[open] collided into you, any

[Dretch]

DRETCH

... and from your lips she drew your hallelujah

I am not sure what wakes me, but even before my surroundings register, instinct drives me to my feet. I scramble over still slumbering limbs and curse my sluggishness when I nearly trip onto my face. I do manage to catch myself but not without knocking the snow from the heavy-laden boughs on my exit, covering myself in the stuff. Adrenaline tickles and stretches my skin as I dart out of my lurking place, darting left and right, then right again. Sweat dampens my skin and the tips of my coat glitter with frost before I slow my wild pace to a casual walk. My throat swells until I can’t hold it in any longer and I meet the cold moonlight with a soft laughter that belies unrestrained turbulence of my aura. Something tugs me in its direction, an intangible draw that I follow without qualm. Snow crunches underfoot as I draw deeper into the shadows, the slower pace giving my lungs a chance to recover. When I can hear more than my breath in my ears, the overwhelming sense of … I pause, adrenaline again spiking under my dark hide and this time I embrace it, drink it in. Stilled like a doe caught out in the open, my head snaps around to the sound of a wheezing death rattle. For a moment I think something has died, succumbed to the frigid darkness, but there it is again. And again, drawing closer. Something wicked this way comes … Resisting the urge to shift (not fully, at least; there are a lot of animals that see better in the dark than my natural form can), it is the yellow eyes that I spot first. Niklas rarely wears that color; his creatures do, but the shade is wrong and – I tilt my nose, sniffing at the cold air – they do not reek of brimstone. They don’t smell of anything, actually. The air is thick with death and dark promises, though, and I find myself edging closer. My intrusion on the shadow creature and his companions’ path is deliberate, a tilt of my head and rove of my grey eyes preceding my question. His smile is a familiar one and it probably says something of me if I find twisted comfort in the familiarity. He is so dark he swallows my gaze, a walking black hole that threatens to pull me in, cold and predatory. “Are you as hollow as you feel?”

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@ jamie