You didn't feel the full force of the shot at first, only the sudden, profound absence of support. You weren't sure you felt anything at all until the momentum stopped and you were dropped to the cold, damp earth. The speed, the unnatural strength that had carried you... it had all instantly failed, replaced by a sickening stillness.
You scrambled to your knees, the air in your lungs sharp and cold, and turned to find the Spirit collapsed. He lay heavy and motionless beside you, his long, angular form heartbreakingly still. His once impossible strength was diminished, poured out onto the forest floor. His face, usually a canvas of deep, quiet sorrow, was now utterly blank. His dear, longing eyes… the eyes that had held the whole world's tragedy and had finally, simply trusted you, were now glazed and cold, fixed on nothing.
The injury was a phantom. Where was the rupture? Where was the blood? You couldn't see a tear, or distinguish a fresh wound from the existing landscape of pale, bruised blotches that covered his skin. Yet, as you swept your hands across the expanse of his form, frantically searching for the source of his stillness, you felt the terrifying truth in the unnatural slackness of his limbs. Tears flooded your vision, blurring the world into streaks of cold gray and muted green, but they couldn't wash away the immense, crushing weight of loss that settled on your chest. You had found him, you had anchored him, and now, in a single, senseless moment, he was gone.
“Leave that thing, sister.”
Your brother's voice, thick with fear and self-righteous rage, echoed through the trees you had only just reached, violating the sanctity of the wood. You looked up from the horror of the lifeless Spirit under your touch to find your sibling creeping toward you. The rifle was held loosely at his side, as if he were preparing to defend himself from a wounded, cornered animal. His expression was manic, twisted with a furious relief that chilled you to the bone. The vitriol that slipped from his tongue when addressing your beloved friend…that thing- filled you with a cold, absolute rage. He looked at you as if he were the one rescuing you, saving you from your own madness, and the assumption made your skin crawl with revulsion.
“Come home. Let us get you help. Let us take you to be looked at. Listened to.” Your brother slowed his creep in your direction.
You shifted your weight, placing your body entirely over the Spirit's motionless form, shielding him even in death. This was not a plea, but a final, defiant stand. "I will go nowhere with you. You want to take me back? Lock me up with those doctors who claim to aid the mentally insane? You and I both know what goes on in places like that, brother. They won't listen, they will only silence." You shot each word out into his direction like a bullet. "So if you're fine with my suffering for the rest of eternity, then let me choose to suffer here, in a place of my own choosing."
He took one more hesitant step, his face momentarily flickering with something that might have been pity, before hardening again. "I'll, I'll help get rid-“
“You’ll leave us!” You screamed, the sound tearing raggedly from your throat. You didn't point. The world narrowed down to the only fact that mattered: the two of you, alone now, and the forest stretching out behind you.
You screamed, the sound tearing raggedly from your throat, no longer your voice but the raw, unburdened howl of the grief you had spent a lifetime containing. You pointed not with your finger, but with the full, violent extension of your arm, away from the dense sheltering thicket of oaks and maples just behind you.
Your brother froze. The sudden, unhinged power in your voice, the sheer animalistic fury radiating from the figure shielding the strange, dead man, was completely foreign to him. He knew the quiet, meticulous keeper of the journal, the one who measured the weather and kept to her chores. This creature of sharp edges and desperate screams was terrifyingly new. His hand, which had been loosely holding the rifle, tightened, then slowly began to tremble. His eyes, seconds ago filled with righteous anger, now reflected a cold, genuine fear of you.
"Don't come any closer," You hissed, the volume dropping but the threat sharpening like broken glass. "You took everything. You took the only one who understood. Now you will take the one thing I have left to give him: peace. And if you try to stop me, I swear, I will not come back from the woods. You will lose your sister entirely."
The raw, finality of the declaration was enough. He was afraid of the monster he had just shot, but he was terrified of the creature you had become. He swallowed hard, his manic energy finally draining away, leaving him pale and defeated. He took a jerky step back, then another, the rifle dropping slightly toward the earth.
You didn't wait for him to flee completely. You had only a handful of seconds before the fear gave way to calculation, or before the others arrived. You needed to move.
Your mind was an agonizing blur, refusing to form a coherent plan. Facts. You demanded of yourself. The simple, observable facts. Fact… He was dead. Fact… He could not be left exposed. Fact… You could not, would not, allow your brother to dispose of him.
You lowered yourself, hooking your arms beneath the Spirit's shoulders. The moment you grasped him, the true, horrifying weight of his body hit you. He was impossibly heavy, the density of dead wood and stone, yet beneath the cold skin, you could feel the remnants of that strange, fragile life. You strained, your teeth gritted against the effort, dragging him backward through the thawing soil and over the tangled roots. The cold was irrelevant; the pain in your shoulders was irrelevant. All that mattered was the rasping sound of his ragged garments scraping the earth and the urgent, frantic need to get him out of sight.
You pulled, your muscles screaming, until you reached the dense congregation of tree. A spot where the shadows were deepest and the earth was still slick with snowmelt. You eased his heavy form down against the base of a massive, ancient oak, the trunk offering a final, solid shield. You collapsed beside him, panting, the adrenaline shaking your body.
You stared at his still, beautiful face. He looked impossibly serene, removed from the suffering that had defined his existence. But serenity was not what you had planned for him. You had promised help, warmth, life. You pressed your hand against his cold, waxy cheek, the sharp contrast between your warmth and his final chill an unbearable, undeniable fact.
Bury him. The thought whispered, practical and final. But the idea sent a sick wave through you. To cover him with earth, to reduce the Spirit of the Forest to simple soil, felt like the ultimate betrayal of the simple truth you had shared. He was not meant for the ground; he was meant for the sunlight, the berries, the stories.
You couldn't leave him. You couldn't bury him. You could only sit there, shielding his body with your own, surrounded by the silent, judging trees, utterly alone with the terrible, cold knowledge of your promise broken and your world irrevocably lost. You were still clinging to him, unable to fathom a single next step, refusing to surrender the weight of his presence to the indifferent facts of nature.
You stayed there, hunched over his massive, still body, utterly paralyzed. The instinct to flee, to save your own skin and run deep into the forest, was drowned by a paralyzing, suffocating sorrow. The memory of your brother’s face, the casual way he had threatened to "get rid" of the only true connection you had ever known, was a wound deeper than any bullet. The house was no longer a sanctuary; it was a cage governed by fear and violence.
A cold, heavy inertia settled over you. You were dimly aware that the silence from the cabin meant your brother had finally retreated, perhaps in fear, perhaps to gather reinforcements. But you couldn't move. You lifted one trembling hand and gently brushed the tangled hair from the Spirit's forehead. His skin felt like frozen parchment. The simple, unbearable fact was that the world's certainties had been reduced to two: the deep, constant ache inside you, and the absolute stillness of the man beside you.
The afternoon light began its slow, cruel retreat. The sky above the canopy deepened into hues of bruised violet and cold, hopeless gray. As the sun finally dipped, taking the last of the day's tenuous warmth with it, the cold became a sharp, demanding presence. It settled into the hollows of your bones, mirroring the empty cold where your hope had been.
It was only then, finally feeling the full weight of your isolation and the magnitude of the betrayal, that you began to weep. Silent, shuddering sobs wracked your body, the sound muffled against the coarse fabric of his cold garment. It was the grief not just for his loss, but for the loss of the future you had so desperately, quietly planned, a future where your loneliness was finally shared.
Just as the cold became intolerable and the despair complete, you felt it.
A dull, low groan, a sound that resonated deep in the chest, not in the air. You froze, every muscle snapping taut. It was followed by a slight, almost imperceptible shift of the heavy form beneath your hands, a slow, agonizing rotation of his shoulder against the oak tree.
You held your breath, convinced the cold and the grief had finally cracked your mind. You lifted your head, your tear streaked eyes wide with a terrifying disbelief. You saw it again: a minuscule, pained stretch of his long, ghostly fingers.
Then, his eyes, those deep, sorrowful pools that had been staring blankly at the indifferent sky, slowly, agonizingly fluttered open. They were confused, swimming in the dim twilight, but they were seeing.
He stirred again, a deliberate, painful movement, testing the limits of his shattered body. His limbs stretched with a creaking sound that was almost a gasp of air. He turned his head slowly, finding your shocked, tear-stained face leaning over him. He made a soft, questioning sound, a low noise of aching confusion. Then, with excruciating slowness, his hand lifted; the same hand that had held yours moments beforE, and reached out. It was a seeking touch, cold but alive, resting gently on the spot where your tears had soaked your cheek.
You felt a blinding, dizzying rush of sensation. Disbelief and relief hit you with the force of a sudden fever and its break, all at once. The world spun, the trees tilted, and the terrible finality of the last hour evaporated, replaced by a profound, agonizing miracle. He was alive. The simple, undeniable fact of his breathing presence was almost too much to bear.
You gripped his hand, holding it tight against your face, your own voice trembling with the magnitude of the moment. "You're alive," you whispered, the words ragged and broken. "You're still here."
He watched you, his eyes still lost, still seeking the anchor. He didn't understand the gunshot, the fear, or the tears, but he understood the need in your touch.
You looked back toward the dark shadows where the cabin stood, cold reality crashing back in. They had tried to kill him. They would try again. They would tear him from you, or they would tear you from him. Going back was no option. Going forward into the unknown, wounded forest, was terrifying.
You leaned in close to his ear, your voice urgent and low. "We can't stay here. And we can't go back. Not tonight." You searched his gaze, needing his cooperation. "We must go deeper. Into the trees. Now."
He nodded, a gesture of profound, weary trust. He struggled to rise, his tall frame trembling with weakness, and you immediately slid beneath his arm, helping to pull his great weight up.
You began to stumble away from the clearing, moving deeper into the shadows of the old-growth forest, every tree a sudden protector, every cold shadow a welcome veil. You found a massive, moss covered log, its lower side offering a slight, dry hollow.
You pulled the blanket that had been hastily thrown over your shoulders tighter, and guided him into the hollow beneath the log. You settled against his side, forcing his cold, vast body to curl inward, giving him the only warmth you had. The Spirit didn't resist. He simply let you arrange him, letting you be the anchor once more.
You pressed your face against his cold, damp clothes, feeling the slow, heavy rhythm of his breathing. A profound fact that eclipsed all the terror of the night. You were two broken things huddled together in the cold, uncertain dark, but you were together. You were alive, and for the first time in your life, you were finally, deliberately, seeking the wild instead of recording the facts of the steady, sure world.
///
The cold, unforgiving light of dawn filtered through the skeletal canopy, painting the forest floor in streaks of weak, watery gray. You woke not to the sound of your family's routine, but to a gentle, persistent pressure on your shoulder. The Spirit was shaking you, not violently, but with an insistent urgency. His deep eyes, though still edged with the lingering sorrow, were alight with a spark of clarity you had never seen before.
"I... remember," He whispered, his voice rough and slow from the cold and the pain of his wound. But in his tone and the slightly elevated pitch, a small, vibrant hope was evident. He lowered his head, his gaze fixed on the dense, mossy earth before them. "The steps. The... direction."
He looked back at you, a profound sense of purpose settling over his exhausted features. "I need to go back where I came from. To know what I am.”
