp in the air.
“Janus.”
The air was thick. Suffocating. I tried to move, yet my body was locked in place. Fixated. I could not budge. The sensation was familiar. Eerie. The voice, neither masculine nor feminine, tonally unidentifiable and devoid of any recognizable human accent. There was no mistaking who or what had taken control of the vulture.
“Oblivion.”
A cold, grasping feeling coiled around my chest. The vulture, possessed, vanished and reappeared directly before me. “I did not believe I would be seeing you so soon.”
“You didn’t? A shame. And here I was, arrogant enough to believe that you’d been watching me from up above, popcorn in hand, snickering and telling your god-buddies about my adventures.”
“You are upset.”
“No.” There was no chest to burn. No throat to be filled with a bitter lump. The biological nuances of the emotion of rage were devoid from me, yet, all the same, I felt it. “We’ve long since passed upset.”
The burning. Pulsating within me like an addictive substance, fueling my skeletal form as it swelled like the rotten corpse of a pregnant
