By Caleb Morrow & Travis Duong

I.

Insatiably ravenous. Because our blood-slicked, grim-frocked feathers curl at the kill, we claw — rupturing songcords with keratin daggers, our coats kept clean. They imagine us as harbingers, a dyad of distant shadows: a dance stranded in history.

They are wrong.

We aren’t warnings — we are reckonings. At trembling sands and dying breaths, we descend. The dark is closer than they expect.

They utter SCAVENGER between their pearly whites as if it is an insult, but it is not. Swallowing histories of carcasses demands a toll. Thievery is art. Assimilation postulates competence. No one creates anymore — they consume. And their leftovers taste the same, fruitlessly purgatorial. When dust settles, rivers dry, and songs cease, it is us that waste the remnants. That is all they are to us — remnants. Shallow facsimiles of something shaped like brilliance.

What happened to brilliance? What happened to visionaries? What happened to…

Wait.

        Do you see that?

Between the crooked carcasses and the mycelium, the droughted roots and the tumbleweeds. Is that… scarlet? Not blood, nor viscera, nor the sacrilege of decay. That, right there, is scarlet. Ruby red ribbons. The blush of a lover. The carmine of a mystic. Is that our Darling? The heart that pumps this empty vessel — arteries carrying wanderlust. Never have we seen this much life, a crimson so brilliant.

        To Darling, our desideratum.

                    We await your inauguration.

                                    We will devour you, utterly.

                                                    Before the anthrax steals your breath.

II.

Tonight, I find myself inexplicably drawn to the dark. It’s a magnetic kind of mischief, a gravitational pull all too familiar with futile resistance. Seldom do I emerge after the sun’s run its course, but the after hours now seem an inopportune time for hibernation.

So now that I’ve descended upon this silent brook, where shall I turn my gaze? How does one orbit the unknowable? Though I’m renowned for my immediacy, slipping into crevices not designed for me, I can’t help but feel as though I’m intruding - every step sounds more like an interruption.

The leaves crackle and moan beneath me, as if they’ve not intended for visitation. My gracefulness betrays itself; footsteps that were once nimble turn uncertain against relentless ivy.

But then, the emergence of a butterfly. Its color relieves me from the earliest etchings of a nightmare. Remembrance of who I am.

Daaaaaaaarling.

That’s right. I’m the darling.

Autonomous and evergreen, I’ve persisted where they’ve told me I shouldn’t. I am the immortal echo, a voice capable of resurrecting even detritus. Unfiltered imagination and soul. The touch of my hand rivals Midas, but even our collision wouldn’t be a fair fight. For I am far more than a one-trick pony; to try and constrain me is to defy the cosmos.

Oh, daaaaaaarlinggggg.

Speaking of forces..

                                      Who dares raise their voice louder than mine?

These playing grounds may not be mine, but it’s only a matter of time before these woods grow accustomed to my song. Its convergence is obligatory. Only fools have asked me to retreat, and I’d hate for this lovely little place to suffer the same fate.

        To the double-sided gremlin perched above,

                        I know you’d much rather see me quiver,

                                          But I’ve never been one for hesitation

                                                                Emerge from that crooked branch if you dare.

III.

An irrevocable collision. 20th century westerns warned us about what happens when two battalions share the same space; nothing is destined to come out alive, not even the environment itself.

Allow me to paint the picture for you.

The whimsical stranger ventured cautiously into our wood before her footsteps quickened. I suppose she’d killed the seeds of doubt bubbling inside and made herself comfortable at will. She must have heard that our home engulfs you at the first sign of fear.

She must have heard the cries of our makeshift guillotine above her head.

So she’d readied herself for conflict, though she couldn’t have understood what she was going up against. Even in all her glamour, she is still mere flesh and bone. Ingredients to be dissembled and made whole again only inside the belly of the beast.

The vultures call it retaliation even when they deliver the first blow. Our defense is necessary, they insist. It’s what keeps the wood alive.

So they spent the night admiring our quick-witted tourist until they’d decided to pounce. Their mercilessness always follows this rhythm; imagining how the prey would taste on their tongues until it’s no longer necessary to imagine. Pretty little vibrant things stumble into the wood all the time, each naively believing that their vivacity can turn our twisted manor into something more animated.

It plays out the same with no surprises. I can’t remember the last time I’d been astonished – something so fresh it shakes me to my core, sheer audacity to make me anew.

So they pounced. Closing in on the wood’s freshest face, the vultures carelessly assumed tonight would be like any other. They weren’t equipped for the fairest fight of their lives.

It was an onslaught of ferocity, the vultures clawing with all their might at the resistant darling. Though bruises etched themselves across her face, I recall a tiny smirk emerging. She seemed to be aware of something the rest of the wood was not; the vultures couldn’t combat such unfiltered exuberance. Their usual prey was in the midst of decaying, so succumbing came as a natural conclusion. But this specific visitor rendered the vultures’ attacks useless. With every advance made, their frustration heightened. The game only worked if the prey understood their role.

So, much to the surprise of all the wood’s frequenters, the vultures rose to great heights and fled far away. As their reign meets its conclusion, the wood starts anew. It’s taken on a vigor unrivaled by our entire past.

We are alive again. ■