The Mockingbird Legends

A Postmodern Gothic Tale. Coming of Age Rural in a Dissolute Time.

Thirty-nine

The great sloe bird with the tiny melted head had ridden the thermals above the crippled two-legged form, expectant. If death did not arrive on its own the predator following not far behind offered the same promise. The scavenger had not anticipated other stakeholders, the shambling trumpet black and tan beasts with the pendant ears now gaining. The bird circled lower to witness the tawny death arc straight over the head of the cripple it had overtaken with those following bowling her over onto the litter. Thereso remaining prostrate a moment before rising once more in soiled integument to scribe a tangent from the trail of the predators. The bird followed her awhile to the southeast. There were no signs of slowing and it circled back north.

There - the tawny one. Perhaps these new players bodies roiling in their leathern blotted skinsacks would catch it and there would be leavings. Or it would catch them. The bird began homing on the sounds of the procession penetrating the canopy until the sounds abruptly ceased. It flapped heavily and caught a thermal, circling upwards to gain a view through the green billows of the treetops. There was no movement until the tawny one itself flashed through an opening directly below, headed south now on a vector towards where the ridge met the river gorge. The bird elected to follow this one. Death had been its companion with gratifying regularity since it had shown up, with the situation typically much simpler than this current one. It tilted its retrices and slewed south. Held firm in the dihedral planes of its armature it swept, finding her once more. Following unnoticed.