The admission was quiet, but it was the most demanding action he had ever taken. He wasn't asking for shelter or simple care; he was asking for his lost identity, the root of the chronic, cold tragedy that defined him. The magnitude of the request, after the violence of the night before, should have been overwhelming. Instead, it was clarifying. The chaos of your world had finally produced a single, simple truth: a mission.
You pushed yourself up, ignoring the stiffness in your limbs, the grit of dirt in your eyes, and the persistent ache in your chest. You took his cold, waiting hand.
"Then that is what we will do," You stated, your voice steady, echoing the conviction of your journal entries, now weaponized by love. "We go back. And we will find the answer together." The promise felt heavy and absolute, a new, indelible fact carved into the harsh reality of your life.
///
The next two days blurred into a desperate, silent flight. You moved deeper into the forest, clinging to the vague, instinctual directions the Spirit provided. He walked with a terrifying, unnatural silence, his long legs eating up the uneven ground, but his movements were stiff, and the pain from the wound, wherever it was hidden, was evident in the occasional wince and the unnatural stillness of his gait.
The journey was a stark, brutal lesson in your new reality. Your journal, your compass, your home were all were gone. You were reduced to your simple, animal needs. You ate the sparse berries and nuts the Spirit instinctively found, drank cold water from flowing streams, and huddled together beneath the thickest cover you could find at night, clinging to the wool blanket for life.
You observed the Spirit constantly. He moved with the quiet grace of a creature entirely at home in the wood, yet he remained utterly dependent on your presence. He knew the direction, but he looked to you for reassurance, for the simple fact of your touch, for the warmth that kept the vast cold of his sorrow at bay. He was the root, but you were the anchor.
On the afternoon of the third day, the forest began to thin. The familiar, chaotic density of the thicket gave way to more ordered, older growth. The air itself seemed to change, growing cooler, heavier, carrying the faint, dusty scent of old stone.
///
You reached the crest of a slow, rising hill. The Spirit stopped abruptly, his hand tightening on your wrist, his deep eyes widening in silent recognition.
Spread out below you, shrouded in a pervasive, ancient mist, were the remains of a tattered, massive castle. It was a ruin of impossible size, choked and consumed by the forest that had reclaimed it over centuries. Blackened stone towers stood broken like giants' teeth against the gray sky, their tops crumbled into ragged crowns. A cracked, imposing wall, draped in heavy ivy, wound down the slope and disappeared into the trees. It was a place of profound, overwhelming silence, radiating a cold despair that instantly surpassed the sorrow you both carried.
The sight was overwhelming. This was not the simple, organized world you knew, but a scene ripped from the pages of a fearful legend.
"The steps," The Spirit whispered, his voice barely audible, confirming the place that his strange, injured body had guided him toward. "The direction. This is... it."
He began to walk, slow and deliberate, toward the broken wall, his terror momentarily eclipsed by the absolute certainty of his arrival. You followed, your heart hammering against your ribs, the simple fact of the massive, cold stone demanding your attention.
The castle was a monument to profound, forgotten loss. You followed the Spirit through a jagged gap in the outer wall. As you stepped over the threshold, into the chilling, echoing silence of the ruins, the Spirit turned to you, his eyes fixed with a terrible, desperate conviction.
"This is the place," he affirmed, the deep sorrow in his voice now mixed with the terrifying, fragile hope of a man finding the source of his own tragedy. "I am meant to be here."
You stood together in the cold, cavernous shadows of a lost world, the final, undeniable destination of your desperate flight.
///
The Spirit’s conviction was absolute, and your own practical mind, though reeling from the sight of the ruins, immediately sought a simple, observable task. This massive, dead place was his origin; you would treat it like a journal to be decoded. You knew you couldn't cover the vast ground together.
"We split up," You stated, your voice echoing strangely in the dead air. "We look for any missing belonging. Any name that holds your memory."
He nodded, already moving with a renewed, grim determination toward the shadow of a crumbling central tower. You turned instead toward what looked like the remains of a study or workshop of sorts… a wing where the stone steps had fallen away entirely, leaving a bank of old ash and splintered wood.
You moved with a devastating focus, your lifelong habit of journaling- of collecting and cataloging simple, certain facts, now sharpened into a desperate tool. You turned broken corners and climbed treacherous, crumbled steps, your hands running over the cold, damp stone. You uncovered notes and drawing not scattered by accident, but clearly hidden, pressed beneath slabs of old ash and buried among the dusty fractals of shattered laboratory glass and stone rubble.
The Spirit returned with his own findings: a small, preserved leather-bound volume- not a journal, but a meticulously kept ledger filled with complex equations and chillingly detached observations. And a handful of faded photographs.
As you laid your collections side by side, you began the process of synthesis, arranging the facts until the terrible truth snapped into focus.
You pressed the cold leather of the ledger, unable to deny the meticulously recorded data. The truth was far more complex and agonizing than a simple ghost story:
The Spirit of the Forest was not a grand entity of nature, but a man made of many... a complex assembly of salvaged bio-matter and carefully controlled processes. He was a creation brought to life by someone else, a scientist or an alchemist working alone in the abandoned solitude of the castle, desperate to prove a point about the viability of artificial life.
He was not born to be cared for, to be loved, or even to fulfill a purpose. He was created to prove a point. His first breath, his strange endurance, his physical makeup… all of it was simply data confirming a theory. And once the initial proof was recorded, once the first, impossible breath was taken and the mind began to stir, he was left and forgotten, an experiment successful but deemed superfluous.
The sorrow that rose in your chest was no longer the chronic, familiar ache; it was a vast, annihilating wave of pity and rage. Your own sorrow had always been your own burden. But the Spirit’s suffering was a manufactured, unnecessary thing, a tragedy imposed upon him by the callous indifference of his creator.
You looked at the Spirit, who stood immobile, watching you absorb the final, crushing fact. The magnificent truth you had recorded every night, the Spirit of the Forest, was simply the raw, panicked existence of a man who was born utterly alone- with a terrifying strength and a built-in memory of only the cold stone and the silent woods.
"You were... made," You whispered, the word feeling too small, too mundane for the cosmic injustice you had uncovered.
The Spirit blinked slowly, his eyes already filling with the devastating, final knowledge. He finally understood the root of the sickness you had both acknowledged: it was the primal, chronic agony of a soul that had never been nurtured, never been claimed, and never truly belonged. He was the most magnificent and tragic failure of human ambition.
The Spirit’s deep, sorrowful gaze was fixed entirely on your face, searching for a rebuttal, a single deviation from the cruel facts laid bare on the cold stone. The terror of the gunshot, the exhaustion of the journey—it all faded before the devastating simplicity of the knowledge you had just offered him.
“And… for nothing?" He whispered, the three words a profound question that contained the entirety of his grief, his abandonment, and the immense, aching confusion of his existence. It was not a question of anger, but of a quiet, weary disbelief that his unique, agonizing life was merely an expendable proof of concept.
You met his gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to let the cold, scientific facts have the final word. You moved swiftly, closing the space between you, and placed your hands on his arms, a firm, grounding pressure.
"No," You stated, your voice low but absolute, a defiance aimed not at him, but at the cruel indifference of the world and the scientist who had built him. "It is not for nothing."
You took a ragged breath, acknowledging the monumental selfishness of the hope that was now rising within you, a hope born directly from the tragedy of his origins.
"Well, it's selfish, but it's true. It feels as though you were made just to end up near me. With me."
You kept your hands firm on his cold skin, forcing him to absorb the absolute sincerity of your confession. "Your creator intended you as proof for a theory. That’s the fact in the ledger. But I have my own truth, the one I wrote in my journal every night."
You searched his eyes, letting the depth of your loneliness meet the depth of his abandonment. "You were the spirit I called out to in the dark. You were the only one who acknowledged the sickness in my heart. Your memory led you to this ruin, but the desperation of your soul led you to my wall. You needed an anchor, and I needed the magnificent fact of you to save me from my own solitary madness."
You leaned in closer, your gaze unflinching. "I'm selfish to claim you, to take the purpose your creator denied you and make it my own. But I want to. I want to say that your purpose is to stand here, now, alive, and to finally be seen and cared for. Your purpose is to be the fact I protect."
The simple, declarative finality of your words seemed to pierce the cold cloud of his grief. His rigid, frail body slowly relaxed beneath your hands. He lifted his own discolored hand and tentatively touched your cheek, exactly as he had done in the coop, seeking the simple, undeniable warmth of your life. The sorrow in his eyes remained, but it was momentarily eclipsed by a profound, bewildering realization: he had been given a new, unexpected, and powerful reason for existing. He was not a failed experiment; he was a chosen salvation.
///
The ruins were too cold, too exposed, and too dangerous a place to remain. Their purpose was served. Now, the overwhelming new fact was survival. You quickly gathered the essential evidence: the heavy, cold leather ledger, a handful of the most damning photographs, and the Spirit's shawl, which you folded into a rough pack.
The Spirit, now burdened with the knowledge of his creation, moved with a devastating clarity. He was no less sorrowful, but his steps were imbued with purpose. He led you away from the castle's gaping wounds, back toward the dense shelter of the forest, the silence between you heavy with the weight of the impossible truth. You were no longer just running from your old life; you were running with the definitive proof of his new one.
///
You had been walking for nearly an hour, navigating the uneven, mossy terrain and clinging to the familiar landmarks of the forest, when your meticulous habit of observation kicked in. You weren't looking for berries or signs of weather; you were scanning the ground, unconsciously seeking a fact out of place.
"Stop."
The word was a tight whisper. You crouched instantly, pulling the Spirit down with you behind the root system of a massive pine. You pointed to a patch of dark, damp earth near a cluster of ferns.
There, pressed into the soil where the snowmelt had made the ground soft, were clear, deep boot prints. They were not the heavy, familiar steps of your own clumsy boots, nor were they the large, silent tracks the Spirit instinctively left. These were smaller, lighter, and more purposefully placed. They belonged to a hunter, moving with deliberate, cold precision.
You followed the line of the tracks with your eyes, a knot of freezing dread tightening in your chest. The prints led directly from the direction of the collapsed castle walls, following your exact trajectory into the deeper woods. They weren't casual. They were tracking.
A few steps later, the dreadful fact became undeniable. Near a weathered, fallen log, you found it: a small, brass cylinder, catching the weak light. You recognized it instantly from your brother's frantic, armed movements in the cabin.
It was an abandoned shell casing. The remnants of a fired bullet, ejected onto the forest floor.
///
You picked up the casing; it was cold and carried the metallic, burnt scent of gunpowder. The knowledge hit you with the force of a physical blow, eclipsing the sorrow of the castle with the immediate, visceral terror of the present.
You weren't merely being followed. You were being hunted.
Someone, perhaps your brothers, perhaps the creator of the Spirit if they had discovered the breach, had been here. Tracking you with the intent to harm, carrying a gun capable of silencing your secret permanently. The shell casing proved the threat was armed, active, and closer than you dared imagine.
You looked at the Spirit, holding the small, deadly piece of brass between your thumb and forefinger. His deep eyes were wide, instantly understanding the meaning of the object. The serenity of the ruins vanished, replaced by the primal, necessary fear of the chase.
