"Mercy" 1

silence                              peace                         darkness                      rest                              food

                 darkness                       hunger                             play                        silence

                                   hunger                             rest                             feed                             silence                                                            

                                                           predator

          Light born in fire. Sound. Pain. Hear us in pain. Claws and teeth break on their shells. Their claws harder, sharper. Hear us crying in pain. See blood on muzzles, our own blood. See clutchmates fall. See the pulp of egg and flesh of clutchmates not born, crushed. Stop them. Stop them—

“—mercy. I didn’t come for a slaughter.” Smell of outside, flowers—kin, but not family. What? 

        “You came because I ordered it.” Crushing eggs. Hard shell, blood of clutchmates. What good avenging us, dying like us? Backed in a corner. Den keeps us safe from predator. Not now. Snarl. Hard shell laughs.

         “For a picnic. Not this. Give them mercy.” Mercy. Word like cool darkness on eyes stung by stinking firelight. Voice like clutchmate, but shape not right. Mercy. Smells right, and wrong. Word presses on muzzle. Hard shell lifting sharp claw. Join clutchmates soon. Mercy. Behind hard shell—soft, flesh, scent of flowers and peace. Scent of kin, but not. Dark, but colors the shine of scales underneath. Eyes silver. Eyes like ours.

         “Mercy.” Our voice. Hard shell stumble back. Drop claw. “Mercy.” Word wrong for mouth. Tastes sour. Taste blood; maybe sour blood. Dying?

        “The kobold parrots you, Rae!” Hard shell. It bends to pick up its long claw, but it teeters. If hard shell falls, we chew its face. It sees us snarl again. Stops. Scent-of-kin steps in front of hard shell. It pushes the long claw away with its foot.

       “Parrot or not,” Scent-of-kin says in cool voice like darkness, “It does speak.” It kneels; puts its face close to ours. Its almost-us smell fills our nose. We could bite it, so close. He wants to kill you, Scent-of-kin’s voice, without sound. Eyes on ours. Do you want to give him reason? Die, be like clutchmates. Be with kin. Show him that you can be more than vermin to die in the mud. We pull our mouth closed over our fangs. We look at hard shell. See flesh underneath and laughter in its skin. Predator that laughs. We not let this kill all our clutch.

       “Mercy,” we say.

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