Per 
ART EXCHANGE FOR AbsentMindedNihilist
"VASILY! COME DOWN FOR DINNER!" Mother shouted from the kitchen, as she wiped off her apron with a crude rag.
The doorbell rang, announcing that Father was finally home from the farm. Nanuq barked loudly at the new arrival at the door and Mother rushed to the foyer to open the door for her husband. A weary but merry man in farmer's overalls and blue jeans came out of the winter wonderland outside. There was a blizzard outside. Father wiped his hair and let out a sigh of relief. Nanuq wagged his tail and jumped at his master entering the household pan
"Man, what a day. You won't believe how restless the foxes and wolves were today! There were a couple of nightshades into their enclosure." Father slumped down into his chair at the kitchen table. The family's arctic wolf laid down next to him.
"Oh no" Mother said as she wiped arranged the table. Dinner plates, butcher knives and forks were placed.
"You'd think the Alaskan winter snow would stop their growth but the Verdant has its perfidious ways. I had to spend the entire day cutting down the plants, the wolves weren't even willing t—" Father was interrupted as Dmitri rushed towards him from the living room
"Daddy! Daddy look I read the entire Book of Sun today!" the young precocious Dmitri exclaimed happily holding out the thin booklet in front of his eyes.
"Nu-uh! Dmitri only read three pages before putting the book down. He's stupid" Anya shouted from the living room. The seven year old girl was reading through a tattered picture book version of the Book of Frost.
"NO I DIDNT!" Dmitri shouted in vexation
"Anya, don't say bad words" Mother said in a monotonous voice while placing prayer pamphlets on the table for the children
"He is, Mom."
"Where is Vasily?" Father turned to Mother as she placed the napkins down.
"I called him a while back, he's still upstairs"
"I'll go get him" Father suspired. He leaned over and scratched the husky's snout before getting up. Man was today tiring. Tonight he'd get a long hard rest. It was Christmas Eve after all, and there was no better time for relaxing than tonight. Father grunted as he approached his teenage son's room. He knocked on his son's room before coming inside.
The room was a mess. Vasily's desk was covered in blood soaked homework papers, with red and clear interstitial fluids soaking up the chair's cushion. Entrails were hanging from the ceiling light, still dripping with blood and viscera. Flesh and torn red muscle tissue were scattered all over the room, along with socks and used shirts and shorts. Vasily's bed was grubby and disheveled, with meatpiles here and there on the pillows. On the bed sat Vasily, playing with his Gameboy.
"Veldt! It stinks in here, please clean your room" Father coughed and held his nose. "How many times have I told you not to bring your food upstairs?"
His son grunted in response, not bothering leaving the Gameboy with his eyes.
"We're starting dinner, come downstairs" Father said before heading back downstairs. There was now a cacophony downstairs. Dmitri was playing with Nanuq, and had wrapped an elastic band around its tail. Before long, Nanuq was clumsily running around in circles chasing its backend, provoking the family's amusement and laughter. There was a general feeling of merriment in the household, and Christmas Eve was fast approaching.
"Are we ready now?" Mother stifled a laugh before turning to Father. Anya and Dmitri started chasing Nanuq through the residence. The family's newborn laid asleep in Mother's arms, and she gently rocked it back and forth.
"Actually, I wanted to open the gifts before dinner. I have a surprise for Dmitri" Father said with a jolly look and winked at his wife.
"Oh?" Mother had a bemused look on her face.
"EVERYONE! WE'RE OPENING UP THE PRESENTS!" Father yelled. The kids screamed in excitement and rushed from living room. Nanuq had wrenched off its own tail to get to the falcon meat and was holding it in its mouth, chewing off chunks of both meats and spitting out the fur and feathers. Mats of fur and wolf blood was starting to pool out on Mother's perfectly clean ceramic floor.