"We need to move," You breathed, shoving the shell casing into your pack alongside the ledger. "Faster. And we need cover. They know exactly where we are."
You scrambled up, the pursuit now a terrifying, tangible fact demanding your attention. You pulled the Spirit deeper into the densest shadows, away from the boot tracks, letting the forest become the treacherous labyrinth you desperately needed it to be.
You didn't feel the full force of the shot at first, only the sudden, profound absence of support. You weren't sure you felt anything at all until the momentum stopped and you were dropped to the cold, damp earth. The speed, the unnatural strength that had carried you... it had all instantly failed, replaced by a sickening stillness.
You scrambled to your knees, the air in your lungs sharp and cold, and turned to find the Spirit collapsed. He lay heavy and motionless beside you, his long, angular form heartbreakingly still. His once impossible strength was diminished, poured out onto the forest floor. His face, usually a canvas of deep, quiet sorrow, was now utterly blank. His dear, longing eyes… the eyes that had held the whole world's tragedy and had finally, simply trusted you, were now glazed and cold, fixed on nothing.
The injury was a phantom. Where was the rupture? Where was the blood? You couldn't see a tear, or distinguish a fresh wound from the existing landscape of pale, bruised blotches that covered his skin. Yet, as you swept your hands across the expanse of his form, frantically searching for the source of his stillness, you felt the terrifying truth in the unnatural slackness of his limbs. Tears flooded your vision, blurring the world into streaks of cold gray and muted green, but they couldn't wash away the immense, crushing weight of loss that settled on your chest. You had found him, you had anchored him, and now, in a single, senseless moment, he was gone.
“Leave that thing, sister.”
Your brother's voice, thick with fear and self-righteous rage, echoed through the trees you had only just reached, violating the sanctity of the wood. You looked up from the horror of the lifeless Spirit under your touch to find your sibling creeping toward you. The rifle was held loosely at his side, as if he were preparing to defend himself from a wounded, cornered animal. His expression was manic, twisted with a furious relief that chilled you to the bone. The vitriol that slipped from his tongue when addressing your beloved friend…that thing- filled you with a cold, absolute rage. He looked at you as if he were the one rescuing you, saving you from your own madness, and the assumption made your skin crawl with revulsion.
“Come home. Let us get you help. Let us take you to be looked at. Listened to.” Your brother slowed his creep in your direction.
You shifted your weight, placing your body entirely over the Spirit's motionless form, shielding him even in death. This was not a plea, but a final, defiant stand. "I will go nowhere with you. You want to take me back? Lock me up with those doctors who claim to aid the mentally insane? You and I both know what goes on in places like that, brother. They won't listen, they will only silence." You shot each word out into his direction like a bullet. "So if you're fine with my suffering for the rest of eternity, then let me choose to suffer here, in a place of my own choosing."
He took one more hesitant step, his face momentarily flickering with something that might have been pity, before hardening again. "I'll, I'll help get rid-“
“You’ll leave us!” You screamed, the sound tearing raggedly from your throat. You didn't point. The world narrowed down to the only fact that mattered: the two of you, alone now, and the forest stretching out behind you.
You screamed, the sound tearing raggedly from your throat, no longer your voice but the raw, unburdened howl of the grief you had spent a lifetime containing. You pointed not with your finger, but with the full, violent extension of your arm, away from the dense sheltering thicket of oaks and maples just behind you.
Your brother froze. The sudden, unhinged power in your voice, the sheer animalistic fury radiating from the figure shielding the strange, dead man, was completely foreign to him. He knew the quiet, meticulous keeper of the journal, the one who measured the weather and kept to her chores. This creature of sharp edges and desperate screams was terrifyingly new. His hand, which had been loosely holding the rifle, tightened, then slowly began to tremble. His eyes, seconds ago filled with righteous anger, now reflected a cold, genuine fear of you.
"Don't come any closer," You hissed, the volume dropping but the threat sharpening like broken glass. "You took everything. You took the only one who understood. Now you will take the one thing I have left to give him: peace. And if you try to stop me, I swear, I will not come back from the woods. You will lose your sister entirely."
The raw, finality of the declaration was enough. He was afraid of the monster he had just shot, but he was terrified of the creature you had become. He swallowed hard, his manic energy finally draining away, leaving him pale and defeated. He took a jerky step back, then another, the rifle dropping slightly toward the earth.
You didn't wait for him to flee completely. You had only a handful of seconds before the fear gave way to calculation, or before the others arrived. You needed to move.
Your mind was an agonizing blur, refusing to form a coherent plan. Facts. You demanded of yourself. The simple, observable facts. Fact… He was dead. Fact… He could not be left exposed. Fact… You could not, would not, allow your brother to dispose of him.
You lowered yourself, hooking your arms beneath the Spirit's shoulders. The moment you grasped him, the true, horrifying weight of his body hit you. He was impossibly heavy, the density of dead wood and stone, yet beneath the cold skin, you could feel the remnants of that strange, fragile life. You strained, your teeth gritted against the effort, dragging him backward through the thawing soil and over the tangled roots. The cold was irrelevant; the pain in your shoulders was irrelevant. All that mattered was the rasping sound of his ragged garments scraping the earth and the urgent, frantic need to get him out of sight.
You pulled, your muscles screaming, until you reached the dense congregation of tree. A spot where the shadows were deepest and the earth was still slick with snowmelt. You eased his heavy form down against the base of a massive, ancient oak, the trunk offering a final, solid shield. You collapsed beside him, panting, the adrenaline shaking your body.
You stared at his still, beautiful face. He looked impossibly serene, removed from the suffering that had defined his existence. But serenity was not what you had planned for him. You had promised help, warmth, life. You pressed your hand against his cold, waxy cheek, the sharp contrast between your warmth and his final chill an unbearable, undeniable fact.
Bury him. The thought whispered, practical and final. But the idea sent a sick wave through you. To cover him with earth, to reduce the Spirit of the Forest to simple soil, felt like the ultimate betrayal of the simple truth you had shared. He was not meant for the ground; he was meant for the sunlight, the berries, the stories.
You couldn't leave him. You couldn't bury him. You could only sit there, shielding his body with your own, surrounded by the silent, judging trees, utterly alone with the terrible, cold knowledge of your promise broken and your world irrevocably lost. You were still clinging to him, unable to fathom a single next step, refusing to surrender the weight of his presence to the indifferent facts of nature.
You stayed there, hunched over his massive, still body, utterly paralyzed. The instinct to flee, to save your own skin and run deep into the forest, was drowned by a paralyzing, suffocating sorrow. The memory of your brother’s face, the casual way he had threatened to "get rid" of the only true connection you had ever known, was a wound deeper than any bullet. The house was no longer a sanctuary; it was a cage governed by fear and violence.
A cold, heavy inertia settled over you. You were dimly aware that the silence from the cabin meant your brother had finally retreated, perhaps in fear, perhaps to gather reinforcements. But you couldn't move. You lifted one trembling hand and gently brushed the tangled hair from the Spirit's forehead. His skin felt like frozen parchment. The simple, unbearable fact was that the world's certainties had been reduced to two: the deep, constant ache inside you, and the absolute stillness of the man beside you.
The afternoon light began its slow, cruel retreat. The sky above the canopy deepened into hues of bruised violet and cold, hopeless gray. As the sun finally dipped, taking the last of the day's tenuous warmth with it, the cold became a sharp, demanding presence. It settled into the hollows of your bones, mirroring the empty cold where your hope had been.
It was only then, finally feeling the full weight of your isolation and the magnitude of the betrayal, that you began to weep. Silent, shuddering sobs wracked your body, the sound muffled against the coarse fabric of his cold garment. It was the grief not just for his loss, but for the loss of the future you had so desperately, quietly planned, a future where your loneliness was finally shared.
Just as the cold became intolerable and the despair complete, you felt it.
A dull, low groan, a sound that resonated deep in the chest, not in the air. You froze, every muscle snapping taut. It was followed by a slight, almost imperceptible shift of the heavy form beneath your hands, a slow, agonizing rotation of his shoulder against the oak tree.
You held your breath, convinced the cold and the grief had finally cracked your mind. You lifted your head, your tear streaked eyes wide with a terrifying disbelief. You saw it again: a minuscule, pained stretch of his long, ghostly fingers.
Then, his eyes, those deep, sorrowful pools that had been staring blankly at the indifferent sky, slowly, agonizingly fluttered open. They were confused, swimming in the dim twilight, but they were seeing.
He stirred again, a deliberate, painful movement, testing the limits of his shattered body. His limbs stretched with a creaking sound that was almost a gasp of air. He turned his head slowly, finding your shocked, tear-stained face leaning over him. He made a soft, questioning sound, a low noise of aching confusion. Then, with excruciating slowness, his hand lifted; the same hand that had held yours moments beforE, and reached out. It was a seeking touch, cold but alive, resting gently on the spot where your tears had soaked your cheek.
You felt a blinding, dizzying rush of sensation. Disbelief and relief hit you with the force of a sudden fever and its break, all at once. The world spun, the trees tilted, and the terrible finality of the last hour evaporated, replaced by a profound, agonizing miracle. He was alive. The simple, undeniable fact of his breathing presence was almost too much to bear.
You gripped his hand, holding it tight against your face, your own voice trembling with the magnitude of the moment. "You're alive," you whispered, the words ragged and broken. "You're still here."
He watched you, his eyes still lost, still seeking the anchor. He didn't understand the gunshot, the fear, or the tears, but he understood the need in your touch.
You looked back toward the dark shadows where the cabin stood, cold reality crashing back in. They had tried to kill him. They would try again. They would tear him from you, or they would tear you from him. Going back was no option. Going forward into the unknown, wounded forest, was terrifying.
You leaned in close to his ear, your voice urgent and low. "We can't stay here. And we can't go back. Not tonight." You searched his gaze, needing his cooperation. "We must go deeper. Into the trees. Now."
He nodded, a gesture of profound, weary trust. He struggled to rise, his tall frame trembling with weakness, and you immediately slid beneath his arm, helping to pull his great weight up.
You began to stumble away from the clearing, moving deeper into the shadows of the old-growth forest, every tree a sudden protector, every cold shadow a welcome veil. You found a massive, moss covered log, its lower side offering a slight, dry hollow.
You pulled the blanket that had been hastily thrown over your shoulders tighter, and guided him into the hollow beneath the log. You settled against his side, forcing his cold, vast body to curl inward, giving him the only warmth you had. The Spirit didn't resist. He simply let you arrange him, letting you be the anchor once more.
You pressed your face against his cold, damp clothes, feeling the slow, heavy rhythm of his breathing. A profound fact that eclipsed all the terror of the night. You were two broken things huddled together in the cold, uncertain dark, but you were together. You were alive, and for the first time in your life, you were finally, deliberately, seeking the wild instead of recording the facts of the steady, sure world.
///
The cold, unforgiving light of dawn filtered through the skeletal canopy, painting the forest floor in streaks of weak, watery gray. You woke not to the sound of your family's routine, but to a gentle, persistent pressure on your shoulder. The Spirit was shaking you, not violently, but with an insistent urgency. His deep eyes, though still edged with the lingering sorrow, were alight with a spark of clarity you had never seen before.
