Keeper-
Clouds move away from the moon, long enough for Keeper to crane her head upwards and look at it as if to say, oh there you are. The light of the moon flooded the clearing before the cave and she could make out the curtain of creeper vines that fell across most of it that she had not noticed beforehand. It almost seemed like a magical grotto tucked away in a forgotten part of the forest as if she had walked right into a fairy tale, albeit a possibly sinister one for how dark the cave mouth looked to be even with the moon out now to brighten it.
She balked at the dark maw of it despite how intent she was on looking for those blazing blue eyes that seemed altogether too bright to belong inside such darkness. It was like finding a bit of summer sky where summer sky had no right to be and it intrigued her. Made her forget all about her mushroom hunting and she had desired a nice mycelium snack this night. In the distance that was no distance at all but mere paces from her, she could hear the plop of snowmelt and ice that came off the branches of the trees. She thought she had felt a bit more balm in the breezes that evening.
But these are nature’s dalliances meant to distract her from the task at hand - finding him in the cave that she now turns her full attention back to the moment his hooves scrape hard against the stone in what she takes to be a fearful scurry backwards. Keeper is surprised, stopped dead in her hunt for him by the realization that he might be afraid of her - nothing has ever feared her before and it is a new and haunting sensation that she loathes. It roils like bile in her gut and Keeper can feel tears come to her eyes, but she refuses to cry - not in the light of the moon, not before the dark cave-mouth and certainly not in front of the one lurking inside, just out of sight.
Keeper takes a deep breath, regains her modest composure in time to hear a snort so soft she thinks she almost imagined it. Or could blame it on the wind that toys with the vines and the snarly mess that is her hair that never just lays flat against her neck but hangs thick with knots and bones and sticks. That sound, imagined or not, emboldens her and Keeper takes a step closer to the cave. He has retreated far enough back that she cannot make out the intense blue of his gaze but she thinks she hears his hooves on the stone floor, was that a step? Forward or back?
Further emboldened, or else just daft and lacking all manner of sense, she takes another step closer. Close enough to poke her head in between the vines that seem to have a life of their own and seem to have pulled back just a bit. She can feel a nubile tendril of vine curling outward, tickling her ear and she almost laughs but holds it back - laughter seems at odds here, with the dark and him breathing somewhere inside it. “Hello?” she beckons again, still just as sweet.
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless