516 Fall 91 Corvus enters his room in the private quarters, leaving the door cracked, a shabby den without detail, a lonely cot sits against the wall next to a chest. He checks the snares he had hid under the bed, one had been triggered but hadn’t caught anything, the other hadn’t been triggered. Corvus walks over to the chest and begins removing item after item. First his engraving toolkit, set on the cot, then 2 dead rats, set on the floor. The first rat was in fairly decent shape, a snare had caught his leg, from which he bled out. The second had been luckier, the snare caught it in the skull right where his brain was, lucky for him anyway, not as lucky for Corvus as the skull was damaged and not as useful. Corvus looked at the second rat, I should start with this one, the skull is damaged but the mouth is for the most part still intact. Holding the rat by it’s tail Corvus stretches the mouth to it’s limit, the jaw opens enough that the roof of the mouth is easily viewable and puts his finger as far it could reach down it’s throat, surprisingly roomy, he manages to get his whole finger down it’s throat. Laying the rat on his lap, Corvus removes his finger from the rat’s mouth and runs it across his neck, finding the shoulder blades. Holding his finger on the point where the neck meets the shoulder he retrieves a blade from the engraving kit and moves it where his finger was. First things first, he presses the blade into the skin of the rat, piercing it, then runs it along the neck, the blood had already drained from the body while it was sitting, so the incision was clear to see. The blade hit the spine of the rat, and with a careful application of pressure, breaks through, Corvus finishes separating the head from the rat, cutting away the remaining flesh. Corvus places the body of the rat under his bed, and sets up another snare nearby, then takes the head in hand and brings it closer to inspect it. The top of the skull is damaged beyond use, however, the roof of the mouth should still work. Without the tissue that would normally connect the head to the body, it seemed a lot more flexible, and corvus was able to stretch the jaw enough to fit his engraving knife up against the roof of his mouth. The first cut was important, if the circle was too jagged it would probably fail to bring out any djed. Corvus carefully sliced a circle in the roof of it’s mouth, not pressing into the bone just yet. The incision filled the roof of the rat’s mouth, taking up as much space as it could, nearly 1 inch in diameter. With the outer circle complete, the next step would be the inner engraving, starting with light designs, Corvus sliced carefully so that within the initial circle had 4 circles, each ¼ an inch in diameter coming off it’s edge, one every 90 degrees. The circles didn’t meet yet, but next came the lines that would connect them, one carving, which starts at the top edge of a circle, curved down to connect to the bottom of the circle opposite it. He did this for each circle, until the circles each had two lines connecting them to the center, one starting with themselves, one starting opposite. |