"I... remember," He whispered, his voice rough and slow from the cold and the pain of his wound. But in his tone and the slightly elevated pitch, a small, vibrant hope was evident. He lowered his head, his gaze fixed on the dense, mossy earth before them. "The steps. The... direction."
He looked back at you, a profound sense of purpose settling over his exhausted features. "I need to go back where I came from. To know what I am.”
The admission was quiet, but it was the most demanding action he had ever taken. He wasn't asking for shelter or simple care; he was asking for his lost identity, the root of the chronic, cold tragedy that defined him. The magnitude of the request, after the violence of the night before, should have been overwhelming. Instead, it was clarifying. The chaos of your world had finally produced a single, simple truth: a mission.
You pushed yourself up, ignoring the stiffness in your limbs, the grit of dirt in your eyes, and the persistent ache in your chest. You took his cold, waiting hand.
"Then that is what we will do," You stated, your voice steady, echoing the conviction of your journal entries, now weaponized by love. "We go back. And we will find the answer together." The promise felt heavy and absolute, a new, indelible fact carved into the harsh reality of your life.
///
The next two days blurred into a desperate, silent flight. You moved deeper into the forest, clinging to the vague, instinctual directions the Spirit provided. He walked with a terrifying, unnatural silence, his long legs eating up the uneven ground, but his movements were stiff, and the pain from the wound, wherever it was hidden, was evident in the occasional wince and the unnatural stillness of his gait.
The journey was a stark, brutal lesson in your new reality. Your journal, your compass, your home were all were gone. You were reduced to your simple, animal needs. You ate the sparse berries and nuts the Spirit instinctively found, drank cold water from flowing streams, and huddled together beneath the thickest cover you could find at night, clinging to the wool blanket for life.
You observed the Spirit constantly. He moved with the quiet grace of a creature entirely at home in the wood, yet he remained utterly dependent on your presence. He knew the direction, but he looked to you for reassurance, for the simple fact of your touch, for the warmth that kept the vast cold of his sorrow at bay. He was the root, but you were the anchor.
On the afternoon of the third day, the forest began to thin. The familiar, chaotic density of the thicket gave way to more ordered, older growth. The air itself seemed to change, growing cooler, heavier, carrying the faint, dusty scent of old stone.
///
You reached the crest of a slow, rising hill. The Spirit stopped abruptly, his hand tightening on your wrist, his deep eyes widening in silent recognition.
Spread out below you, shrouded in a pervasive, ancient mist, were the remains of a tattered, massive castle. It was a ruin of impossible size, choked and consumed by the forest that had reclaimed it over centuries. Blackened stone towers stood broken like giants' teeth against the gray sky, their tops crumbled into ragged crowns. A cracked, imposing wall, draped in heavy ivy, wound down the slope and disappeared into the trees. It was a place of profound, overwhelming silence, radiating a cold despair that instantly surpassed the sorrow you both carried.
The sight was overwhelming. This was not the simple, organized world you knew, but a scene ripped from the pages of a fearful legend.
"The steps," The Spirit whispered, his voice barely audible, confirming the place that his strange, injured body had guided him toward. "The direction. This is... it."
He began to walk, slow and deliberate, toward the broken wall, his terror momentarily eclipsed by the absolute certainty of his arrival. You followed, your heart hammering against your ribs, the simple fact of the massive, cold stone demanding your attention.
The castle was a monument to profound, forgotten loss. You followed the Spirit through a jagged gap in the outer wall. As you stepped over the threshold, into the chilling, echoing silence of the ruins, the Spirit turned to you, his eyes fixed with a terrible, desperate conviction.
"This is the place," he affirmed, the deep sorrow in his voice now mixed with the terrifying, fragile hope of a man finding the source of his own tragedy. "I am meant to be here."
You stood together in the cold, cavernous shadows of a lost world, the final, undeniable destination of your desperate flight.
///
The Spirit’s conviction was absolute, and your own practical mind, though reeling from the sight of the ruins, immediately sought a simple, observable task. This massive, dead place was his origin; you would treat it like a journal to be decoded. You knew you couldn't cover the vast ground together.
"We split up," You stated, your voice echoing strangely in the dead air. "We look for any missing belonging. Any name that holds your memory."
He nodded, already moving with a renewed, grim determination toward the shadow of a crumbling central tower. You turned instead toward what looked like the remains of a study or workshop of sorts… a wing where the stone steps had fallen away entirely, leaving a bank of old ash and splintered wood.
You moved with a devastating focus, your lifelong habit of journaling- of collecting and cataloging simple, certain facts, now sharpened into a desperate tool. You turned broken corners and climbed treacherous, crumbled steps, your hands running over the cold, damp stone. You uncovered notes and drawing not scattered by accident, but clearly hidden, pressed beneath slabs of old ash and buried among the dusty fractals of shattered laboratory glass and stone rubble.
The Spirit returned with his own findings: a small, preserved leather-bound volume- not a journal, but a meticulously kept ledger filled with complex equations and chillingly detached observations. And a handful of faded photographs.
As you laid your collections side by side, you began the process of synthesis, arranging the facts until the terrible truth snapped into focus.
You pressed the cold leather of the ledger, unable to deny the meticulously recorded data. The truth was far more complex and agonizing than a simple ghost story:
The Spirit of the Forest was not a grand entity of nature, but a man made of many... a complex assembly of salvaged bio-matter and carefully controlled processes. He was a creation brought to life by someone else, a scientist or an alchemist working alone in the abandoned solitude of the castle, desperate to prove a point about the viability of artificial life.
He was not born to be cared for, to be loved, or even to fulfill a purpose. He was created to prove a point. His first breath, his strange endurance, his physical makeup… all of it was simply data confirming a theory. And once the initial proof was recorded, once the first, impossible breath was taken and the mind began to stir, he was left and forgotten, an experiment successful but deemed superfluous.
The sorrow that rose in your chest was no longer the chronic, familiar ache; it was a vast, annihilating wave of pity and rage. Your own sorrow had always been your own burden. But the Spirit’s suffering was a manufactured, unnecessary thing, a tragedy imposed upon him by the callous indifference of his creator.
You looked at the Spirit, who stood immobile, watching you absorb the final, crushing fact. The magnificent truth you had recorded every night, the Spirit of the Forest, was simply the raw, panicked existence of a man who was born utterly alone- with a terrifying strength and a built-in memory of only the cold stone and the silent woods.
"You were... made," You whispered, the word feeling too small, too mundane for the cosmic injustice you had uncovered.
The Spirit blinked slowly, his eyes already filling with the devastating, final knowledge. He finally understood the root of the sickness you had both acknowledged: it was the primal, chronic agony of a soul that had never been nurtured, never been claimed, and never truly belonged. He was the most magnificent and tragic failure of human ambition.
The Spirit’s deep, sorrowful gaze was fixed entirely on your face, searching for a rebuttal, a single deviation from the cruel facts laid bare on the cold stone. The terror of the gunshot, the exhaustion of the journey—it all faded before the devastating simplicity of the knowledge you had just offered him.
“And… for nothing?" He whispered, the three words a profound question that contained the entirety of his grief, his abandonment, and the immense, aching confusion of his existence. It was not a question of anger, but of a quiet, weary disbelief that his unique, agonizing life was merely an expendable proof of concept.
You met his gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to let the cold, scientific facts have the final word. You moved swiftly, closing the space between you, and placed your hands on his arms, a firm, grounding pressure.
"No," You stated, your voice low but absolute, a defiance aimed not at him, but at the cruel indifference of the world and the scientist who had built him. "It is not for nothing."
You took a ragged breath, acknowledging the monumental selfishness of the hope that was now rising within you, a hope born directly from the tragedy of his origins.
"Well, it's selfish, but it's true. It feels as though you were made just to end up near me. With me."
You kept your hands firm on his cold skin, forcing him to absorb the absolute sincerity of your confession. "Your creator intended you as proof for a theory. That’s the fact in the ledger. But I have my own truth, the one I wrote in my journal every night."
You searched his eyes, letting the depth of your loneliness meet the depth of his abandonment. "You were the spirit I called out to in the dark. You were the only one who acknowledged the sickness in my heart. Your memory led you to this ruin, but the desperation of your soul led you to my wall. You needed an anchor, and I needed the magnificent fact of you to save me from my own solitary madness."
You leaned in closer, your gaze unflinching. "I'm selfish to claim you, to take the purpose your creator denied you and make it my own. But I want to. I want to say that your purpose is to stand here, now, alive, and to finally be seen and cared for. Your purpose is to be the fact I protect."
The simple, declarative finality of your words seemed to pierce the cold cloud of his grief. His rigid, frail body slowly relaxed beneath your hands. He lifted his own discolored hand and tentatively touched your cheek, exactly as he had done in the coop, seeking the simple, undeniable warmth of your life. The sorrow in his eyes remained, but it was momentarily eclipsed by a profound, bewildering realization: he had been given a new, unexpected, and powerful reason for existing. He was not a failed experiment; he was a chosen salvation.
///
The ruins were too cold, too exposed, and too dangerous a place to remain. Their purpose was served. Now, the overwhelming new fact was survival. You quickly gathered the essential evidence: the heavy, cold leather ledger, a handful of the most damning photographs, and the Spirit's shawl, which you folded into a rough pack.
The Spirit, now burdened with the knowledge of his creation, moved with a devastating clarity. He was no less sorrowful, but his steps were imbued with purpose. He led you away from the castle's gaping wounds, back toward the dense shelter of the forest, the silence between you heavy with the weight of the impossible truth. You were no longer just running from your old life; you were running with the definitive proof of his new one.
///
You had been walking for nearly an hour, navigating the uneven, mossy terrain and clinging to the familiar landmarks of the forest, when your meticulous habit of observation kicked in. You weren't looking for berries or signs of weather; you were scanning the ground, unconsciously seeking a fact out of place.
"Stop."
The word was a tight whisper. You crouched instantly, pulling the Spirit down with you behind the root system of a massive pine. You pointed to a patch of dark, damp earth near a cluster of ferns.
There, pressed into the soil where the snowmelt had made the ground soft, were clear, deep boot prints. They were not the heavy, familiar steps of your own clumsy boots, nor were they the large, silent tracks the Spirit instinctively left. These were smaller, lighter, and more purposefully placed. They belonged to a hunter, moving with deliberate, cold precision.
You followed the line of the tracks with your eyes, a knot of freezing dread tightening in your chest. The prints led directly from the direction of the collapsed castle walls, following your exact trajectory into the deeper woods. They weren't casual. They were tracking.
A few steps later, the dreadful fact became undeniable. Near a weathered, fallen log, you found it: a small, brass cylinder, catching the weak light. You recognized it instantly from your brother's frantic, armed movements in the cabin.
It was an abandoned shell casing. The remnants of a fired bullet, ejected onto the forest floor.
///
You picked up the casing; it was cold and carried the metallic, burnt scent of gunpowder. The knowledge hit you with the force of a physical blow, eclipsing the sorrow of the castle with the immediate, visceral terror of the present.
You weren't merely being followed. You were being hunted.
