The Eturi
Part 1 - Genesis


I shall tell you of the first Eturi.
I shall tell you how the seas did not want them--
Coughing them up on the shore
Like water from the lungs of a drowning man.


They were unseemly things.
Arms stretched sinewy from their sockets
Fingers tipped with bulbs
And dripping a sticky mucus
Tearing flesh off prey caught in their hands
On teeth with edges like sawed-off metal.


Their stomachs--
A swollen gelatinous sack of a belly
Mottled with spots and partially translucent
Allowed for an uninhibited view onto the trophy of their latest meal
As it slowly digests.


The Eturi were humanoid only by their incipience
To foul the word--
Human.


The land was bare rock and mud then.
The Eturi were kings
Nothing lived that could challenge their predominance
For nothing lived,
There were yet no plants or other animals
Nothing to eat.


On all fours, they scrabbled the earth for food
Stiff-arming on knuckles
And the tippy toes of their feet
Lip-******* the dirt
Pumping their bellies full of mud and sand
Licking the rocks and chewing clay--
Always hungry
Scouring from beach--to desert--to canyon--to cracked earth--to volcano
Anything to eat.


Until starving, their belly made its final demand--
They must feed.


The first to fall to hunger was unexpected.
A look
From one Eturi upon another
A look that may have been casual or even sincere
Suddenly took on a thoughtful gaze
Then a deliberate stare.


Soon a second Eturi took up that gaze
Then a third,
No words passed between them
Their eyes were like the baying of hounds
Calling the others to them
Swelling into a pack
Drinking the scent of their gaze--
Silent
Coiling
Hunger so close to the surface
The air was almost chewy.


When the other Eturi turned
And saw their eyes upon him
The eyes of his brothers and sisters
The look in their eyes,
He could barely register protest
Before they were on him--
Ripping flesh from muscle
Muscle from bone
Bones snapped to **** out the marrow.
The Eturi was eaten
Before he died.


Survival did not go to the biggest and strongest
For they had the most to eat.
No, survival went to the scrawniest
The smelliest
The most deformed
Those with unappealing prickles of hair
For they were the most unsavory.


And out of this interspecial gorging
Bred a trait
That would become their greatest and most lasting legacy--
Cunning.


For what mattered resourcefulness
Self-preservation
Or strength of the will to live,
If you could predict the hunger in others
And twist them to your own?


It was said that the Land was so moved
Upon seeing the Eturi,
That taking the earth in her hands
She tore open her own breast
And drew forth life
In plants and grasses and fruit and trees and rich vegetation
And to lure other animals--
That anything
The Eturi may feed on anything
Anything but themselves.


But so the Eturi were
So when the Land gave up its last blossom
So would the Eturi always be.