08-27-2023, 10:38 PM
The outsider lurks in the darkest parts of the forest, where the trees eclipse the sun and even the birdsong has gone silent.
This place is new, but not so very different from other places.
He is not sure which iteration of the world this is—he has long lost count, or perhaps he never cared to track it to begin with. He stays only as long as his interest is held, or until some other force manages to cast him out. Usually it is the first. They are all the same, he has found; a thousand scattered pieces pulling themselves together into whatever they have deemed is a society, working towards some imaginary purpose they have crafted for themselves.
They live and they die, and maybe if they are lucky they die as some kind of legend, but most will simply be dust.
There are others in the forest; he can feel them pressing at the very edges of his mind, but he does not seek them out. Currently, he is indifferent to the existence of the land’s population; the satiated predator ignoring the prey, until hunger strikes again.
He notices that as he ventures further from the heart of the darkness that here the trees become thinner, their leaves bright with autumnal colors, and the light grows brighter, though it is seemingly swallowed by the eerie blackness of his own coat. He is tall, and strangely thin, with curtains of moss draped from the antlers that tower from his skull. He preferred the still bodies of water — the bogs and the muddied ponds that rarely attracted visitors.
But he is not immune to curiosity, and he lets himself be lured out into their midst.
It is not long before the crunch of leaves causes him to pause, and with an ever so slight angle of his head, he locks her in his gaze. He watches her with unnervingly black eyes, glossy and unreadable as he appraises her. If she is strange in this world for her talons he does not seem to notice, making no effort to move closer to her as he observes her from where he stands in the half-shadow of a grove of trees. “You walk loudly,” he tells her, his voice smooth and flat, and it is difficult to discern whether he is chastising her or simply offering his observation.
-- i n f e r n a l
@Abyzou