ORIGIN

An experimental pull on his end of the line found no less give than the last attempt. Crossing off one contributing cause for the weight dragging down toes, not much more could be done besides poking at the next possible factor on his list. Where the previous risk had prickled beneath feathers, the newest stacked on top positively curled them—and yet sickening suspicion clung on and rendered choice a sad, sorry illusion.

Another step farther into the flames. He only hoped Bentley’s forgiveness came easy should he be stung twice on another’s no-good, pushy behalf.

"Are you able to pick it up? Or, caves willing, haul it? I can wing off and help guide you out so long as you hold on."

Naturally this would all fall to pieces if his helper did: instructions and a leash were worthless without an attentive ear or the body it attached to.

Nerves wracked watching Bentley without being able to do much other than yell down orders and encouragement, but it came to reason that helpless observation couldn’t compare to whatever stress was brought on by conditions on the ground. When the sight of bone within canine jaws peered back at him, then his side of the job began. The vine cued East to end his concern-tainted hover upon slackening slightly due to the newly uplifted status of its catch. A downward thrust of wings returned tautness to the line and provided a pull that’d start the journey out of the field of nightmares. His flight was kept straightforward and even-paced, no fancy aerial tricks included.

Breaking the lead out of a hazardous situation by twisting and straining it to the point of snapping didn’t seem ideal. Furthermore, showing off to the landbound had no place in these circumstances.

Once the authority of good eyesight informed him the worst had passed, accompanied by a more dramatic slackening of the vine in his grip—a definitive all clear—touching foot on land ceased being a tense prospect. He alighted to meet Bentley where he would emerge from the flowers, ready to greet both him and his cargo.

"That’s good. You did great," he declared. It wouldn’t compensate much for the burden the retrieval had set on shoulders, but who knew what the appropriate cost for that truly amounted to. "Now let’s see what trouble we’ve brought out into the light."

Too much time wading around in the flowers had taken a hefty toll. Whatever nightmares Bentley had encountered continued to flicker in his gaze, phantom residents refusing to vacate the premises even after the field was left behind him. Blame or insult couldn’t be laid on the canine as he wordlessly padded away and fixated on the source of his torment. If roles were reversed, East wouldn’t have expected himself to emerge all smiles and wagging tails either.

He followed Bentley the living sacrifice’s wake for a while, breath sucked in until he witnessed him settling down, body gripped in terror. Only then did an exhale leave, no smart remark or reassurance quick to fill the silence. Those came from a place of confidence, defiance against surrounding hopelessness; in this situation, it lay barren, unable to quite fathom the complexities plaguing another’s mind.

Talons rolled around the bone abandoned on the ground. No other option available, he’d examine what offering up a once cheerful soul to destruction had bought. Looking down, the stab in his gizzard told him it had to be a rip-off.

If he’d been inclined to run a quiz show based off of this corpse’s fate, an undoubted failure would’ve been in his possession. Plenty of questions emerged from the piece they’d managed to secure, yet not enough answers paired with them, most ending up conundrums to add to a growing pile the caves and invisible narrators enjoyed handing off. Well-preserved, the part of the picture he had was unfinished but clear: old but recently deceased. The flowers, while they were seemingly responsible for the perfect condition, also had likely served as a deterrent for more than your average bone-picker. Unless they managed a glimpse from overhead, any potential snooper would’ve never noticed a burial spot, too busy being chased off by pollen-conjured visions to reach the field’s center or notice anything underfoot.

Whoever left this there had the inside knowledge to realize an excellent shroud for their crime. A name and face for this clever murderer? Nowhere in sight. Their victim’s? Gone too, the best chance maybe still in the field alongside the cause of death this femur lacked signs of.

And was there even a connection to the book’s contents or mere happenstance that had brought the body here? Any smart someone could have received a face full of pollen on a jaunt through the garden and eventually determined the culprit of their sudden specters instead of racing after power and glory. Had more cycles worn down the bone, a guess for the mystery victim could’ve been the second-to-last author, killed and robbed of their written guide before even departing for the mentioned tunnel adjoining the ocean cave. Unless the flowers could wind back time as well, however, this relatively fresh kill came across as no fit for any scribbler in the dust-covered, ancient pages.

Old as it was, how many owners less fond of sharing their thoughts had carried around this book before the Narrator dumped it on his head? Had any, writer or not, shared the information and later regretted it?

This thread of inquiry activated a well-entrenched habit whenever feet touched the ground and caution dug talons in. A long-lived Gembound could have a long-lived enemy waiting for opportunity to hand them a coveted object. Better safe than sorry should such wild speculation actually be borne out.

