hunting through the leaves of the night; balto

[keeper]

Moonlight pools in the hollows of her face. 

She is thin; ribs sprung and hips jutting. 

The bear had a hard time before hibernation. Gone into it looking leaner than she ought to have. Following game had proven fruitless and frustrating as she refrained from taking down a juicy foal the previous summer after they’d had time to fatten up on their mothers’ milk. Fall had seen her dare not that much better - everything left ahead of the coming cold and snow.

So it is odd to see her now as a mare in rough-spun fur with a smear of old honey high up on her cheek. She is dirtier than she is accustomed to being; dirtier and wilder in her look. Haunted might be the best description of it as she stands beneath the moonlight before the mouth of a familiar cave. 

No longer pony-plump, it is as if the winter had done more than carve the fat from her bones. It might have taken liberties with the memories trapped in her mind by the long necessary sleep the bear side of her endured. Memories of mushrooms and moonlight, and his fearful then trusting sighs in the dark.

She stands there now; something the winter spat back in shambles from a den of loam and hollowed out log. Each quiet drag of breath tells her that he is not there and hasn’t been in quite some time. It is easy then to morph into that other half of her that he never got to see, and so she does. 

The grizzly is the one brave enough to tackle the dark and the cave-must as it lifts one large paw to the vines and pulls them back —

@[Balto] ❤️❤️❤️

[Balto]

i've been both a saint & a viper

They come for him. They will always come for him.

In what used to be his most precious and safest place, the demons thrive. The darkness that once was his only cloak of protection they writhe, blaspheming what used to be his sanctuary with their demonic laughter and spitting. Their shadows bounce off the damp cave walls, their howls echoing through stone and stalactites in between the sound of their clicking jaws and drool, snapping their teeth just inches from his flesh, set on tearing skin from bone. Each night is a new scene but the same characters - blood-stained and half-rotten, hobbling towards him with sickly smiles and hollowed-out, eyeless sockets. They are as real to him as his own flesh and bone, yet he knows they are hidden amongst the nooks and crannies of their cave, unseen by others.

Yet he hears them always, champing in his ear and whispering terrible, unfeasible things in his ears.

Kill, kill, kill.
Kill, kill, kill, like you killed us.

It’s never ceasing and he screams out in protest, cursing them and throwing them away from his flesh with bucks and pressing his weight into them against the walls until they disappear; but they always return, and always with the same request.

Kill, kill, kill.

So he did.

Black as their own shadows he had come, and with cloudiness in Balto’s gaze he tore into actual flesh and bone, severing arteries and pressing his forelegs into a shattered ribcage until organs and muscle became nothing but mush beneath his hooves. They cackled and howled with pleasure as it occured, the walls splattered with rubies of blood and pieces of sinew as he shredded his only friend into nothingness. 

The act had gifted Balto with immortality - the demons had told him. 

Now you’ll live forever, now you’ll live forever.

They whisper excitedly in his ear and it tortured him even more than anything previously - he would never die, never die.

Never die.

A sound - a real sound, not one in his mind - rouses the beast and silences the demons.

The vines of his cave whisper against each other as moonlight begins to spill inward, a large, burly shape taking a massive shadow at its front.

Kill, kill, kill.

Eyes - glassy and blue as the moon - sharpen and fixate on the massive shape, remaining hidden beneath shadow and writhing demons. He dare not move forward, he dare not listen to the demons that entice him with sickly sweet ideas. “You’re not safe here,” comes the harshness of his voice that trembles with resistance, slick with warning. It’s the same words he had told Faulkor, before his eyes became blind and his mind became theirs.

Balto

@[keeper]
ugh this is so dark and keeper is not :| i am sorry but so excited!! <3