And Behind It All There's A Price To Be Paid
For The Blood On Which We Dine
Justified In The Name Of The Holy And The Divine
Sunday, February 12th ~ Early Evening through Morning ~ Monday, February 13th
The voices are closer, human. Female - high pitched, nervous and exhilarated all at the same time. A boy - nervous, covering with bravado and trying to hold onto a timber rather than a squeak. He can smell them now, the teenage hormones - sweat and sex and musk, the fear of an illicit rendezvous, the fear of the forest. And underneath that, the scent of the forest, old death, new life.
A gruesome smile crosses his face as the pain begins, twisting, contorting - his screams rebound in the night and the birds flee their perches to fill the sky. As it abates, he can sense panicked movement, hushed crying voices and then the footfalls of desperate running. He raises his head and growls, the sound elicits a shriek of terror and as he rushes through the overgrown foliage at them.
Screaming so loud - his sensitive ears protest and the throat is ripped away while the second one's ribcage is crushed. Tearing and gnawing, feeling a hunger that has ached for so long begin to be sated. Blood runs down, covers the ground in red - greedy vines twist forth to drink their fill - the predators here strike whenever they can and others crawl forth, only to bide their time as they are met with sounds of possession.
The dawn light strikes his face, he rolls over and grins into an eyeless skull, bits of hair and clumps of flesh hanging from it. He greets the morning with a kiss, moving up to lick at a crack in the head, tongue searching for any meat left.
Once he has had his fill, he rises and grimaces as his bones shift and pop, the ground a hard mattress. Picking up a stray cloak to cover his nudity, he fingers a tear and makes a soft tutting noise. His fingers find the emblem - Hogwarts students - and begins to cackle madly.
He looks back and examines his masterpiece, uses a finger to push the girl's mouth in a parody of a smile. Shame neither have their tongues, crosses his mind fleetingly as he pushes the nude figures so carefully arranged closer together. Looking up at the sun climbing higher in the sky he turns and flees the pitch to the anonymity of the forest.