[Gift] FOTN | Gavle Goat

One day, a strange effigy appeared too close to his territory. It glowed brightly in the calm of night with strings of lights that thrummed even from a distance. Made of dead grass and red decoration, it looked like a suitable sacrifice to some terrible god. Shasi and Yetzu waited as patiently as they could together for the night when flames would consume the crude recreation of a goat, when they could, from a distance, enjoy something great and terrible, and the horrible people gathering would finally disperse.

This did not happen.

As the days went by, Shai-zu’s frustration grew. He felt mocked. They were just far enough from his territory’s border that it shouldn’t bother him, and the technicality itself chafed against him. His nostrils flared, fangs bared at the sight of it, a blazing sunset on the other side casting a long shadow, reaching towards him.

There was no need to converse — both sides of him agreed. He pushed off the ground with his powerful haunches, tattered leather wings spread wide as he crossed the distance to the horrible, pointless statue.

One head snapped at the humans who came close, threatened with sparks of flame — they didn’t know he couldn’t yet wield it — while the other went for the goat’s throat, tearing through the grass with his teeth, with his horns, with the clawed tips of his wings until it fell to the ground, fully severed, staring at the sky without eyes.

Shai-zu flung himself at the rest of it, shredding with glee. He bit through the wires of the lights, tore with his claws at the twee decorations, pulled the bales of hay apart until he got to the wooden frame beneath which he snapped and broke until the sun disappeared behind the horizon and all that remained of the miserable thing was the mostly-intact head.

Satisfied with himself, Shai-zu returned to the air, bellowing a roar of triumph, and glided home, not yet knowing that it would return in a year’s time.