CREATURE
It takes her in. She is strange in different ways than it, wet and glossy and beneath the glint of her skin it sees strange things. It senses a delicacy about her too, the way things like it are wont to sense the injured or otherwise easy prey. But it does not act on such notions (though there is a moment, a breath, where its muscles tighten without conscious thought). But it was taught, from a young age, to be careful in its hunting. It was that horses who appear normal – or even frail – can harbor great magics, things that would backfire and destroy it in a heartbeat. And so, it only watches, and listens to her question.
What are you?
This question has been asked to it before. And there are answers, words that drift in its mind like detritus on a river - alien, monster - but it does not say these words. It thinks. It tries.
What are you?
It parses the question, word by painstaking word. What. Are. You.
It thinks of what the pack calls it, sometimes. It gives her this.
“Cree…cher…” it says, laboring in the words, trying to say its name. Creature.
As good an explanation as any.
and what rough beast, its hour come ‘round at last
slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
@[clementia]