Someone, perhaps your brothers, perhaps the creator of the Spirit if they had discovered the breach, had been here. Tracking you with the intent to harm, carrying a gun capable of silencing your secret permanently. The shell casing proved the threat was armed, active, and closer than you dared imagine.
You looked at the Spirit, holding the small, deadly piece of brass between your thumb and forefinger. His deep eyes were wide, instantly understanding the meaning of the object. The serenity of the ruins vanished, replaced by the primal, necessary fear of the chase.
"We need to move," You breathed, shoving the shell casing into your pack alongside the ledger. "Faster. And we need cover. They know exactly where we are."
You scrambled up, the pursuit now a terrifying, tangible fact demanding your attention. You pulled the Spirit deeper into the densest shadows, away from the boot tracks, letting the forest become the treacherous labyrinth you desperately needed it to be.
a/n: heyyy i've gotten loads of diffrenet rec's for the creature so i kind of lumped all the ideas together here
warning: sad! but the baby boy is cared for deeply!
───※ ·❆· ※───
You’d stay up late and write near the hearth, when you were sure everyone was heavy in slumber. Sometimes you’d make up fantasies, or scrawl dreams you had. But mostly you would simply journal. You would write about the towns drama or your families disposition. You would write about the changing of the weather and try to find new fascinations about the steady sure pace the world always kept to. The snow would always fall in winter. The sun would always set in the evening. And the spirit of the forest would grant small miracles each morning.
These were facts and you found comfort in their truth. These were promises you clung to when the sadness of death and distraction and loss would strike your town or livestock or family. And there was always something, inside you, far past where the muscles and veins pulsed, that gripped you with sadness. A distraught and ever present dark cloud of agony was always knocking at the door of your heart. And it didn’t keep you from your duties, your chores or your writing. But it was often acknowledged in your entries. It had to be acknowledged, the feeling, in your most private form of communication. You had to get it out somehow. You had to cast it from soaking your mind in a fog. You had spent all your conscious years trying to dissipate it through every manner of action and distraction imaginable. All with one exception; laying the awful burden of knowledge upon another soul. That was the final, uncrossable line.
But writing was enough. Scribbling kept the stirring thoughts in an organized stream. Mumbling out the mess of your mind next to the days dying fire was a dear routine you’d come to depend on.
But that night, you began to struggle to find the right words. Not that anyone would read them and judge their sequence. But that you longed to express the storm inside of you, that you longed to get it sorted out. “No,” you huffed in a gambled whisper, knowing your squeaks wouldn’t wake those who slept across the wooden length of floor. “No, it’s not like a storm of feeling. It’s more of a sickness. An ache.” You sighed. This was almost correct. But you sat in wonder if you’d ever find the right word, if it even existed.
Just as you sat scratching out the ink of your misprint, the wind must’ve blown exactly right. The fire flickered away and an eerie creak was heard from somewhere beyond the wall you leaned against now. You couldn’t help but gasp at the sudden shift in the night’s tempo. And you could not shake the wonder, the fear, the curiosity that had stifled all other feeling, when you thought you heard your name. Just beyond the wall where the wind had blown.
The creak had been loud, the sound of aged, stressed wood shifting under an invisible pressure. But the voice- if it was a voice- was a different terror entirely. It was a sound pressed low by distance and wind, a sound that resonated not in the air, but inside the quiet chamber of your ear. It was just one syllable, a whisper of your own name, spoken with the intimate, sorrowful knowledge of someone who understood the sickness you couldn't write down.
The practical part of your mind, the part that dealt in facts and journal entries, insisted it was only the wind vibrating the loosely fitted chimney flue, a trick of the exhausted night. But the other part, the part that was gripped by the low, constant tragedy of your heart, felt a profound, almost devastating recognition. You leaned forward, pressing your ear against the cold, rough-barked log of the wall. The sound of the sleeping house was overwhelming now: the tick of the cooling stove, the deep snorts from your family’s beds, the distant, steady drumming of your own pulse. You waited, a new, magnificent kind of fear displacing the old, chronic grief.
“If it is my own mind and soul sick with mad grief, so be it.” You shuddered to declare, gaining the confidence to raise your tone, mindful of the stillness of the home, but dazed by the need to address the event, no matter its cause. “But if it is you, spirit of the forrest, if it’s you insisting I’m not misunderstood in my madness, please make it known.”
The silence that hung around your reality was heavy with waiting. Pregnant with anticipation that’s excitement was dwindling with every new still second. Just as the hot, foolish bravado began to curdle into the familiar shame of being alone with your own grief, the response came.
It was not a roar, but a more clear and warbled pronunciation of your name. The voice trembled as its attention was evident, like there was more terror in the spirit than in yours. And it broke free whatever band kept your sadness locked away to manage. Your chest pierced with a sorrow you yourself had never even felt the pelts of. Your eye’s pooled with tears. It was all so sudden. All so overwhelming. The answer to your call, and the response your person sparked fourth.
“Spirit? Is that really you? Are you really there? I can hear you, I can.” You were frantic, voice giving way to tone, care shrugged away for respecting the other quiet rest. The last, loud declaration was too much for the stillness of the cabin to absorb. A moment later, the heavy rhythm of the closest sleeper broke. There was a low, grumbling grunt, followed by the slow, painful creak of a cot as your father rose, reaching a tremor hand to your shoulder. He couldn’t see your tears but he heard your cries.
"Hush now," His voice thick with sleep rumbled from the shadows. It was a sound of the mundane world reasserting its dominance, a fact as unavoidable as the winter snow. "You're only having one of your bad dreams, child. Ba”ck to bed we go.”
His voice in your ear and his hand on your shoulder was enough to puncture the profound quiet you shared with the wall. In an instant, the terror of the spirit vanished, replaced by the acute, sharp sting of humiliation and the knowledge that the door to the outside world had been violently shut.
You turned, wiping the frozen tears from your cheeks with a trembling hand, and watched your father settle back down, already breathing deep and slow. The spirit’s voice, the fearful tremor, the profound resonance of shared sorrow- it was all gone. The silence returned, but this time it was a punishing, empty vacuum.
///
The next day you woke remembering the details of the night as a crazy dream. But as you went about your duties, tucking in your sheets, starting to boil water, and staring blankly at the burnt out hearth, you were reminded that you’d been awake to see the flames die with a startle.
And when your brothers hurried outside to find piles of wood and a basket of fresh picked berries, you were reminded that the spirit was real. And a chill rose the skin at the back of your neck when you recalled it’s voice. You knew it was the spirit’s voice. But you had absolutely no idea what to do about it. You, the meticulous keeper of facts, the cataloger of simple certainties, were faced with a truth that offered no comfort, only a profound, complex connection to a suffering far greater than your own.
You successfully reduced the night's revelation back to the status of a simple, explainable fact: wood appeared, berries were found. The spirit's terrified voice, the sudden, crashing wave of sorrow—these details were filed away in the deepest recesses of your mind, a secret you were now keeping not only from your family, but from your own conscious, journal-keeping self. You clung to the rhythm of the day—the hiss of the water, the scrape of the bucket as you fetched ice from the trough—the steady, certain pace of the world you depended on. Yet, with every normal movement, you could feel the new, unsettling weight settling beneath the old chronic ache: the burden of knowing you were not alone in your suffering, and the fresh, heavy tragedy of having to pretend that you were.
///
The sun had long since bled out of the sky, and once more, the predictable, deep silence of the sleeping cabin settled in. You performed the initial steps of your ritual perfectly. Mend the fire, find your journal, ease into the silence of the evening.
The leather-bound journal lay open before you. You even managed to record the day’s simple facts… the count of the berries, the temperature of the river, your mother's disposition. but when you finally turned to the blank page reserved for the night of the event, the pen hovered and stopped. You tried to write around it, using euphemisms for the "strange wind" or the "unexpected gift." You even attempted to describe the simple, flawless geometry of the frost crystals in exacting detail. But the moment you tried to frame the voice, the warbled, terrified confession of sorrow, the ink seemed to curdle on the nib. You couldn't, would not, reduce that profound, shared agony to a series of neat, controlled sentences. The simple routine had been ruptured, and your meticulous facade collapsed.
With a heavy, final sigh, you closed the journal without securing the clasp. The truth was too big to be contained by a ledger, and the act of trying to contain it felt like a fresh betrayal. Instead, you knelt closer to the log wall, the same spot where the sorrow had pierced your own, and laid the entire surface of your hand against the rough, cold wood.
"Spirit," you whispered, the sound barely audible over the crackle of the new fire. You kept your tone even, shedding the frantic fear and desperate need of the night before, and replacing it with a quiet, unsettling curiosity. "Spirit, if you are there, I am awake. I am listening."
The response was not immediate, but it was absolute. It did not come with the sound of wind or the stress of wood. Instead, it was a quiet, almost hesitant voice that sounded distinctly, strangely like a man's. It was low-pitched and oddly resonant, as if the speaker were cupping his hands over his mouth from a short distance. It was not alarming, possessing none of the previous night's fearful terror, but it was profoundly, deeply strange.
“Why?”
The answer was laced with a skepticism and a sadness you didn’t need to understand to feel. You felt a deep, uncontrolled trembling start in your knees and work its way up through your chest. It was not a tremor of primal fear like the night before, but a confusion so profound it shook you. Why did it sound so... near? And why did it sound so perfectly sorrowfully? It sounded like the voice of a realized soul who was desperately lonely, a man standing just on the other side of a closed door.
You pressed your hand harder against the log and forced the words out, trying to keep your tone as steady and factual as you would while describing the weather. "I am awake because I always am at this hour," you replied, your voice now a thin, tight thread of sound. "This is when I write. This is when I can be alone."
The confession hung in the cold, still air. The small fire crackled, and your family breathed its steady, oblivious rhythm. But the voice from beyond the wall was gone. There was no follow-up question, no warbled sigh, no return of the overwhelming sorrow. Only the absolute silence where the man's strange, wondering voice had been. It was as if the simple fact of your routine, the admission that you chose this isolation every night, had been too much for the spirit to process. You waited, heart hammering against your ribs, certain you had somehow offended or frightened away the only thing that had ever truly acknowledged the dark cloud within you. The silence stretched, heavier than any night before.
The silence stretched, heavier than any night before. You waited until your hand was numb against the cold timber, forcing down the fear and letting only a gentle, careful concern remain. The simple fact of the man-like voice, and its sudden disappearance, was almost unbearable.
"Why have you gone quiet?" you murmured, your tone as soft and tentative as reaching out a cautious hand to a wounded animal. You kept your face close to the wall, letting your voice carry only the weight of curiosity, not demand. "You called out to me last night. Why would you come to the wall if you didn't want to be heard now?" You spoke to the darkness as if you were encouraging a frightened child to speak their name.
The response was not a warble, or a whisper, or a question of wonder. It was a single, devastating syllable, spoken with a fragile, meek intensity that barely pierced the wood. It was the sound of utter exhaustion and profound, trapped desperation.
"Help."
The word struck you with the force of a physical blow. It was not a cosmic plea or a spiritual summons; it was the raw, tragic admission of human need. The dark cloud of your own personal agony instantly faded into the background, eclipsed by the sudden, overwhelming realization that the Spirit of the Forest was not a grand, indifferent power, but a single, suffering entity—and it was asking you for rescue.
