Night is favorable for a lot of them, including Tannin. So many shadows! So many opportunities! In their midst, he skulks and is invisible, camouflaged by the shadows that engulf him like a long lost brother. Except he is not lost - he knows exactly where he is and who he lacks tonight. He has left Tallow lying in a glade bathed in starlight, and it is not often that he leaves his other half alone but he fears not for her - their mother has left one of her creations behind to stand watch.
This leaves him free to do as he pleases though he is almost certain she has sent another of her shadow-minions to stalk him. It is a game often played between him and the things she makes out of the darkness that is hers to command and shape. Pleasure ripples through him at the thought of what his mother might have sent out tonight to hunt him. He looks for the yellow eyes, always a dead giveaway that it is darkness-made and unnatural. But Tannin did not count on finding a different sort that night.
He could never make predictions but his camouflage kept him concealed as he cast about for thoughts. Schools of them come to him, like fish to a net: unsuspecting and he sifts through them until he picks up on some that are short and girlish - darkness, starlight, patterns. Tannin pauses in his hunt, curious and awakened in a way that he couldn’t explain. His lips turn up in a grin that is decidedly impish, as an idea forms inside his mind. He does not mean to be cruel but it is a good night for mischief and he can feel it like an ache in his bones.
Hello beautiful, he shoves into her mind, about as intrusive as smoke, dark and curling. He doesn’t have to lie now that he’s spotted her, decorated in the colors of the aurora and bathed in starlight. She practically glows, like a beacon of brightness for all the dark things to find in the forest. Dark things like him.
Still he hides, it is much more fun this way.
@[aurorae]