"Thanks for the tip," East muttered. Though the remark was partially dry, finding some of the ongoing narration’s suggestions more than a little foolhardy—Fire? And risk choking on smoke and pollen if an enraged groundskeeper didn’t wring his neck first?—there was at least genuine consideration given to the more reasonable ideas. He supposed that was the point of a Narrator: to offer as many stupendous chances to succeed as there were to eat dirt and pain.

Uncertain of whether any words would be heard or bounced off an unwilling, furred back, he rocked back and forth on toes over trying to approach Bentley. Good-tempered as the dog had proven to be on first meeting him, becoming a chew toy for stress relief didn’t seem impossible, especially not after all he’d been through. Instead he allowed a heaviness to weigh down his feet, letting it be the anchor to base his thoughts around. See if honesty and directness got him anywhere.

"Ben… staying here, you wouldn’t happen to know who this ‘old bat’ is, would you? I think someone in the Palace ought to know that a dead body’s been helping fertilize their garden. Maybe bring the bone along as proof."

He sighed.

"Look, you don’t have to stick around for all the gory details if you don’t want to. You can head back to the library. When I’m done, I can drop in and we can talk about better, nicer things. Like those at-mose-fears you were reading about? How that ties into the weather? Anything you feel like, swear on my stone."

He refrained from voicing a nagging concern. These flowers were grown on palace grounds. Why have them? Who’s to say the staff didn’t have their own sinister uses for the pollen?

More acquainted with isolation than company, any sign of acknowledgement from Bentley after all he'd been persuaded to weather carried an additional effect which took the hawk by surprise. An unnoticed vice grip firm around his lungs loosened the slightest as eyes fell upon him and a quiet response drifted its way over. Voice less liable to crack under strain, East drank in a fresh gulp of air, mindful to keep it shallow in case any scattered pollen had spread from the field in the wake of his canine companion's exit. Odd were any vestiges would be too thin in count to dent psyches substantially, but a mite of caution typically didn't backfire when it came to mitigating potential harm.

"Isra, huh? I'll still need your help bringing this back here for her," he said, a tap upon the recovered bone a gentle reminder of its presence, "but once you're done with that, let's say the cave ceiling's the limit for you. A swear on my stone is a promise here to stay. If my word is too fragile to keep, then may it shatter into a million pieces too many to piece together again."

"Besides," added East. "After all this, I wouldn't mind hearing about anything but flowers myself. I'll leave the books up to you. Your pick."

The meeting of two brains from different backgrounds was bound to lead to a miscommunication at some point. So far East had been fortunate enough to encounter two varieties of Gembound: those tolerant of his particular brand of jargon to the point of ignoring it in favor of the more understandable, plain language he spouted and the few actually capable of seeing the core meaning behind every phrase. To have his words interpreted so literally befuddled both sides of the conversation. He followed the drift of his talk that'd eluded capture upward to the ceiling in a perfect mirror of Bentley, blinking and at a loss as to what had caught the other's attention, until it finally sank in exactly why he'd been questioned. The revelation jerked his beak back to ground level, a soft chuckle falling from it.

"I suppose that is a far way to leap without wings," he remarked, but no enlightenment was offered. A faint hunch told him an attempt at explaining figures of speech would only tangle his words into a bigger, more unintelligible knot. No point in giving his furry acquaintance here a worse puzzle to figure out; his mouth wouldn't have enough space to cart around an extra problem that needed solving.

Time apart from polite company had lead to cultivating interests most might consider less than palatable. It didn't require exceptional social grace to realize not many wanted to hear the complete details of a Lesser's internal anatomy or the exact steps a corpse took on the path to decomposition. They'd rather hold onto their lunch than lose it after all. In Bentley's case, such talk seemed like it would only rattle his cage when the whole objective was to give him an escape from death-scented flowers and waking nightmares, so East quickly scrapped the most immediate subjects that sprang to mind and rummaged around for lighter material.

"Well." He drew the word out until it was reduced to a meaningless hum. Wings banked for a turn up ahead while he pondered. "I've never been the best, but singing has always been a decent way to pass the time. Just can't find the right words for a good tune usually. And I guess I like challenges too. Anything that can really make me think for a solution. Even better if it's against someone else."

Especially if the one he was besting was well outside of his weight class. Often at a size disadvantage, East had come to savor such small victories. If he couldn't outmuscle them, at least he could outwit.