Clockwork Harpy

Perched atop the rotting billboard, she gazed out over the ruined city. Her leg cogs creaked for want of oil. Hunger made her belly rumble.

It was time to start looking for dinner.

She winged down to the roof of an old crumbling warehouse. From there, her sapphire eyes could scan the streets for potential food. The gears in her neck whirred quietly.

Finally, a pack of wind-up deer eased out of the shadows to drink at the stagnant oil puddles. They neared the warehouse with caution, their mechanical noses twitching when the stale breeze blew past.

She waited patiently so as not to spook them.

Good. There was a lame one, an old buck. His back leg sported a loose bolt and a crooked coil. He limped behind his herd almost apologetically.

He never saw the harpy swoop from the evening sky. The beast's sharp steel talons quickly brought an end to his internal mechanisms, leaving his once shiny onyx eyes dull with death.

The harpy landed easily on the roof of the warehouse. Greasy fluid coated her lower legs as she tore into the wind-up buck's carcass. Soon his entrails of timing chains and organs of steel coils were hang-drooling from her mouth. Her empty belly became full once more.

Finally she left what little scraps there were and launched herself off the warehouse roof. Back into the shadows of the deepening night.