He slowed his pace as a lizard-duck scurried across his path. He stopped for an instant and tried to remember if this was the time of orbit-cycle that they were poisonous.  This was month ten and the planet had begun its orbit around Sisera Two.  The planet tumbled through space in continuous figure eights around the two suns, each one providing a powerful slingshot effect for the change-over orbit.  In another eight months, the planet would begin its orbit around Sisera One.  He remembered that a human-person could eat Swanbird feathers in months one through seven, but they became poisonous in months eight through twelve.  Then you could snatch, pluck and eat till your heart’s content from thirteen through seventeen.  The swanbirds were slow and didn’t seem to mind an occasional robbery of their tasty feathers.  Month eighteen was definitely off-limits.  Joseph, one of Yukon’s work mates ate a feather in an off-month and suffered stomach boils for fifteen days.  Except for the imported olive-aloevera oil that someone gave him to drink, he would have gone to departation double-quick.  From then on, Fina, Yukon’s femaler made each him carry an olive oil container on his hip. Yukon protested that it was unnecessary and it slowed him down.  She hardened her face at him and he yielded to her new protocol. 

He missed Fina now.  She said she was forty, but felt thirty on Jabex.  She was slightly shorter than he was, but kept her hair fluffed and multicolored as he like it.  She had taken a transit tube to City Number Five for a few days.  Since she was visiting someone there and wouldn’t return for a half-week, he had no real excuse for missing a meeting at Candelabra Enterprises.  He emerged from the woods and began the traverse across the blue-orange meadow.  The grass hummed as he ran across the glen.  He listened, but could not figure out the tune.  Sometimes he could discern a definite melody in the grass, but not today.  He could see the top of the tower of Candelabra Enterprises.  It was at least twenty moments away.  He remembered the directive from Powers to be there in twenty moments.  He sighed knowing that he would miss meeting the protocol.

The meat sluiced down the throat of the open maw as the jaws crunched the last of the bones.  Victim blood dribbled down and puddled beneath the beast.  Since the hunger was never quite satiated, the poor victim whose life had been consumed in awful pain had paid a futile price, worthless, and ignominious.  The beast belched and the explosion of waste gas from its innards sent a splatter of blood and torn tissue over the kill zone.  The three yellow eyes scanned the area for yet another meal.  The target eye saw a runner in the distance.