we scream our very souls free
Darkness had fallen over the land, bringing with it a most beautiful freedom. One Haunt had never truly experienced before. There is nowhere the shadow creature cannot find sanctum, nowhere their feet cannot now stand. For the first time, they had stood upon the tallest cliff, wind whipping at their impossibly dark locks as they tasted the salt and sea from the most exposed points of Beqanna.
The crude, ambling beasts of the netherworld do not bother Haunt. A shadow is impossible to contain in a world made of shadows. The withering vegetation is of little concern. Not when it has never been the thing that sustains them.
No, all Haunt has ever needed is the darkness. And now, Haunt feasts. Much like the inelegant monsters feast on flesh and fear, Haunt feasts on the darkness shrouding the land. And when they had chanced upon one another in the darkness, gleaming yellow eyes meeting hungry orange, there had been an odd sort of understanding.
Haunt is no kind of meal to them, and as sharp teeth flashed behind impossibly dark lips, it had been clear they are more akin than either would care for.
And so they avoid one another, an unspoken truth kept deep in breathless lungs.
Instead Haunt frolics, pleased to have a world so welcoming at their disposal. It is easy enough to ignore suffering - they have been doing it all their life - but even Haunt cannot remain oblivious. The shadow does understand, even if it is only on the very edges of their consciousness. Mother and Father had instilled something akin to pity in them, and even if Haunt cares for little else, the creature does care for them.
So sometimes they pause. They pause to survey the world - an attempt to understand (for their parents’ sake). This is one of those moments. One of those pauses. A curious glance around a shadowed meadow, a gleaming yellow eye seeking someone else who might impart some kind of wisdom to sustain them until the next time they remembered.