Your trembling returned, but this time it was born not of fear, but of the sudden, shocking weight of responsibility. You swallowed, the dry air scratching your throat.
"I hear you," you whispered back immediately, your voice absolute and steady, a sudden anchor in the overwhelming night. "I hear you, and I am here. Tell me what I must do."
But the silence rushed back, heavy and final. It was the silence of a truth delivered, a burden passed, and now, a moment of profound, exhausted waiting. You could not bear the stillness. The word demanded action, and the wall that had been your protection now felt like a maddening barrier.
"I hear you," you repeated, leaning in close, letting your breath fog the cold wood. "If you need help, tell me. Do I need to leave the home now? Do I need to come out to the other side of the wall?" You kept your voice a constant, reassuring murmur, an anchor for the trembling spirit.
A moment later, the low, strange voice returned, thinner now, edged with genuine alarm.
"No. S… s-scared."
The word "scared" was drawn out, sounding less like a powerful forest entity and more like a lost child. You blinked, processing the admission, the logic of the night entirely inverted.
"You're scared?" You whispered, the simple fascination returning, overwhelming the urgency for a moment. "Scared of me?" The idea was absurd, yet it filled you with a strange tenderness. "Or do you think I'll be frightened of you when I see you? I won't. I promise you I won't."
You didn’t let the next beat of silence linger long. You pressed your ear to the cold log, straining for a breath, a sigh, anything. There was only the low roar of the new fire and the relentless, indifferent breathing of your family. You couldn't wait. The thought of the spirit, this terrified, suffering presence, begging for rescue while you sat protected by thick logs and a warm hearth was suddenly intolerable, a profound moral failure. You moved with a decisive, silent speed born of pure desperation. You grabbed the heavy wool shawl from the hook, silently slid the wooden bolt on the heavy front door, and stepped out into the night.
You hurried a few steps around the corner of the cabin to the coop attached, built directly against the far wall of the house, the same wall you had been leaning against.
The air here smelled heavily of old straw, frozen earth, and the faint, dusty scent of roosting chickens. In the near-total darkness, relieved only by the sliver of weak moonlight filtering through the gaps in the planks, you saw only the interior of the makeshift structure. There was nothing but the usual rough-hewn posts, the piled, dry hay bedding, and the wooden nesting boxes.
"Spirit?" You called out, your voice tight and thin in the cold air. "Are you here? I came. I am right on the other side of the wall now. I want to help!"
Only the shivering rustle of the sleeping hens answered. You moved your hands along the cold, rough plank of the actual cabin wall, the exact spot where you had pressed your palm moments before. It was just wood. Just wood, hay, and the crushing, familiar solitude.
The silence here was worse than the silence inside; it was exposed and vast. The cold began to leech the heat from your body and the last vestiges of belief from your mind. The truth hit you with the force of a sudden fever break: You must be losing your mind. The chronic sadness, the endless need to compartmentalize, had finally cracked your perception of reality. There was no man, no terrified spirit, just the sound of the wind, the creak of the chimney, and your own lonely, desperate desire for acknowledgement.
You retreated quickly, yanking the door shut, stumbling back into the cabin. The warmth was immediate but felt dishonest, and the fear that followed you inside was no longer fear of the spirit, but a cold, small terror of yourself.
You bolted the door, your heart hammering a frantic, hopeless rhythm against the terrible new realization. You crept back to the hearth, the warmth of the renewed fire doing little to thaw the cold, internal dread. Your first impulse was to extinguish the fire and climb into bed, to seek the oblivion of sleep and hope that this sudden, acute madness would be gone by morning.
You reached for the journal, intending to slide it back into your chest and hide the evidence of your foolish vigil. But as your fingers touched the leather cover, you saw it: a single, perfectly preserved, dark green leaf, pressed neatly onto the empty page you had struggled to write upon.
It was an oak leaf, small and deep emerald, the color impossibly vibrant against the stark white of the paper. There was no way it could have survived the frost, or been carried into the cabin unnoticed, let alone been placed with such meticulous care on your specific page.
You picked it up. It was cold to the touch, almost waxy, and entirely real. The silence of the cabin instantly changed. It was no longer the cruel silence of an empty coop or a mind broken by grief; it was the attentive, waiting silence of a promise kept. The spirit had been scared, yes, but it hadn't lied. It had been there, and it had left a sign.
A shaky, grateful breath escaped you. The knowledge that you were not entirely alone, that you had not completely lost your mind to the 'sickness,' was a profound relief. But it was immediately overshadowed by a crippling, new confusion. You held the leaf, rotating it under the dim light, its simple perfection mocking your complexity.
If it was scared, why send a part of itself inside the home? Why offer a clue you couldn't decipher? You had a tangible miracle, an undeniable fact, but the question of what to do next felt like an insurmountable mountain. You were connected to something vast and terrified, and you were utterly clueless about what kind of rescue a lone, anxious keeper of facts could possibly offer.
You carefully pressed the leaf back into the journal, closing the cover gently. You remained by the fire, the ache now replaced by a vast, wakeful uncertainty, waiting for the cold, confusing dawn.
///
The next night, you did not even bother to open the journal. The leaf was pressed securely inside, a cold, vibrant anchor to the undeniable truth, rendering the act of simple journaling irrelevant. You sat by the hearth, stoking the fire until it burned with a low, steady heat, and waited up until it was deeply, utterly late; long past the hour you usually finished your entries.
The house was heavy with sleep and the silence was once again pregnant with anticipation. You finally rose, walking the few deliberate steps to the log wall, your hand holding the cold, firm edge of the oak leaf, which you pressed against the rough timber.
"Spirit?" you whispered, the word trembling slightly, but carrying a conviction you hadn't possessed the night before. "I know you were here. I found the leaf you left for me. It's real. It's beautiful."
Silence. You pressed the leaf harder against the wood.
"Please, I know you can hear me. I want to hear your voice again. The sad one," you continued, the words starting to rush out in a hurried stream, "the one that sounds like a man’s, the one that told me you were scared. I know you're scared, but I'm not. I'm not scared of you. I was scared I was losing my mind, but the leaf—the leaf proves you are here. So please, I want to hear you. I want to help you. You asked for help, and I am the only one awake, the only one who knows. Don't go quiet again. Just tell me what to do. Tell me anything, I just need to hear it. Don't make me sit here alone with this knowledge, you can't, you can't ask for help and then leave the help right here on the other side of the wall, I'm going crazy with it, I—"
You stopped abruptly, realizing you were rambling, your voice escalating into a frantic pitch that threatened the stillness of the home. You took a huge, shuddering breath, pressing your forehead against the cold wood.
A pause, vast and agonizing, stretched. Then, from the darkness on the other side of the wall, the low, strange voice returned. It was meek, fragile, and laced with a profound reluctance.
"Okay."
The single word was enough. It was a surrender, an invitation. You didn't wait, didn't question. The long wait, the frantic rambling, the desperate plea- it had all led to this. You grabbed the heavy shawl, threw it over your shoulders without tying it, and fumbled with the wooden bolt on the front door. It slid open with a whisper, and you were out in the biting cold of the winter night.
Your feet crunched on the frozen snow as you hurried around the cabin, your breath pluming in white clouds. The coop door was ajar, a dark, inviting maw. You slipped inside, the familiar scent of old straw and sleeping fowl doing nothing to ground the burgeoning unreality of the moment.
"Hello?" You whispered, your voice thin but steady, a stark contrast to the frantic monologue from moments before.
A sudden, sharp intake of breath came from the deepest, darkest corner of the coop, behind the stack of unused lumber. You turned, your eyes straining in the faint moonlight that filtered through the gaps in the plank walls.
And then you saw him.
He was tall his frame startlingly angular broad but thin, almost skeletal beneath what looked like tattered, earthy rags. His skin was of a peculiar, almost ghostly discoloration, pale, bruised blotches of blue and grey that seemed to absorb what little light there was. He was huddled, his long limbs drawn in tight, like a creature trying to make itself disappear. But it was his eyes that truly arrested you: they were wide, impossibly deep, and held within them all the sadness of the world- a profound, ancient grief that made your own chronic ache feel like a shallow scratch.
You saw him for only a flash, a devastating tableau etched into your mind. Then, with a sudden, jerky movement, his hands shot up, his palms flat and splayed, not quite covering his face but held up in a raw, instinctual gesture. It was a posture of profound defense, as if to protect himself from a blow, or perhaps, more tragically, to shield you from the full, overwhelming truth of his visage. He let out a small, wounded sound, like a creature caught in a trap.
The man's sudden, defensive gesture was heartbreaking. In that instant, the terrifying strangeness of his appearance faded beneath the overwhelming, familiar reality of his pain. You felt the weight of your own lifelong sorrow settle heavily back onto your chest, but this time, it was not a burden; it was a strange, empathetic armor. You knew this sadness; you cataloged it every night. His fear was simply a more acute version of the agony you had spent your life trying to manage.
You took a single, slow step forward, ensuring your movement was deliberate and non-threatening. You stopped a short distance away, kneeling slow and extending your right hand toward him, palm open and upward, in a gesture of simple, unarmed peace.
"Look," you murmured, your voice low and completely steady, allowing only compassion to color your tone. "I won't hurt you. I am here to help."
The man remained frozen for a long moment, his eyes—those deep, glowing sorrowful pools—watching your outstretched hand. Then, with a visible, painful effort, he began to lower his own shielding palms. It was a slow, nervous movement, evident in the tremor that ran through his patchwork arms, but beneath the fear, there was an unmistakable spark of desperate, necessary bravery. He slowly extended his own hand toward yours.
When his cold, long fingers finally met your warm palm, a single, sharp current of cold shot up your arm. You held his gaze, studying the deep, crystalline sadness in his eyes, feeling the sheer magnitude of the world's grief reflected there, yet feeling no fear at all. You held the simple, perfect truth of the night in your sight.
You offered a small, steady smile, the first true, unforced smile you had given in months, a small acknowledgement of the miracle you were witnessing.
"You are the Spirit of the Forest," You stated softly, the simple fact needing no grander declaration, just the quiet certainty of your journaled truth.
The Spirit gave the smallest, most heartbreaking shake of his head. A tiny, confused movement that did not suggest disagreement, but rather a profound, ongoing struggle to comprehend his own identity. His eyes, fixed on yours, were searching for a meaning he couldn't grasp.
You held his cold hand tighter, your thumb gently running a reassuring circle over his prominent knuckles. The contact felt grounding, a warmth against the immense chill he embodied. The familiar, low hum of sorrow within you rose to meet the sorrow in his eyes, creating a strange, quiet harmony.
He spoke then, the sound slow and effortful, the words carefully decided as if he were practicing language for the first time in his life, or as if he had to get this single, crucial sequence exactly right.
"You..." He began, his voice a low, graved whisper "...are my spirit."
The declaration struck you, not with alarm, but with a sudden, sharp, simple wonder. You had been looking for a cosmic power, a divine entity to catalog, a magnificent truth to record. Instead, he saw his own salvation, his own reason for existence, reflected in your lonely vigil. You, the meticulous keeper of simple facts, were now the profound, essential truth of his tragic world. You were his anchor.
