A Fine Black Sky
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
The berfrey bat flapped efficiently over the chimneys exuding their waste from the inexpensive fires below, within the Aberrant’s homes of light and dark stone, which lay low over the valley and contained the poorer places, and flew over the accenting buildings of the shape of broken needles punctuated by large bushy vegetation seeking its nourishment, and the tall, the thick and thin, the small and squat, filling the gaps left by the stretched creeping building, that clawed for the sky, and over the noble watchers, in silent prayer, until eventually it reached the Wall. And it continued.
Through the darkness it went, onward, forward to some old forgotten place, deep in its instinct, leading it on, ever on, to a destination it had forgotten it knew. The berfrey bat glided over the mud, the bushes, the old unused tracks and the paths of ancient times that would criss cross about the no-man’s-land, and around the inner circumference of the forest. Here and there was the evidence of a war fought millennia ago, of fortifications that had broken apart so much that they remained little more than a marker to what had been. The land here had been left to its own devises, and it had thrived - it had grown wild. Yet it contained not one animal, not one creature the berfrey bat could prey upon, so it was forced to enter the woods. And it did.
At first it was thin and broken, difficult to traverse, but not impossible. The further the berfrey bat ventured, the deeper and darker the forest became, and it saw upon the ground and bark creatures that strode, slunk, slithered and splashed, but not one of them was enticement for the berfrey bat. It seemed to know that these creatures were tasteless, poisonous, even deadly.
Somewhere minutes into the dark disiduity, the berfrey bat came upon something it recognised as food, or somewhere close to it. The berfrey bat, with not a second look, as the travel and time within the Tower had made it hungry, swooped down toward the nourishment.
It wasn't to know, as it all happened so quickly, that a large mass would grab it from the air with lightening speed and bite into it whole. The berfrey bat didn't even know what hit it, and it went to its resting place none the wiser, oblivious in its repose.
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Upon the edge of the forest, the heavy set shape seemed to shift, lose the extra shadow, and come to rest upon the ordinary order of a man, who was dusting himself off of the debris he had picked up during his sojourn into the forest. Yet it was the teeth that were the last to rescind, back into the gum. And onward he walked to the edge of the City - the Wall - to the Glorious City of Unity.
And he found the place, that secret place very few knew. Those that did were a handful of Deviators, and the odd one or two Poachers, hunting for unusualness and succour without. Once he had reached that door, he shifted the pack upon his back, pulled back the vegetation and slipped into the City.
END
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