seven for a secret, never to be told
It looked like a jaguar. Midnight black and sleek as oil, darker than even the pegasus that had rushed so foolishly to meet it. It knew what pegasus’ were, because it had killed one oh so long ago, when the world was young and blood still tasted like elixir.
It could not taste anything anymore, not after it had awoken from its slumber. It did not know how long it had slept, only that it was long enough. Long enough for carcasses to taste like leaves in its mouth, long enough for intruders to enter its beloved island.
It was not a jaguar. It had the head of one, and perhaps the front half of it looked vaguely jaguar-like, but that was where all similarities firmly ended. A jaguar did not attack three full grown prey animals, even if it was starving. It had always thought its distant cousins pitiful.
Draconian wings snapped out from the not-jaguar’s shoulders as it clawed viciously at the pegasus, but the pegasus was sly enough to snap his head back before he lost it. It only managed to leave one shallow gouge in his chest, which was already starting to bleed.
A barbed, reptilian tail writhed in the dirt when the pegasus drove something sharp and cold and hurting into its ribs. It did not scream. It’s bloody red eyes, pupil-less and perfectly spherical, merely narrowed.
The pegasus’ wings — two pairs — snapped out, as if he was trying to prevent the not-jaguar from noticing the thing — two things — behind him. The not-jaguar had never liked meals that fought too much back. Especially meals that jammed painful things between its ribs.
So it dove gracefully below the pegasus’ wings and sauntered into the weak filtered light, its spherical eyes flicking from the silver mare to the black and white stallion to the black pegasus who had decided to stay when he should have run. The bird it had killed earlier rotted grotesquely where it had left it.
It could not taste anything anymore, but oh — did it hunger.
