Eros

"There lies a sickness upon that place I tell you- a sickness vile and pestilent-"

Such lay the words on every merchant, traveller and wanderer's tongue, uttered under cloudy, haunted eyes. Welled near shut with thick, slimy tears, the tears of a sorrow not fully natural. Every drake stupid enough to wander there would flee, wings shivering, mouths watering, screeching and crying "the mist! the mist!". The same mist held prisoner in their milky eyes, eyes that only grew milkier as the days passed, until they fell completely white. Then translucent as the slime- and then, fell out entirely. Scales paled, flaky like snake skin except it crumbled like flour when touched, like ash or dead butterfly's wings. Then the teeth turned black, like an overripe cob, in rotting striations. Until the full thing discoloured and, too, fell off. Maybe that was why they called it "Autumn sickness", for once the season caught you you changed colours and fell- into a decidedly more oily, ash-covered puddle than delightful crunchy piles. A frighteningly normal name for a virus so violent.
"There is a sickness upon that place, vile and pestilent."
They said. Eros heard. He saw too, for it took his father and his sister soon after. Both coughing on foam and slime. He remembered the sound most... a slush, a soft, wet slop, as her wing simply slid onto the floor. It had looked like filthy satin, like one of mother's dresses, if only made from equally delicate flesh. He'd had the strange thought to just... pick it up and put it back. Hang it over the fingers of her wing, like when he put mother's dresses back on their hangers. Her shaking shook the bed and her screaming rung between his ears like church bells. Down into him, like a lightning strike but slower, through his spine and fingers. Over and through and under his skin. Inside his head while his mother tried to calm her hysterical whining.
Such a grating voice.
He watched the mushy pile, free of it's body and rapidly discolouring, pooled upon the floor. Like an asymmetric puddle of rain. Or perhaps an odd, see-through blanket. He looked at his own wing, whole and solid. He frowned.

Then Eros left, looking for that place, searching for the season.

'That place' was a patch of growth beneath the boughs of electric trees, a sub-tunnel dug out however long or short ago, where wires rotted like tree roots and the stiff ground got soft as butter. Eros didn't like the soggy floor between his toes or the smell of mould. It was so strong he felt the fungus grow upon his brain, settle a spore and begin to propagate- but he carried on. He felt the twigs rip at his gentle wings and scrape his thin hide. Each slight wince brought made him smile. Open wounds might help the sickness take faster.

For a while he wandered, unsure of what he was looking for, where the sickness festered- until it became difficult to breathe. There was a sudden stuffiness in his chest he couldn't be rid of. Mild at first, then increasing with insistence, and then it wasn't hard to breath at all- for he knew he was walking in the sick now and his closeting lungs could not protect him. The illness would take. He too would change colour and fall.

Eros got his wish. Except- the young drake did not rot like he dreamed. Did not fall off his skeleton like moss off a branch in the swamp. Did not become clean of breathing flesh and viscera. Eros would become a corpse- but he would walk as one.

His eyes opened. Light like the sun assaulted him. Only after a series of painful blinks did he recognise them as belonging to a clinic. Gingerly he raised his head, peeking over a thick, blue blanket. It smelled like ozone. While a harsh light shone upon him, the rest of the room was shrouded in darkness. Vague silhouettes hinted at what might be around him- glass beakers, books, glints off metal utensils, dark boxes that might have been computers and the like. Far at the back, beyond even the vague glow, truly in the dark-
Red lenses glinted back at him and a dark laugh followed.