His Demon: Conflicted

My little master, quite young yet so wise,

With beauteous, fathomless, deep dark blue eyes,

And a stone face his gentle, warm nature belies.

He's ordered me never to tell to him lies.

(I pray that he never sees through my disguise.)

.

...

.

My little lord's deadly a small, wicked shrike.*

In his own human way, we are very alike:

When he fights by my side, we join and ignite,

And pass through our foes like a white-hot iron spike.

(I hope he is looking away when I strike.)

.

...

.

My master: so clever, quick-witted, petite,

With long, fragile fingers and small, soft, pink feet,

He parries my wordplay, my chess moves defeats,

My time with the earl's been rewardingly sweet,

(Nevertheless a starved demon must eat.)

*An odd, rather gruesome little bird, the shrike is built like a sparrow or a small finch, but is a true, dedicated carnivore, a meat-eating predator and must regularly kill other small birds and rodents in order to feed itself. Yet it is neither large nor strong. It possesses no natural weapons, no talons nor sharp beak, so all it can do to bring down its meal is hurl itself at the other bodily and hope to beat, batter and bludgeon the other bird out of the sky until they become so disoriented they fall to earth.

When that happens, the shrike, hardly much bigger than its prey, must fly down and carry its little victim off to a certain tree—a thorn tree— the shrike's chosen larder. There, the ghastly little shrike finishes the job by impaling it's victim onto one or more of the long thorns to slowly die and eventually rot enough for the small predator to be able to tear it apart with its weak bill and (finally!) eat.

Trees belonging to shrikes are always adorned with the grisly bits and bobs left over from the bird's hard-won meals.