{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/03",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/03",
  "publishedAt": "2020-03-23T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "You dodge into the underbrush between the trees, hoping you blend in\nwell enough. Your reddish yellow chitin isn't the darkest chamoflage,\nbut at least it isn't the bright pastels of some. You are careful to\nchoose a hiding spot with a quick path of escape, just in case it's\nsomething you can't handle. Earlier you saw the hint of motion in the\nshadows, and you look further along the path where a... small hopping\nform comes into view. It's dark blue, almost black, and moves on two\nstalks --- legs. As it continues along the path, you make out the beak,\nand decide the blue is feathers --- a bird, nearly as tall as your\nmesothorax! The beak opens and it calls again.\n\nThis vulgar grunking and throat-rattling sound the bird made was never\nthat threatening. Of course this wasn't a monster, it's just a dumb\nlittle animal.\n\nBut you had already decided to ambush this thing, got your nerves all\nsteeled up, and --- you feel a rumble in your abdomen. You are hungry.\nThis bird might make a decent meal, too! (Or at least a snack before\ndinner. You are going to be on time for dinner. You always are.)\n\nYou wait for it to progress further along the path, all the while\npivoting its bird-head and surveying the woods, entirely unaware it's\nbeing stalked by you.\n\nAt the right moment, you leap out from the underbrush at top speed, bird\ndead in your sights!\n\nAt, that is, your top speed. Hardly impressive, to something that\nstartles like a bird does. It sees you as you start to lunge, and it's\nalready taking off, wings flapping.\n\nBut you lash out with your spiked raptorial forelegs, and their spikes\ncatch on the bird's feathers without piercing its flesh. The attempt at\nflight is completely thwarted, and your raptorials close, holding the\nbird there in a vice-like grip.\n\nYour maxillae curl in a smile, wet with saliva.\n\nAnd then, fixing you with one eye, the bird says, \"Help!\"\n\n::: afterword\n:::: details\nSuggestions Received\n\n> Grant the bird mercy, provided it swears an oath of fealty.\n\n- - -\n\n> startled from the bird speaking let it go ?\n::::\n:::"
}