The quiet, devastating weight of his declaration threatened to overwhelm you, stirring a host of deep, complicated emotions you had spent a lifetime diligently suppressing. You recognized the immediate danger of being consumed by the beautiful, tragic simplicity of this connection.
You gave his cold hand a final, firm squeeze and then gently released it, forcing yourself to return to the simple facts of the moment. "You are freezing," you stated, the cold air hitting your lungs providing immediate focus. "Come in by the fire. Everyone is sleeping, they will not stir."
The effect of your words was immediate and drastic. The Spirit did not simply hesitate; he recoiled. His eyes, seconds ago filled with a desperate, searching connection, were now wide with pure panic. With a silent, fearful urgency, he scooted backward across the hay-strewn floor, pulling his long, frail body close against the rough, cold plank of the coop wall, a motion as instinctive as a trapped animal seeking the deepest shadow. The movement was a stark, physical rejection of the warmth and the safety of the house.
"No," he whispered, the single word sharp with alarm. You knelt there, your hand still suspended in the cold air where his had just been, immediately understanding his upset. Anyone who saw him and didn’t understand his alarming height and scared skin may act out of fear. Not knowing the spirit was far more gripped by terror.
Decidedly, you rose to your feet, noticing for a moment, the spirits alarm at your sudden turning away. But you were on a mission. You slipped out of the coop and back inside the cabin, moving with a practiced, silent grace. The warm air felt foreign against your chilled skin. You avoided the hearth, where the shadows were too deep, and instead went straight to the trunk at the foot of your bed. With meticulous, quiet care, you pulled out your thickest spare wool blanket—a heavy, dark one that would absorb light and provide real warmth. Next came a pillow, and from the cold pantry, a loaf of still-soft bread and a small flask of clean water.
You knew, as you moved, that this was pathetic. A single blanket and a dry loaf were nothing for the Spirit of the Forest. The realization settled heavily: so much more would have to be done for this spirit in time, because you already knew the insistent, unshakeable urge within you would demand it. But this was all the night could offer without risking the security of the sleeping home. You gathered the pitiful bundle and, without looking at the dark mounds of your family, slipped back out into the bitter cold.
You slipped back into the coop, letting the door fall shut with a soft click that was lost in the cold air. The faint outline of the Spirit was still huddled in the corner, his wide eyes tracking your return with an anxiety that bordered on pain.
You moved toward him, gently placing the blanket, pillow, bread, and water down on the straw beside him. "I'm sorry," you whispered, crouching down so you were level with his cowering form. "I am sorry I don't have more. This is all I can bring tonight."
You did not wait for a response. You gently extended your hand and reached for his, taking his cold, thin fingers back into your grasp. This time, the tremor that ran through him was not just fear; it was a visible, full-body shudder, an overwhelming response to the simple physical contact. He was evidently not used to interaction, not accustomed to the steady, unalarming warmth of another living thing. His hand felt like frozen roots, yet you held it fast.
You pulled his hand slightly, slowly, until it was close to your face. Then, with deliberate, unwavering sincerity, you pressed his cold, discolored palm flat against your own warm cheek. The sensation was shocking—his skin was far colder and rougher than you expected, yet your own warmth felt like a profound, simple truth against his life.
"Look at me," you commanded softly, holding his gaze. "I am warm. I am alive. I am a friend. I will truly not hurt you." The simple warmth of your skin against his hand was your explanation, a fact more concrete than any promise. The expression in his deep, sorrowful eyes wavered, slowly giving way to a profound, bewildered realization. You had crossed the final line, offering not just help, but the shared, vulnerable fact of your own body as proof.
As the heat from your cheek slowly began to seep into his frozen palm, the tension in his shoulders seemed to snap. The fear did not entirely leave his eyes, but it was momentarily eclipsed by a look of overwhelming, simple relief. A single tear, shining faintly in the scarce moonlight, tracked a slow pattern down his scared cheek. He did not speak, but he very slowly, very slightly, pressed his fingers against your face. It was the first sign of acceptance, the first true acknowledgement of the Spirit of the Forest allowing himself to be cared for by his own terrified, lonely spirit.
///
The sun rose on a world suddenly sharp with danger. Every sound your family made, a low question from your father, the heavy scrape of a chair, your brothers distant, rhythmic chopping, now felt like an impending threat. You moved through your morning chores with a tense, brittle energy. The weight of the secret was immense; it was no longer just the sorrow you suppressed, but the physical, fragile existence you were now responsible for. You worried constantly about leaving any trace; a displaced shoe, a stray crumb near the back door, the persistent, earthy smell of the coop clinging to your shawl. You had promised help, and the fear of frightening him off with some careless mistake felt far heavier than the burden of his existence.
You monitored the coop wall constantly. When your youngest brother lingered near the corner while fetching firewood, your heart hammered against your ribs until he moved away, oblivious. When your father checked the lock on the front door, you felt a surge of cold panic. They could not find him; they would not understand the meek, sorrowful terror in his eyes. They would only see the strange, discolored man who did not belong, and you knew instinctively that any interaction would result in a second, final withdrawal, or worse. The simple, observable world of your facts was now a perilous cage you had to navigate with obsessive caution.
The night finally arrived, bringing with it the immense relief of deep, pervasive quiet. Once the last candle was blown out and the rhythmic breathing of sleep filled the cabin, you began your new routine. You gathered fresh water and another piece of bread, along with a small, flat slate and a piece of chalk salvaged from an old school lesson.
You slipped out to the coop and found the Spirit exactly where you had left him, still huddled against the cold wall, wrapped tightly in the dark wool blanket. He watched you approach, his deep eyes still carrying the enormous, lingering sadness, but now mixed with an unmistakable, profound trust.
///
Weeks bled into months. The bitter grip of winter finally loosened, and the first tentative whispers of spring began to stir the land. The frozen earth softened, allowing the first brave green shoots to push through. The air grew warmer, carrying the scent of damp soil and awakening life. The Spirit, for the first time, seemed less hunched, less defined by the cold. He would watch the early birds through the gaps in the planks, his gaze filled with that same quiet wonder, his pale face often tilted as if trying to recall a forgotten song. You would whisper to him about bringing breakfast or thank him for stacking a new pile of wood. He would respond with lithe grins, and sometimes sentences of understanding or gratitude. He would let you take his cold fingers in your grasp and hold them there as if to pray together when night fell and uncertainty crept in. You did not know what to do for him further. And he, though it seemed he had the capacity for understanding, did not say.
But then, the storms of spring began.
One night, the sky unleashed a fury. Rain hammered against the roof of the coop, driven by a wind that shrieked and howled like a banshee. Thunder cracked directly overhead, shaking the very foundations of the cabin. You found the Spirit not merely frightened, but utterly, completely undone. He was cowering deeper than ever, his tall frame trembling violently, his hands pressed hard over his ears, a low, guttural whimper escaping his throat.
"Spirit! What's wrong?" you cried, fighting against the noise of the storm. You knelt beside him, trying to gently pull his hands away. "It's only thunder! It will pass!"
He shook his head frantically, his eyes wide with a terror that surpassed even the first night's fear. "No! I... I don't know!" he cried, his voice barely audible. "My body... it feels afraid. It remembers. But my mind... my mind cannot catch up!" He was lost in a physical, instinctual panic, disconnected from any conscious understanding of the storm.
You did not hesitate. The idea of leaving him alone in that primal terror was unthinkable. You scooted closer, pulling his shaking body gently toward you. The straw was damp, the air thick with fear and the smell of wet earth. You held him, not speaking, not trying to explain, simply offering the warmth and solidity of your presence. You tucked his head against your chest, one hand stroking his tangled hair, the other rubbing circles on his strong back. You stayed there through the long, tumultuous night, feeling the tremors of his terror against your own heart, offering the only shelter you could against a fear that defied all understanding.
///
The opportunity you needed arrived two weeks later, delivered with the casual, cruel indifference of routine. Your siblings were required to travel to the nearest large city, two days' journey away, to sell the last preserves of winter and procure necessary goods for the planting season. The trip would take at least three weeks. However, your father would remain behind. His vision had been failing him for years, and now he being blind; the journey was too dangerous for him. He was a presence, a quiet, listening shadow in the house… but one whose dependence on routine and sound gave you a narrow margin of safety.
The day they departed was a blur of frantic activity. Once the carriage was packed and the final goodbyes exchanged, a profound, unsettling quiet fell over the cabin. You waited until your father had settled into his accustomed chair by the remaining embers of the morning fire, his cane resting beside him, his ears tuned to the familiar sounds of the house.
You slipped out to the coop. The Spirit was watching you, his deep eyes full of unspoken questions about the sudden change in the atmosphere. The spring storms had not ceased entirely, and the coop remained miserably cold and damp, the straw offering only meager protection.
You knelt before him, taking his cold hands. "They are gone," you whispered,"The others. They will be gone for weeks. My father is here but he cannot see you. He won’t be able to. You can't stay here anymore. Not in the damp."
The Spirit's hands trembled in yours. His eyes flickering nervously toward the thick log wall that separated them from the cabin's interior.
You held his gaze, allowing the familiar, compelling weight of your own sorrow to rise, transforming your plea into a fierce, absolute demand. "The cold will make you sick," you insisted, gently running your thumb over the ghostly discoloration of his skin. "You are frail. I offered help long ago. I promised I would manage. But I cannot do that if you are frozen in the straw."
Your voice hardened with a conviction born of love and desperation. "You are damned to accept it, and I am damned to give it. You must trust me. I will not let anything hurt you."
The Spirit searched your face, absorbing the fierce, undeniable truth of your commitment. The terror was still immense, but the weight of his physical need—the persistent chill that settled in his bones—and the magnitude of your desperate pledge finally overcame his fear. With a slow, agonizing effort, he nodded once.
"Okay," he whispered, a sound of profound, weary resignation.
With infinite caution, you led him to the door, quietly unbolting the latch. You took one last, steadying breath, preparing to cross the final, terrifying threshold of your secret world.
You gently guided the Spirit across the threshold, pulling him into the immediate, shocking warmth of the cabin. The first thing the Spirit registered was the heat. It hit him with the force of a physical blow—the thick, smothering air of the stove and the lingering warmth of the hearth. He winced, his discolored skin seeming to deepen in pallor under the sudden atmospheric change, his wide eyes immediately fixed on you.
Before your father, who was sitting in his chair a few feet from the still warm hearth, could question the sound of the door, you spoke out, your voice unnaturally bright and loud to override the Spirit’s nervous silence.
"Father?" you called, closing the door firmly behind you. "I'm sorry to wake you, but I brought a traveler in from the cold. He was caught out by the spring wind and needs a few hours to thaw."
Your father adjusted his position, his blind eyes turning in the direction of your voice, his expression immediately softening into welcoming hospitality. "Ah, a traveler! Good, good. Bring him closer, child. There's nothing like a warm hearth to chase the chill."
He lifted his hand in a vague gesture. "Tell him he's welcome to our meager fire. I hope he has some interesting stories from his journeys to share with an old man; it's been a quiet few weeks."
The Spirit entered the main room of the cabin. Though his movements were still timid, his steps were slow and deliberate, imbued with a fierce, terrified determination. He kept his gaze locked solely on you, seeking direction and reassurance in your presence, his frail form standing out starkly against the familiar shadows.
