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Then came removing the head and organs, and finally, stripping the meat from the carcass. And of course, you would always cure the meat before cooking to remove that awful gamy flavor. He could only imagine that his ancestors had prepared their meat in a similar way, though without the luxury of a modern stove. He could almost smell the scent of meat cooking over an open fire, so much so that a bit of drool ran down his lower lip as he slept.

Sharing their dream feast from a distance was the human's mate, the female of the pair; she sat hunched over in a crude wooden cage near the back room where her mate had been killed. Nude and covered in filth, she was quite the opposite of the modern human female. Human women had been allowed into the city as far back as fifty years or so, when it was discovered they could bear mutant offspring, They were treated well, allowed to go to school and hold jobs so long as they agreed to marry a mutant. Smight's mother was among the first generation of these women: quiet and sweet, willing to give anything to live alongside mutantkind. And yet, the female in his dream was, like her mate, really no better than an animal. She watched the three devour their meat, wide-eyed and oblivious to her fate. Ripper, just as bold and arrogant as his real-life self, spoke directly to her with his sharp country accent: "Oi! Maybe if you beg me enough, I'll let ya have the scraps!" He gnawed noisily on a charred thigh, tearing the glistening meat off with a terrific growl, and threw the thick, greasy bone at her cage. It made a hollow "thunk" and bounced off the sturdy wooden bars, landing in the dirt in front of her. She nudged it with her finger and then shrieked, recoiling in terror like a child who had touched a hot iron. "That ain't such a bad idea, giving her scraps. I mean, we've gotta fatten her up somehow, right?" Smight's primitive self finally spoke, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of gristle, glancing over at the cage. Truly, he was not in his own body in this dream, but was more of a specter floating on the ceiling. He longed to enter his dream body, to feel that primitive instinct which had been siphoned out of his people and replaced with civility. Yet he couldn't help but harbor a growing repulsion for his dream self and a longing for the same civility that had cluttered his world.

And still he dreamt on. They had agreed to feed the scraps to the female in the cage. When they had finished filling their stomachs, Ether reluctantly stood up and made his way to the cage, that same real-life look of grim duty on his face. Bracing himself, the mutant unlocked the fastening mechanism with a steady blue hand and the door swung open on crudely fashioned metal hinges. The captive peered out at the three, but shrunk back when Ether tried to grab her by the scruff of the neck. Lo and behold, she spoke the modern Mutant Dialect: "Keep away from me, you blue-skinned monster!" This anomaly shocked Smight to the point of nearly waking him. Only when they were allowed into the city did humans learn the Mutant Dialect, otherwise they spoke only the Human Dialect, a mishmash of grunts and squeaks that Smight had only recently begun to learn.