Father would never allow a spy of the Verdant in their house, but the tortured corpse of the spruce sapling Father cut down and burned served its purpose as a Christmas tree. They didn't celebrate Christmas for that holiday of the Nazarene the mainlanders worshipped, but the kids seemed to enjoy the winter festivities. Children of the Green were not allowed to live in closer proximity than the edge of their ranch. All vegetation, plant life and the such have been burned, and the ground salted. Cud chewers like rabbits and cows were slaughtered and the others were warned to never approach the ranch ever again. Still, Father made an effort to provide a dead tree, too weak to spy for Pan but strong enough to hold all the bulbous red and green decorations under its frail stature. After all, it's Christmas right?
"I'M OPENING MINE FIRST!" screamed Anya, overexcited to see what her gift was. The box was held together with red wrapping paper given a cute yellow bow. She shook the box to hear if anything was inside, but it didn't make a louder noise than a dull thunk, which suggested the object was solid and took up most of the dimensions of the box. Anya ripped off the bow and looked inside. Mother had gifted her a children's copy of the Book of Canyon. Anya squealed and looked at all the pretty pictures inside. She loved picture books. Mother smiled at her.
"Oh! Before I forget, here… I made your mother this" Father reached out and took out a slightly bigger package, this one green and covered in pictures of Santa Claus. He ceremoniously presented it to his wife, to the general hilarity among the kids. Mother laughed and, after placing the newborn down, opened it to find a mason jar full of a weird crinkled fleshpaper substance.
"I've been collecting those for a while now" Father said with a smile "Every afternoon at the ranch, I would snip off my lips with the pruning shears and put them aside in this bottle for you. You've got about a month's worth of snacks in there. I want you to take one whenever you feel down, and remember that it's my way of kissing you when I'm away." Mother leaned over for a kiss and he happily responded
"Yuck!" Anya said looking away. Dmitri laughed. Vasily appeared at the entrance of the living room, no doubt enticed by the prospect of gifts.
"Me, Anya and Nanuq made something for you too" Mother wiped her mouth sideways and reached down for a package
Mother was extremely busy preparing the house for the holidays, but she somehow still found the time to craft something for Father. The family wolf had molted off its entire adipose and dermis layer, of which Mother had used as a teaching exercice to show Anya how to sew. Anya and Mother made a tie, two belts and a pair of wolf gloves for Father out of the wolf pelt and used the rest of the hide as wrapping paper. Father laughed as he unwrapped the package and looked at his wife with an exuberant expression, his eyes gleaming. He put on the tie and the gloves.
"Hey theses fit really well Nanuq!" He leaned over again and scratched the wolf under its chin. Nanuq barked at him delighted and proud and started rubbing his long snout in father's gloved hand. Dmitri and Anya laughed and Anya rushed over to hug her father. He accepted her hug with widespread arms and held her in a strong embrace.
Vasily leaned over and tugged at his gift. It was contained in a small box, about the size of a shoe box and the wrapper was adorned with Nintendo characters. Vasily snickered knowing he asked his parents for a gaming console last month and fully expecting this to be the Nintendo Switch he had asked for for a while. Unable to contain his excitement he started ripping into the wrapping paper. Inside was a a can of herbicide.
"Ah." He said, staring at his gift.
"Oh Vasily, we got you this! This is one of the best herbicide formulas we found on the market! I saw you lounging around last week and I figured the lawnmower must be a little tiring. Now you can do your part of helping the world get rid of the Greens even faster!" Mother smiled at him. Vasily held in his hand a can of Weedfire herbicide. His excitement a little tamed, he looked at her with a neutral look and sighed.
"Thanks mom" he said without a smile, looking back at the can of herbicide a little disappointed that all he got for Christmas was more chores.
Dmitri looked down at the last box under the corpse of the tree.
