~ black feather fragment #1 ~
"You understand, don't you." the Good Woman says, tracing a grey-brown nail along the soft edge of the mushroom cap. "Even the great trees that stood so proud over our heads... even they must be returned to the Earth when their time is over."
The Good Woman turns golden eyes to the man who lay beside her. His rich silks and dyed leathers bright where they rest next to his sallow skin.
"Shhh," she whispers as he gasps thinly. The slender fingers of her other hand pin him to the moss as surely as an archer's arrow.
"Your time is over," she says to his dimming eyes. "Now I, like the mushroom, will take my meat, and my pleasure, in your passing."
