the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight
[ drunk and driven by a devil's hunger ]
He tastes the fear on the air as one might taste the coming seasons, and he lifts his massive head to sniff at it gently, contemplating. Of course, he does not hunt for it with these senses (sharp and tuned as they may be); no—instead, he hunts for it with the magic that he releases from his mouth and into the wild. He pulls upon it and it hums low and melodic, riding upon the crisp, biting winter air straight to her.
Slowly, he drop his head and turns it toward her, emerald gaze sharp and unrelenting.
Methodically, he changes his path and although he considers simply teleporting to her side, he decides that he likes the ache that travel in the winter brings to his muscles, the sting of his lungs. So he walks, as normally as he can, until he reaches her, until her fear is thick and palpable, the tears on her cheeks real.
“I am not from where you think I am,” he answers her thoughts, dismissing her fears and ignoring her greeting. “Although I have, perhaps, visited.” He has visited many places in his young life—cosmos that spilled out, heavens that called to him, dimensions he had no business calling home. He does not know exactly where she thinks of, what pulls upon her heart so, but he cannot say that he has never been there.
He, however, does not leave—not yet.
She fascinates him, although not for her beauty or the many ways in which young mares fascinate young stallions such as him. She fascinates him for her reaction, for her calling over that which terrorizes her, and so he does not change back to his normal form—not yet. Instead, he transforms into another creature befitting her visions, his coat starting out as a cacophony of hues and then simmering into pastels. A stag, this time, the same one he’d worn when racing the forest alongside Fur. This time his coat is not mahogany and cream. Instead it shimmers and changes, and strings of ice drip from his antlers.
“What do you dream of?”
