cw for death/decay/mortality/etc When things die they become the ground, after taking a few detours through meat and bone. Socket knows this, because he has monitored the process with intense interest many times. He and Dot have made playgrounds of skeletal ribcages with antlers and hooves still strewn about nearby; his own deer is a reflection of his knowledge of the process, with its flesh hanging in heavy sheets. Sometimes something interrupts the process somehow. He knows this too--he has found mummified little birds in high branches, for example; and something is odd about the shells of cicadas. The general rule does not always hold, and Socket, sitting on his fat haunches and gazing tranquilly over a pool where minnows mill frantically and hungrily over a fallen trout, thinks that he and his kind must be one of those exceptions as well, in some way. He wonders if there is some way to restart the suspended process. The thought is not accompanied by fear--Socket has never known