Many things live in the forest. Among these things is Tunnel, cerulean and dripping in black smoke. He is not the worst of the things, the flesh-carvers and blood-letters have darker tastes. Of course that may be a matter of perspective. Tunnel does not hunt, he waits. A dark undercurrent brings him the things he desires. A demon unseen drops them at his door like gifts, hoping to be voyeur to his perversions. Tunnel for his part, acts only for himself.
Autumn has brought down an evening of deep chill and the wind has teeth. Delicate things seem to go astray on nights like this, to shatter in the frost of a newborn morning. In time someone might come along and look upon the things broken by nature and wish mournfully that they’d been able to help. Senseless and impossible regrets that Tunnel has never been stirred to, though he is occasionally willing to intercept if he will benefit.
The sound that comes to him is of a breakneck flight, and he listens with a vague interest. Tunnel does not begrudge his neighbors their pleasures, as long as they keep far from his precious things. Though he listens for a sound of the pursuer there is nothing but wind in his ears. Pale eyes narrow and a few long strides bring him along the bare side of a half-dead cedar. Through the bars of black tree trunks a dark woman stumbles to a stop, sweating and trying to fill her lungs with stuttering breaths that rale through the eerie night. Blinking slowly the stallion relaxes and watches, remaining motionless. He can smell stale fear, but there is nothing behind her and he thinks she knows this.
When she sees him the corner of his mouth twitches, but he utters not a word. Moonlight and shadow ripple and slither over his bicolored hide and slowly his masked features bleed free of the murk and he breaks cover. His eyes glitter in the moonlight and he draws near to the still mare without uttering a word. What has brought her to him? She is grown, ripe, not lost, not it the way they usually are. He turns beside the woman, to draw a long draught of her scent from the dock of her tail to the summit of her withers. His dark muzzle drags against the grain, tracing the curve of her inky neck pausing just behind her cheek, his neck arched and head high. His lips brush the latch of her throat as he echoes her greeting. “Hi.”
He has left a trail in the damp sweat of her neck and Tunnel considers smoothing it back but instead, keeping his position, his side pressing toward her own, he speaks again in a tone rumbling and low. “Why are you here?” Likely he doesn’t care what her answer might be, she might even run from him that way she’d been running from nothing a few minutes ago. Not that running would matter, he would make her worth his while.
Delicate things seem to go astray on nights like this, to fall beneath Tunnel’s caress and wish that they might shatter.
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves
as though we were drowning inside our hearts
[Briseis]
