Meatbag

You could hold them in your hands like baby snakes, their long, flexible tails make the up majority of their length, twirling around your claws and tying themselves in knots. The baby faes were still slick with yolk, the dust had begun to settle upon the shades of purple and blue of their scales. The cauldron bubbled and spat at your face, smoke from below intermingled with the steam and blinded you momentarily with a sudden gust of wind. You clench your fist some and feel them squirm and claw like earwigs. You release them then into the water, watch them writhe and twist floating as you poke at them with a stoker.
He grasped desperately at the thick air and at the tin walls that held him prisoner, only for his spindly fingers to be burned by this too but still he persisted relentlessly. The steam burned his eyes, skin peeling loose and red like a footy frank, he inhaled its scent with each frantic gasp for breath. The smell of cooking flesh did little for an insectivore.
You wonder how much pain the mind of a tiny fae could comprehend. If one would look at death like an emaciated wildclaw would look at a fresh carcass, or the other side of this boiling pot. You assume they had never had the chance to experience such pleasure in their short lives, as to appreciate the other side, their feet on the dry earth. They were an ugly sight now, death had replaced your hand with his, tightening the grip on their tiny bodies, sloughing the scales from pink, blistered skin like hotdog skin.
One fae evaded this grip, seemingly, and still he thrashed about, albeit with growing lethargy. You ponder for a moment before offering him the tip of the stoker, he coils around it with what little strength remains, sticks to it like a tongue to an icicle.

***

At first sight of the pathetic creature, the pale coatl remarked “Oh! He is just disgusting, how horrible! That is not a fae, that is a bag of meat, Meatbag. Of course I will have him.” A pustule popped under a gloved claw. “I will fix him, and I will fix his ugly little face.”
Indeed he was deformed and hideous, a spectacle to behold, raw and blistered. He oozed bits when manoeuvred, otherwise just spending his time limp in his cage, but breathing nonetheless. He monitored him over time, fed him bug guts with a syringe although he often struggled to keep anything down. The flesh of his full body wound remained sticky and a magnetic for dust, and required regular dunkings in lukewarm water. To the surprise of many he continued to grow at normal pace, and gradually make attempts at wriggling himself small distances, such as towards the back of the cage when approached.
“You can be a prime example of my handiwork, stealer of hearts, slimy like the Mother Herself.” He held Meatbag’s small head between two fingers. A fae’s eyes were never emotive, his were strange and milky, Montserrat could never quite tell if it was back into his he would stare, or blind into the endless abyss which was never ending agony. He liked to think it was the former.