Once upon a dreadful time

A Murder of Crows

The sun had long set, followed by the moon, and in the darkness of the Springwood and the Summerwood, as well as the Autumnwood and the Winterwood, from within the embraces of the roots of the trees along a key portion of the starwise bounds of each forest, small beings emerged in the night and stealthily climbed upward. And they had with them razor-sharp shards of flint and obsidian, and slender barbs and nooses and other such weaponry, all of a size for the Root Dwellers, and all silent when compared to brute-force smashing weapons, such as hammers and mauls. Out along the limbs the tiny people crept, searching, seeking, hunting for crows, and death came mutely among the birds.

And from deeper within the Springwood and Summerwood and Autumnwood, more Sprites came with long thorns in hand and silently glided toward the trees.

And from Valeray’s demesne, Sprites drifted on wings through the twilight bound, needles and scarfpins and thorns in hand, to join in the murder of crows.

And they settled to the roosts of given trees and at a specified signal, they stabbed through the eyes and into the brains of the ebon birds. Even though slain, the crows fell to the ground and flopped and fluttered for long moments, yet other dark birds asleep in adjacent trees did not note the passing of their

more, the troops of tiny warriors moved to the next set of full roosts.

In the Winterwood it was Ice Sprites who popped from frozen pond to icicle to ice-laden limbs, seeking blackbirds who perched on ice, and there the winter Sprites reached forth with their tiny fingers to oh-so-lightly touch the birds at the places where they grasped the clad branch; and the Sprites froze them to death, while the Root Dwellers of that forest slew the ones who sat on ice-free roosts.

When morning came in these four domains, the floor of each woodland along those portions of the starwise margins was littered with dead birds, like black leaves fallen to ground.