Frozen most of the time. A terracotta kitten, a glazed white and brown calico, a shaggy black maine coon, a manx. These in forms of pottery scattered near the mouth of the descent, or in the first few hundred yards within. I looked at them. I knew them from some older time. I had slain them and passed by. Slain them when they had been in their other deadly form. Dead shards from the ancient war. But even the small ones weigh the same and cannot be lifted from where they lie.
Nephilim never lacks for bodies, it sucks them from the earth, glazes them, or wraps them with precious metal. Hammered gold as we shall see. And they never move unless released by some emotion. A wanderer, usually. takes some joy in its form and evokes the fatal response. What happens then is unknown. Devoured in some sense. Restored? To heaven? Eden?
In this passage there is the smell called: the doubt that things ever end. A lure?
Curiosity evokes curios, but hunger, hunger brings the big cats. And I have brought to me a whopper, a cat worthy of my lust to mine this deep lost portion of my soul.
And so Nephilim, as tall as my shoulders sits on its haunches before me in a body of hammered gold worked exquisitely in vines and leaves. Then with one immense paw it pushes me to the ground, moves over me and extends its tongue to my face. The rough texture of the tongue is so familiar that I do not notice I will never breathe again.
