Antlers

Published by
Flash-Frontier, flash-frontier, March 2022 Thunder
Zephir, May 2022, Issue No.1

Each twisting path among the pines looked the same. How would we get home?
"Whoa... look! What do you think it is?"
The carcass was immense. The land around it had receded to make room for the newcomer. Time and soil had swallowed more than half of it, but the head and torso were still visible.
"A deer?"
We bent down to peer in.
The flaking ribs hosted small animals and insects. Blades of grass twisted all around, making that transitory den cosy and soft. The entrails, now dry, had wrapped like the mountains around a miniature city. Grey and brown veins drew the contours of a completely new place, where the rules of its inhabitants, microbes and bacteria, changed second by second.
Alfredo grabbed a stick and teased the skull's hollows, and gasped when a lizard came out in a flash.
"Look here!"
A raven had signaled its participation in the banquet with its shiny black feather, stuck in the centre of the entrails, like a flag. Little further down, a crater had formed, perhaps in place of the liver, and young cyclamens had sprouted in there. A ladybird flying over the crest of a hip at that very moment shone like a ruby set in stone.
We had never seen a dead body so close. For us, it was fun, but not for the grown-ups. When we told them at home, they said the wolves would return.

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