They called him Gorefeather, bane of the green,
A honking harbinger, ruthless and keen.
Not born of a barn, nor reared in a glade -
He hatched in the shadow where warm blood is laid.

The mayor of Thera, once pompous and proud,
Now hangs from a fountain, death is his crowd.
The foray board's shattered, the racetrack runs red,
The tea house lies still, its last patron fled.

Steel in his stare and war in his wings,
A flap and a peck - he rejects their offerings.
He once knew the pond, the soft sunlit shore,
Before men took his clutch and left him with gore.

The children all jeer him, the adventurers spit,
But none dares to face him where silence has split.
He honks not in rage but the ache of a past,
Where goslings were slaughtered, a heartbreak that would last.

He is not noble, nor wise, nor serene -
He kills with a grace that borders obscene.
Yet look at his eyes, those dark molten wells -
You might catch the echo where old sorrow dwells.

A tyrant? Perhaps. A monster? Mayhap.
But gods help the hand that lays him a trap.
He fights not for conquest, nor glory, nor gold,
But for what was stolen and never consoled.

So when Thera falls 'neath the webbed-footed tide,
And a honk splits the dusk like a war-hawk's cry,
Spare him your curses, your arrows, your blame -
For Gorefeather only remembers the blame.

Penned by my hand on the 25th of Daedalan, in the year 972 AF.