I stayed there longer than I’d like to admit, caught between fear and fascination. Every new angle made it look stranger, like it couldn’t decide whether it was an object or something that had once been alive. My mind filled the gaps with stories: a bird dropping its prey, a creature crawling up here to die, time slowly stripping it down to this fragile outline.
When I finally understood what I was seeing — the delicate bones, the tiny skull, the way the body had folded into itself — the horror softened into something else. Not relief, exactly, but a sober kind of respect. It wasn’t a monster, or a sign, or anything supernatural. It was just life, finished and forgotten, resting above my head all this time. I climbed down differently than I’d gone up, suddenly aware of how much the world hides in plain sight.