Psychopomp birds

There are black birds that eat the bodies of the dead. When they fly up after feeding they carry the souls of the slain to the sky. Surely you have heard of the court that drank too deeply from the well of forgetting. They forgot their guilt but also forgot to eat. And so, they starved. When the birds feasted on their bodies they also began to forget. They forgot to fly and forgot call out the warning that ghosts were close at hand. So rather than joining the winds among the clouds the forgetful court of spirits remained around the well as did the black birds. The winds around the well do not stop but swirl and howl day and night full of muttering  and groaning. .... Those who take a drought from the cold well, amidst the vortex of the departed, don't find the mental alleviation of forgetting anymore. By some strange magical adjustment they do not forget but are forgotten, as if erased. Some say that the black birds that follow a person out of the abandoned court swallow the memories which surround us like a cloud of invisible insects....