Devour

I tie up my hair in the old mirror. The frame of it is starting to chip, but it does the trick. It's Dawn. The was Sun starting to rise in the east. I can just see it outside my window. My desk is a mess. Books from the library I never returned, nail polishes, and wildly growing indoor plants. The plants are mom's. She's good at growing them, but I've been too busy to maintain them. There nice. Small white, and red flowers growing on vines, mixed with some ivy spreading from the outside wall through the open window. We own the top floor. Have our own rooms. Beneath us is a tavern. I walk quickly down the steps to the cobble stone street outside. The streets are black. The tavern is a cottage that's been reworked into a tavern, and flat to rent. The smell of food comes in through the open window. The smell of roasting chicken makes my mouth water. I don't have time for breakfast though. Besides we had since learned not to trust any cooked meat that we didn't get ourselves. Though that's been difficult. Moving here there was little affordable land for crops, little need for more farmers, and besides mom wasn't one for urban farming. We had tried that in the being. Wasn't making enough to get by so about half a year ago we became place servants. Starting making descent money. Enough to pay for necessities and a small about of trinkets now and again. It was a nice enough routine; the work. It was the people you had to worry about. The Dragonborn were... a peculiar group of people. Particular and erratic in the same breath. Luckily our roles kept us mostly out of the way. As long as we kept quiet and kept our heads down, it seemed like we would do alright. Not like the last head of staff. Her head was still mounted on the gate outside. We never did get told what she did to offend them. Now I imagine we would never know. Still things have been much quieter, safer even since Noble Krow came into power. Not as many executions, or casualties. Not from it directly anyway. So it would just have to do. I like that the work kept me moving, in my feet, but I always felt restless while held up here. The castle wall for just another reminder that I was stuck here. People rarely left alive, and I had little money anyway. I wanted to see the world or at least explore the town without worrying about becoming someone's new appetizer. After all, if our God grew stronger this way, perhaps we could too. Never as powerful as it though, of course. So blind in their devotion. I would've thought it's silly if it wasn't so cruel. It was this war though. And war had much sharper teeth. I had done sweeping the hall, and had just gotten down on my knees to scrub the floors when another maid came running my. Short red horns poking out of her blonde hair. She knocks over my bucket. Water pool onto the floor. I swear in old demon.

"Watch it!" She calls over her shoulder for scampering off. It takes me a while longer to clean it up. By the time I start in the dinning room, my least favorite room to clean my mother is already serving Noble Krow dinner. Its father was far more imposing so the others say, but I can't imagine a more intimidating presence than Noble Krow Dragonborn. I keep my head down. I only look at the floor in front of me. The next bit to clean, and then I'm gone. I'm to on edge for the comforting boredom to set in. It stepped right on Sherri's hand earlier when she had been clean. So I keep aware of my surroundings. That's how I notice the mood change. It didn't say anything, or lean back in its chair. Perhaps some primal part of my could simply sense when we became prey. My mother was closer, it lifted her small body off the ground by her throat. Then slammed her hard onto the table. I must have been moving because I was on my feet. I was as small as my mother, but had my father's strength. Still I had no way of fighting Krow. What to do? What could I do? A carving knife in it's hand, then the same one sticking out of my mothers throat. Her limbs twitches them stilled. She was still gurgling when it leaned down to eat her.

"Please don't." I whisper. Fight or flight, and my body choose the most useless one: freeze. It pauses for, a moment and I just wish it would stop looking at me. It raises his eyebrow like it's confused why I'm speaking to it at all. It only says one thing.

"Grab the rag." Before it begins eating my mother.