jamie
He stares.
Acutely aware of the things that move in the shadows. Almost like he feels them move through him, too. Because they are him and he is them, that impenetrable darkness, all that heavy air.
He sees the roan stallion long before he sees him. The thing in the dark watches, unblinking, as he moves through the forest’s underbelly, careful. And the shadow thing appreciates this because he is careful, too. Because his own movement is often stilted, stunted by phantom pain. (And he calls it phantom pain because he cannot say for sure if there really is bone and sinew beneath the surface of his shadow-skin, only assumes that there must be with how fiercely he aches, how feverishly he shakes with exhaustion).
It is almost certainly the rattling breath that gives him away. The eyes are almost certainly an afterthought, further proof that the shadows have come to life. They have gathered, hunched themselves into the shape of a horse, and spit him out. Spit him out into the fog that curls around his legs, licks up his sides. His constant companion. Where this roan stallion has his demons, the shadow thing has his fog. Although, of the two of them, only one of them has any semblance of control over the thing that follows him.
He watches, wheezing, as the roan stallion ventures closer. And the shadow thing’s spine bows in anticipation of what will follow. He thinks briefly of the creature he’d met at the river’s edge, how feverishly his exhaustion had sunk its wicked teeth into his neck, bled him dry of whatever strength he’d had left.
But this stallion does not try to touch him. He keeps his distance, though he’s still close enough that the shadow thing can smell him. He smells of darkness, too. Damp darkness. A cave, perhaps, of which the shadow thing knows plenty. And were the roan stallion to stretch out a curious nose, he would find nothing.
And he speaks and the shadows listen, gathering dense around them. No, he is not like the others. And no, he is not real. Not real like the roan stallion is real. But the shadow thing tilts his peculiar, featureless head, flashing those lethal teeth in a kind of smile. And when he opens up that ink-black mouth, it’s almost as there will be nothing but a rush of air.
“No,” he rasps, the voice thin. Weak. Tired. Sick. “I am an idea.”
He drags in another rattling breath. “Do you know much about ideas?”
@[Balto]