The headache was trying to become a fledgling migraine but I was doing my best to sabotage the attempt. I laid down in the darkened room and wore an eye shield for literal cold comfort on the sensitive right side of my face.
If the talons on my nose and mouth didn’t wake me, the loud call in my face would have.
I opened my unprotected eyes and realized without looking that I was in the Boneyard. Still dressed in physical clothes, the smell of funeral pyres brought more tears to my eyes.
As if the raven actively trying to remove my right eye wasn’t enough already.
It was strange and surreal to watch the raven’s beak chatter over my cornea before wedging it’s open mouth into the socket. The pain increased every time it tried to get a grip around the knot of misery watching it, but it was a different kind of pain. Felt pleasant compared to the migraine trying to root itself in my facial bones.
After some commentary and mocking from other observant ravens, the attending bird finally clamped down properly on the eyeball and gave it a vicious twist to pull it out of my face and snap the wormy optical nerve.
It hopped into my left field of view to show me the bloodshot prize. The action distracted me from another raven dropping something small, heavy, and cold into the bare socket. The chill soothed the muttering ache left behind and I sighed in relief.
Satisfied with its work and my response, the attending raven swallowed its fee for work completed and left quickly before it was mobbed by other ravens that had hoped to share the delicacy.
The migraine now reduced to a merely annoying headache, I remained lying in comfort on the bed of bones I awoke on. Other ravens came to me and settled around me. Their gossip and chatter was the last thing I needed to settle into a deep and restful sleep.