“How goes the waiting?” Selahi called as she came in on the power line for a landing. “Anything die yet?”
The other vultures continued to stare into the backyard of the latest dying place, the sweet scent of rotting garbage and bones wafting upward. None of them responded.
“Guys? Hello?” She settled in and started to preen, self-conscious that her feathers might be ruffled and unsightly. “Did I offend you?”
“Just look,” Jeskor hissed without turning his head.
She craned her neck around so fast a muscle twinged. “Good thing I like my prey already gone,” Selahi muttered. “And…”
Shining, glittering red came from the dump below, where something caught the light and made it gleam like a nuclear reactor.
Her beak watered at the thought of mutated prey. “What is it? Can we have it yet? Is it dead?”
“That,” creaked the white-streaked Ensor two perches down, “is called a dragon. And they are delicious. You missed the Salt Wars, but trust me, you won’t forget the taste of rotted dragon.”
She snapped her beak twice and mantled her wings. “It’s huge. We’ll feast for days. I haven’t had something new in so long. Just rabbits.”
“Evil, red-eyed little sots,” Beccki muttered. “I enjoy their demise, and regret not being the cause.”
A golden gleam approached from the west, for all the world looking as if the great airborne fireball had spit out a smaller, less predictable version of itself onto the earth.
Selahi’s anticipation dried up as she watched the gleam approach. “I think there’s another one coming.”
“Fire!” croaked Ensor, flapping his wings in futile effort. “Fire breather! Flee!”
The roar of flame proved him correct, and Selahi mourned the loss of her babysitter’s mate.
The vultures scattered, settling into a new flight pattern…keeping an eye on the ruby scales below.
***
A snippet here, though I think I’ll come back to it sometime. This one from Becky Jones was fun, and I hope she enjoyed the trade as well.
Lots in progress, and now back to work!
