Status Updates From The Beggar's Knife

They filter through the wall and float among us. Between our fingers and legs, warning them. Sometimes they go in through the ears and enter the head. Then one suffers.

The final knot in the web is a fingernail of a black slave or god who has fought with a tiger. He spent the night hidden in the belly of a young elephant. He had felled it by cutting the tendons with a long poniard. That afternoon hee had covered himself with mud to conceal his odor. And with his ear flat against the ground he waited for the herd to come down to the river to drink.