"Open it champ." His father had a twinkle in his eye
Dmitri leaned down and opened the box. Inside was an ornamental knife made of artic wolf ulna bone, bright and pale in the light of the sun. Dmitri grabbed hold of the knife and looked at it closer. The knife was a little bit more than nine and a half inches long and clean, and what appeared to be cloth soaked in epoxy and left to cure was wrapped around the knife handle.
Dmitri looked up to see his fathers eye shine bright with pride and Vasily smirking. His mother looked like she was holding back tears. Anya looked at his with her mouth wide open
"You're a man now, Dmitri. Almost nine years old in four months. I was thinking it over at the farm, and I realized that it's about time we allow you to offer yourself to the broken cycle fully without being told what to do."
"Oh Veldt!" yelped Anya, realizing what was going on.
"So your mother and I were talking and seeing as you're not a kid anymore, we think it's about time for your first consumption."
Father turned around and turned to the windows. After unbolting the them from their frame, he placed them down. The windows were in the way, and he didn't want anything to get injured. He looked out and saw that the snowstorm and winds had died down. Weather good enough for them to arrive.
Father startled whistling a tune known only to the adherents of the Veldt. Vasily sat down on the floor and started explaining to Dmitri how to use the knife.
And less than two minutes later, two majestic gyrfalcons appeared at the window.
Mother had come back from the living room with her own Book of Bone. She turned to her children "Alright kids, it's time for dinner!"
Vasily handed back the wolf bone knife to Dmitri and Mother placed her book down in front of him. It was a book without pictures. Dmitri had never read a book without pictures before and hesitated.
Father edged him "Well go on, read it"
Dmitri swallowed and looked at the book
They whisper out- mongering about the Earth and the sky and the heavens, and saying the stones should be molten and open, and that the water should be good for the making, and the sun that shines out on the plains.
Dmitri approached the knife to his eye. He hesitated a bit. Vasily chuckled
In the spirit of the collective. Now hear! Ah! Black Raven cries to thee, dark one, hear the scream of the ravens, hear the crunch of the bones and bony shapes breaking against the molars and the incisors. Hear the mighty echo of skin rupturing in lovely agony, lovely divinity.
Dmitri plunged the knife into his cornea and screamed at the pain. He never expected this to hurt so much, seeing Father do it so many times. The knife had sliced cleanly through iris, and popped the bubble that formed the lens, spilling blood and aqueous humour dripping down the contortions of his face. His eye started deflating like popped bubble wrap.
Down to the silt and the life, to the silent depths and the fire. Ghosts we call them, those who succumb to Pan's infernal cycle and that is when they wear down. In death, they retreat from the world and from men. We have broken this cycle, and come out freer than ephemerals!
Vasily and Father held up Dmitri, hosting him up and helped him sturdy the knife, instructing him on what to do. Dmitri twisted it some more and screeched. Popped blood vessels were spilling out the inside of the eye like the yellow veiny pulp of an egg, dribbling down making previously unknown paths down the sideline of his cheekbones
I pledge myself a servant to Veldt, and use its hand for offerings. Your winged angels. Your hand. Not mine. I have kept it close, though the knife
The falcons emitted a shriek cry and flew and dive bombed straight towards Dmitri's face. He felt the sharp pain of their talons as they dug themselves in his scalp, puncturing blood vessels and parts of his brain. The peregrine falcons bent over and dug their beaks inside of Dmitri's eye, before pulling on a red string like muscle, the optic nerve. They twisted and pulled and finally ripped it out of Dmitri's face. The falcons made a shriek before digging furiously into his mushy socket and devouring the pulp.
Suddenly, all the pain faded, as abruptly as it came. His eye was now a mess, but he no longer felt anything. Even with all the falcons tearing into him, he only felt the tugs, nothing that actually caused him pain. He looked up at his family
Father clapped and congratulated Dmitri. Mother had never looked as proud and Anya looked at him with a mixture of awe and envy. The falcons done with their meal, flew out the window.
"Well then" Father stood up with a grunt and grabbed the butcher knife Mother left on the table
"It's time to eat"
