[open quest] trick or treat? round 2

[Moonlet]

The thing’s (creature seems not quite accurate for something shadowy and insubstantial) pleasure is palpable and mounting; she can feel it as it envelopes her and it feels like the cool damp of fog on skin or the chill coming off a freshly dug grave. It makes her shiver just a little but she never takes her eyes off it - it’s too important not to watch despite the growing legion around them that call out their answers in turn. Most prefer tricks and only a few, the treats. She is in that lesser group and wonders, for just a moment, if she’s made a mistake.

Moonlet has never been a trickster though. Mischief has its place but rarely does it tickle a bone in her body. Usually she is too nice for that, except for when she was bold and blatantly rude because she doesn’t hold back. The thing though, is accorded more respect than that and it shows in the demure but focused stance of her. She almost leans in closer to feel a little more of that wild scary pleasure that radiates off the thing, entranced by it and how it seems to grow more substantial though still shapeless as their answers fill it up like food.

Then it waves what seems like a hand and all those that picked the option of trick vanish into thin air like they’d never been there to begin with. Her eyes widened in surprise as a theatrical burst of smoke and sound filled the area to accessorize their vanishing. Or disguise it… she wasn’t sure but since it had little to do with her, she didn’t dwell on it for too long. So she goes back to watching the thing as it manifests the very thing that the rest of them have said - treats.

Only what each horse sees seems to differ because none of them are the same, so their experiences can’t be either. The particular treat that manifests in front of her has all the same theatrical trappings that she half expected of the thing now. All smoke and mirrors and outward pizzazz, just like the gift that presented itself in shiny black and orange satin with matching big poofy bow tied up all nice and neat. 

Not that she would have ordinarily known what all this was but for the quest’s sake, the knowledge has been imparted to her. She snorts in excitement and prances in place for a few minutes - all the marks of a kid giddy with happiness and excitement at what could be contained in such a pretty medium-sized box. She reaches out with her nose to touch it but can’t quite reach it.

Hm, that’s odd.

She tries again, almost tripping in her desire to reach the present and her neck is so ridiculously stretched out that it’s uncomfortable and starting to hurt. Moonlet snorts again, this time in annoyance and stamps a good as she considers the situation. How and why is the present able to appear so close but then isn’t it? Why, magic of course! Or a test of such, she figures. Not quite testing if she is magical but moving the present out of her reach by magical means and she has to be smart enough to figure out how to get to it.

Because now it is so very very far away as if all this distance came zooming in between the gift and her. Dizzyingly so, before blurred edges resolved themes led into the firm line of a forested chasm. She can still see patches of night sky but the trees loom close, reaching out with branch-like arms and fingers as if they’ll claw her. It makes her think the trees are hungry and might gobble her up. Then she laughs because they’re not that scary after all - she’s stood before a dragon and stated that she wouldn’t make a good meal!

Besides, who ever heard of a tree devouring a horse?

The bay cocks her head, considering. Her choices are slim: go forward and try to reach the present or remain and bow out gracefully. Moonlet decided she wasn’t going to be a quitter despite how gnarly that forested chasm looked and how dark the night was as it pressed in around her. Spooky is as spooky does and it sure was shaping up to be one spooky adventure! She leapt forward at the challenge but eventually slowed her pace to conserve speed and energy as using up neither seemed to get her any closer to the prize at the end.

So she walked and walked and walked some more. She kept walking and had no idea as to how much time had come to pass because it felt like she’d been walking for forever. In all reality, she probably hadn’t - it had probably only been an hour or so. She was no closer to the present and it was beginning to feel a lot like a carrot dangling from the end of a stick that she’d never get. Maybe that was the point? 

There must have been a lesson in all of this or, she was thinking too hard. Maybe it was a bit of both as she walked on. She swore in this ghastly silence, that she could hear the thump thump thump of her own heartbeat. It sounded crazy loud, like her heart was outside her body and walking beside her. She paused, then took a step and heard the thump again. Her ears pinned back to her head and the whites of her eyes began to show.

This was all just too weird and spooky! But she promised not to quit. So another step forward, another companionable thump or that’s how she likes to think of it because the other alternative was something preternatural that went bump in the night and we’ll, she just didn’t want to think about that. Thump. Thump. Thump. Plodding along in time to the thudding footfalls of the little bay mare. It made her skin crawl with the heebie jeebies until the thumps sounded even louder…

Like right underneath her!

She stopped and looked all around and down between her legs…. nothing! Absolutely nothing! Then a twig broke and the trees or shadows moved in a menacing fashion and a rabbit broke out of the clutches of the forest. It was pale and beautiful and cute and furry and small, like all rabbits should be so she laughed out loud at herself until the rabbit halted and twisted its head around to look at her —

ZOMBIE RABBIT!

It’s throat was torn out and it’s front was bloodied, the eyes milky with death still seemed to find her and then, it opened its mouth and hissed at her. But the mouth was wrong too because it had very sharp teeth and fresh blood dripped from its jaws as if it had just eaten a hearty meal. Hearty, ha ha ha. Get it? Zombie-Thumper had a half-eaten heart in its paws that was still thumping away with life despite no connection to blood or a body. 

Moonlet was naturally creeped out and grossed out, which made itself known in a snorty “Ewww!” before she began to back away but the undead rabbit decided to hop alongside her regardless. She sighed and resumed the endless walk towards the gift with the zombie thumping alongside. Sometimes you just have to go along for the ride with the things that go bump in the night and a zombie rabbit couldn’t be any worse of a haunt and a ‘bump’ than she was likely to get. 

Just as long as it didn’t try to eat her next but it seemed content to pace her with that eerie resonant thump thump thump, so like a heartbeat. In time, it became an acceptable rhythm that the two moved in tandem along to. As long as she kept her eyes on that pretty black and orange prize at the end of the never ending road.