A/N: A defining moment in a little over 900 words . Loviatar ritual idea was Witchwolf's, not mine. ...And why can't I insert a line below this? (sigh) Ah, ff dot net, you are nothing if not the sum of your faults. Anyway, next scene is either the gold standard or to be left, depending on whether I go with chronological order or order in which scenes were typed. Any preferences?

dog eat dog

His skin was dark as rich soil and the pitch fringe of lashes around his eyes made kohl unnecessary: his eyes were hemmed in with thick, black lines, anyway. It was deemed a necessary expenditure when hunger had begun to suck in at his stomach, cheeks and eyes. With his short spikes of lice-ridden hair, marimba ribs, and shaking fingers, he was picked out less by even the customers with the thinnest of coins. The boy was glad for the respite from the depravity he had always known.

Shadash understood what it meant when his wounds refused mending. He knew what it meant when his skeletal body ceased to turn a few coppers: he would have to fight for muddy water though it smelled as if it had passed through a donkey's body. New contentions for scraps with much smaller competitors: rats.

A tenday after he had introduced his wooden horse to the other children and Shadash was still stunned by anger. For days, all he saw was the swarm of grabbing hands as the horse was ravaged by desire, quarter drawn in acquisitive frenzy. The shakes had intensified as he struggled with an internal foe he could not comprehend. When the internal struggle finally erupted, it translated itself to his limbs in a frenzy of his own.

In the burning midday heat, when nothing of any intelligence moved about the city streets, Shadash had pierced the thick stillness with a feral scream, seized what was left of the horse's wooden body and began to lay waste to every living creature in his vicinity.

Children fled the house like rats before a flood. On the squalid back alleys of Avenue Paradise, a wave of screaming, crying children broke forth. It only took one adult to rip the makeshift club from the boy's clawing grip. It took a second to lift the twig-like boy off the ground by the back of his neck. The horse's body hit Shadash repeatedly and the man yelled in his face, but it was nothing more than gibberish and pathetic pain versus the loss of the dreams invested in the wooden marionette.

The beating was enough to steal the boy's conciousness. When he awoke he found nothing but enemies within the shelter. The other children stole his food, tore apart his orange scarf, pissed in his water. He'd seen this before and the result was always the same: starvation, dehydration, disappearance, all paths that led to death.

His body was too weak to succumb to shakes, though his fingers still trembled, but Shadash decided that would change. He had never given up, his small chest never lost the flame of utter defiance; it only burned brighter. Salvation came in the routine observance of death.

Shadash often ate bugs; most children did. In his hunger, he ceased to be disgusted by the writhing pale bodies of maggots; they didn't move fast enough. Beetles were not his favorite, because the shells stuck in his teeth and slid beneath his gums. Moths were fine as long as the wings were removed; it did not benefit anyone to have a dusty mouth.

It was when he found the larger piece of carrion that he knew his fortune was changing. There were the flies, the crows, and the dogs, but Shadash was patient. He went back to the shelter and, shutting out the residents' whispered threats, Shadash made off with a makeshift torch, lit off one the place's tea lantern.

The remainder of the horse's body made a fragrant torch. While the scavengers were not afraid of the rickety boy, they did fear the smell of smoke, the burn of fire. Shadash chased off the beasts, ignored the flies, and made an attempt to cook his meat. He did not care how much he burnt it, just worked to make it soft so his teeth, increasingly loose in his mouth, would not have to work as hard.

It didn't take much to fill his shrunken stomach, but he knew that to leave his windfall was to lose it. It was far too large to hide or save; he resolved to work diligently with torch and shards of glass and pottery until he removed a great chunk of the flesh. He then burned it nearly black, in hopes it would last longer.

He smiled at his handiwork, his yellowed teeth bright through char and grease. Reverently, he put out his torch, his fiery horse, and hid it in the debris before shuffling back to the reeking house.

That night a cleric of Loviatar came for the boy and several more of the cheapest prostitutes in Calimport. It was a seasonal practice to augment one of their feared communal rituals with a press of hired skin that none would miss. One of the healthier children ran up to the haunted second level to find the local temple's favorite child…

...and raced down screaming.

Shadash, hair wild over his head, green eye and red eye shining with a crazed light, appeared at the top of the stairs. His stance was confident, his feet spread wide, sticky grease adhered gloves of black ash up to his elbows in living parody of the half-devoured hand gripped in his teeth.

"Horror...!" said the proprietor.

"Magnificent...!" said the cleric, placing bright coins of gold in the horrified man's hand.

And he was both. If only animals could survive the gutters of Calimport, an animal he would be.

"If you possess anything, child," Loviatar's man said, "bring it with you."