Somewhere in my thick skull, I should know that teaching (younger) children curse words is wrong, but I don't really care. Let this little mongrel have her fun, let her say those taboo syllables where her mother can't hear her. And maybe I should warn her not to say such foul words before her parents, but I can't bring myself to care whether she'll get beat over it later or not. Perhaps I'd like for her to get hit, to understand what I go through, and then I won't be alone in this silent suffering. What a silly thought. I don't want anything in common with this.

She didn't like that I told her this was nasty, furrowing her brows at me in discontent. Even the little chick turned its attention from its grotesque meal to squeal at me in the most unpleasant manner, its blood splotched beak making my stomach lurch. My eyes dart to the movement around her ankles, her leonine tail snaking around them in agitation? Boredom? Did the thing just do what it pleased? I really don't understand how they work, bit it's there, hairless and terrifying, waggling around her hooves while she busied herself with my bare brow.

"I don't have any— and I'm glad I don't. They're signs of inferiority." I inform her, thinking that maybe her parents just haven't told her that she's supposed to be below me, that maybe they were waiting until she could comprehend more than simple sentences. My throat catches before I can talk anymore, watching as the filly purposefully angles her head so I can see the deep scars running over the right side of her face. They're still healing, not quite scarred, but not new either. My face wants to react, to twist in displeasure at seeing this and knowing that any day that could happen to me if Mother ever felt up to it— that although these are from the claws of a wild animal, what's to stop Mother from doing the same? What if one day, she becomes the wild animal, and I the helpless prey to fall beneath her raging talons. "Oh." Is my only response to her wounds, having nothing of that caliber to show her. Scattered swelling bruises and light scars blanket my body, but none so severe as hers. 

I raise an unimpressed brow at her retort, almost chuckling at the failed response to my words. "Was that supposed to make me feel bad?" I ask her, looking down at the battered filly and then onto the rotting corpse laid out before us. I would give her a better come back than that. "I'm sure your mom smells just like this—" I respond bluntly, raising a cream hoof to the exposed innards with a wrinkled nose. It indeed did smell bad, like a hot shit left to sit out in the summer sun for far too long. Unpleasant.

Sure, those things may be inside of me, and her, and that tiny chick picking at them— but that's just the difference. They were inside of us, where they belonged. That's what made the open body gross, and (at least) me, not. "It's because those organs are all out of the body where everything can get to them and they can get smelly and gross. In us they're fine because that's where they belong." I shrug nonchalantly, gazing at the face of the deceased fawn, wondering what it saw before it died. Death was something I wasn't fond of, something I didn't find interest in, but I didn't fear it either. It just was— there was nothing fascinating about it, nothing terrifyingly dreadful either. I accepted my morality and went on, but this girl seemed very keen on knowing the physical half of death, about what the body becomes afterwards.

"Talk."

kid