Everyone is obsessed with turning Tech into some form of primitive animal who likes to go around being angsty and committing horrendous acts of violence. Okay, let me rephrase that. A lot of people like to play on his role of being a carnivore. Thus, it amuses me to see Slam pushed completely to one side in this department.
So here we are, vivid imagery, childhood…stuff and Rev. Because Rev, Tech and their bond together is awesome.
Bones, tapped dry of the sweet tang that resided with the marrow, achingly empty and whittled down to the breakable size of a pebble. They glistered while still moist and red, slick in the caverns of hungry pups, a constant tearing need for sheer warmth draining out through their young teeth.
Tech remembered how it was. To feel the root of your primary instinct knocking at the base of your conscience, just a sharp thrust into the membrane of the skull. It was powerful.
He had never once had to hunt for his food, never had to crush something out of existence below his paw. But he remembered the greed that had bore itself along with that damning need when fresh meat was rolled out onto the table, cut-throat prices for a bulging family. And the bones…they were snapped clean, chewed over thoroughly in the socket of the mouth and rinsed out with the iron-like salvia.
Savour the bones, he remembers. Save the bones, a vital technique to force food down the gullet. And then out come the delicate shapes, little coyote claws scribbling out nonsensical marks of imagination on the outer casing. Another toy, anther lost part to a machine that was far more complex than anything he could ever hope to build.
The poultry bones were different though, more delicate. Wide expanses where the marrow of a mammal should have been, stretched out branches of ivory where wings once were. They almost seems to float when you tossed them up into the air, falling into a snappable clatter that shook out the drumming beat of emptiness. His mother hung them round the cradle, little snatches of wind whispering through the hollowed-out base. A series of grotesque wind chimes.
And utterly, utterly dead.
Of course, now they're all stuck out here in a landscape that comes close to resembling such a barren concept and there's nothing but sand and a keening whine for Duck. His confident shape blurs into the beginning of night, heavy and more rounded than those wispy bones around his night time memories. The smell reaches him, stubborn and unhappy and completely unlike chicken. Totally inedible. Yet again, another mission gone wrong.
He ponders and tries hard not to remember even as the darkness seeps through the sky and veils over the sunlight, even as Rev's head decides to slumber against his side defiantly. And the scent flows forward again, fresh road runner and some ancient, primal need stirs within him. Everything is delectable. Except…Rev is warm while the wind is cold, slender muscles sending out a beacon of warmth that he could never find among the dusty bones of his childhood. He can still feel them all, thin stripes of mashed-up grey locked within that breathing heap of feathers. Shoulder blades, spine, even a slight contour of a skull.
And Rev…Rev is snoring. And it sounds nothing like those strange wind chimes he used to hear around his cradle. And just like that, the spell snaps and the coyote is left a little ruffled, a little gruff by embarrassment.
The bird sighs, a cotton puff of breath near his ear and Tech shivers, one arm nonchalantly propping Rev up against him more firmly before drifting down towards the ground. After all, Rev is the only one allowed to even touch his shoulder in a gesture of goodwill or perhaps sheer laziness like tonight and not receive a glare. He has personal standards to stick to.
And Rev is loud and noisy, warm and slight, yet not quite as boring or as light as those whispers of ebony stretched out into the past. Rev is not a pile of bones yet. And Tech has every intention of keeping it that way.