"Tell me, friend," your father prompted, his voice friendly and expectant. "Where have you traveled from? What sights did you see?"
The Spirit shifted his focus, forcing himself to look toward the sound of the voice. He opened his mouth, and the words came out slowly, carefully decided, but without the usual terror. He was not lying, only stating the overwhelming fact of his existence.
"I can't remember," he whispered, his voice resonating slightly in the small room. "It's been a hectic journey."
///
The weeks that followed were thus; your father sat passing the long, quiet hours, often told aloud from tattered books of scripture or old adventure tales- when the spirit would pick them up and rattle off their titles like a question. Your father’s voice ever a comforting drone. The Spirit would listen, utterly captivated, his head cocked, absorbing the flow of words even if their full meaning escaped him. He began to learn not just the cadences of human storytelling, but the meaning behind why.
For you, the nights returned to their sacred ritual, but transformed. Your journal was open, and you wrote frantically, night after night, trying to capture the impossible reality, struggling desperately to separate thought from feeling. How could you explain the existence of a man made of sorrow and cold, who brought berries and split wood, who listened to your blind father's stories with a child's wonder? How could you describe the gentle weight of his hand on your cheek, or the fear that now lived in the space between your heart and your throat? The lines between the objective facts of your world and the profound, overwhelming subjective truth of the Spirit had irrevocably blurred.
And as you wrote, the Spirit would always be there. He would not sleep. He would sit near the dying embers of the fire, his blanket drawn around him, his deep, sad eyes fixed on you. He watched the steady, familiar scratch of your pen, the silent movement of your hand across the page. There was no demand in his gaze, no judgment, only a vast, aching wonder, a deep, silent longing to not let sleep separate you. You wrote your truth, and he simply witnessed it, the silent guardian of your frantic, bewildered words, both of you connected by the quiet, shared tragedy of the late night.
Finally, you could not write another word. The effort to capture the uncapturable was exhausting. With a sigh, you set the leather-bound journal and the pen aside, the final, simple act of giving up control. You gently slid off the stool and crawled closer to the Spirit , where he’d often sat, leaned near the fire place with blankets abound, watching you.
He studied your approach, his sorrowful eyes vast and receptive. As you settled near him, leaning against the cold stones of the hearth, he spoke, his voice low and weary.
"You know so much," he whispered, a deep admiration and confusion woven into the tone. "More than you know what to do with. You write it all down. I know nothing. I don't know how to get back home, to learn." The words were an articulation of the root of his profound sadness- the loss of memory and identity.
"Is that the help you need?" You asked, leaning your head against the cool stone and looking into his desperate eyes. "To get back? To find what you lost?"
He hesitated, the sheer uncertainty of his existence heavy in the air. "Maybe," he finally replied, the single word soft with resignation.
You did not wait for a clearer answer. You reached out, offering your hand once more. This time, there was no fear, no painful hesitation. His cold, technicolor hand was quick to reach back to yours, seeking the familiar warmth and reassurance. You watched, mesmerized, as your fingers laced together, studying the way your contrasting colors and forms aligned, a simple, undeniable fact of connection.
Then, you reached further. With infinite tenderness, you placed both of your palms on his face, cradling his sharp cheekbones and cold skin. It was the first time you had touched him so intimately. He did not pull away; instead, he leaned into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut, savoring the warmth.
Emboldened by his acceptance, and moved by the profound, simple truth of his need, you shifted forward. You wrapped your arms gently around his incredibly broad shoulders, pulling him into a soft, careful embrace. He went utterly still, his body rigid with shock. He was stunned, unused to this basic human gesture of comfort. Yet, after a single, frozen moment, his arms slowly, tentatively, came up to return the embrace, accepting the physical comfort, accepting the beautiful, terrifying truth that he was no longer alone in the dark. And there you eased. You felt safe to curl there and stay and sleep.
///
The morning came not with the gentle, slow diffusion of light, but with a shock of noise and violence that ripped through the quiet cabin.
You and the Spirit were roused instantly, not by the sun, but by a deafening, panicked shriek, followed immediately by the heavy thud of gear hitting the floor and the distinct, terrible sound of your father's cane clattering away. Your family was back early.
"MONSTER! Get away from that thing! Get away from him!"
You scrambled up from the floor by the hearth, instantly disoriented by the chaos. Your siblings stood jammed together just past the main door, trembling violently, their faces bleached white with shock and fury. Your two older brothers were already raising their heavy hunting rifles, their hands shaking so badly that the barrels wavered erratically, pointed directly at the space where you and the Spirit had been curled.
The Spirit, immediately stripped of the brief safety he had felt, reacted instantly. He let out a low, terrified howl, his tall body collapsing inward. He cowered into the corner against the cold stones, his knees drawn up, his strange, discolored palms flying up to shield his face, reverting instantly to the primal fear that defined him.
You threw yourself forward, stepping directly into the line of fire, your body shielding the cowering form of the man you now understood. The warmth of the shared sleep was replaced by a cold, desperate fury.
"NO!" you screamed back, the sound torn from your lungs, louder and more savage than anything your family had ever heard from you. "Lower those! You will not touch him!"
Your older brother, fear turning instantly to rage, yelled back, "Get out of the way! Look at it! It's some kind of thing! Where did you find that monster, and why is it here? It could have killed Father!"
"He is no monster!" you shouted, standing over the trembling, huddled form. The chronic, dark sorrow inside you now surged out, weaponized by protection. "He is the Spirit of the Forest! The one who gives us the berries and the kindling! No one- no one dares to harm him!"
Your littlest sibling rose a shake finger. “Look at his skin! Look at his eyes! That is not a blessing, that is a sickness! Get away before it harms you, please, please!"
Your middle sibling trembled just behind, “He was sleeping with you! Right there!"
The terrible truth was out, exposed by the rude light of day and the brutal simplicity of their fear.
Suddenly, your father moved, his stillness instantly shattering into frantic action. He hadn't been cowering; he had been listening, trying to locate the source of the danger. He flung his cane away and lunged forward, his nearly sightless eyes wide with alarm and driven by raw paternal instinct, trying to get between the guns and the noise.
"STOP IT! STOP, I say!" he roared, his voice cutting through the hysteria. He grabbed wildly for your older brother's rifle barrel, his hands fumbling but finding purchase. "Put that down! You will hurt her! He has been here with me! He is quiet! She said he is the Spirit of the Forest! I believe her!"
The declaration hit you with the force of a physical blow, moving you more than any threat of a gun. You looked at your father's panicked, resolute face. You couldn't be sure if he truly meant it—if the chronic ache of his blindness and loneliness had finally allowed him to accept the fantastic truth—or if he was simply trying to diffuse the violence and protect you both from his terrified, armed children. The ambiguity was a sudden, sharp, new sorrow, yet his voice was your shield.
Your older brother, fear turning instantly to cold, deliberate rage, yanked the rifle back. "He is a threat, Father! A monster! Get back, or we will have to protect ourselves from you, too!" The threat was sharp, calculated, and aimed to clear the line of fire. Your younger sibling, equally terrified, stood ready, his own rifle barrel now held steady, pointed with chilling resolve at the huddle near the hearth.
The Spirit, still huddled, let out a low, mournful sound, a sound of perfect, shattering surrender.
Your father planted his feet, ignoring the immediate danger. He knew exactly where the Spirit was by the sound of his ragged breathing. He turned his face toward you, hearing your frozen breath. He didn't waste time trying to rationalize the Spirit's nature.
"He’”ll shoot if you don’t go.” Your father shouted, his voice cracking with urgent despair. “Run! Child! Take your friend! NOW!" He threw his body to the side, blindly blocking the line of sight for a split second. "Go! Run to the forest! Get him out of here!"
There was no time for supplies, no thought for the journal or the leaf pressed within it. The simple fact of the imminent gunshots was all that mattered.
You lunged forward, grabbing the Spirit's pale, thin arm and yanking him hard, forcing his collapsed body to rise. "Get up! Now!" you hissed, shoving him toward the back door, the only exit not blocked by your siblings.
The Spirit stumbled, his eyes still wide with terminal fear, but he obeyed the physical command. As his long, broad body gained momentum, his fingers clamped around your wrist with a sudden, surprising strength. Instead of letting go, he held fast, dragging you with him as he launched himself toward the door. And you were glad for the momentum, because you were ready to dash at his side no matter.
You didn't look back to see your father grapple with your brothers; the sounds of desperate shouts and heavy breathing were enough. The Spirit did not wait. He began to run, a panicked, frantic effort that was terrifyingly fast and utterly silent. You were pulled along, your feet scrambling on the wet earth, the fear in your chest a raw, desperate thing.
Then, just as you stumbled on a root, the Spirit paused for the briefest blink of time. Without breaking his stride, his free hand shot down, gripping the fabric of your shawl. With an effortless, shocking movement, he scooped you up, lifting you clear off the ground and settling your weight against his side. Suddenly, you were moving faster than you thought humanly possible. His long, discolored legs ate up the ground, carrying you both toward the dense, awakening thicket of the forest.
You almost felt peace. You could almost feel the mighty tree’s shielding you. But then,
a/n: heyyy i've gotten loads of diffrenet rec's for the creature so i kind of lumped all the ideas together here
warning: sad! but the baby boy is cared for deeply!
───※ ·❆· ※───
You’d stay up late and write near the hearth, when you were sure everyone was heavy in slumber. Sometimes you’d make up fantasies, or scrawl dreams you had. But mostly you would simply journal. You would write about the towns drama or your families disposition. You would write about the changing of the weather and try to find new fascinations about the steady sure pace the world always kept to. The snow would always fall in winter. The sun would always set in the evening. And the spirit of the forest would grant small miracles each morning.
These were facts and you found comfort in their truth. These were promises you clung to when the sadness of death and distraction and loss would strike your town or livestock or family. And there was always something, inside you, far past where the muscles and veins pulsed, that gripped you with sadness. A distraught and ever present dark cloud of agony was always knocking at the door of your heart. And it didn’t keep you from your duties, your chores or your writing. But it was often acknowledged in your entries. It had to be acknowledged, the feeling, in your most private form of communication. You had to get it out somehow. You had to cast it from soaking your mind in a fog. You had spent all your conscious years trying to dissipate it through every manner of action and distraction imaginable. All with one exception; laying the awful burden of knowledge upon another soul. That was the final, uncrossable line.
But writing was enough. Scribbling kept the stirring thoughts in an organized stream. Mumbling out the mess of your mind next to the days dying fire was a dear routine you’d come to depend on.
But that night, you began to struggle to find the right words. Not that anyone would read them and judge their sequence. But that you longed to express the storm inside of you, that you longed to get it sorted out. “No,” you huffed in a gambled whisper, knowing your squeaks wouldn’t wake those who slept across the wooden length of floor. “No, it’s not like a storm of feeling. It’s more of a sickness. An ache.” You sighed. This was almost correct. But you sat in wonder if you’d ever find the right word, if it even existed.
Just as you sat scratching out the ink of your misprint, the wind must’ve blown exactly right. The fire flickered away and an eerie creak was heard from somewhere beyond the wall you leaned against now. You couldn’t help but gasp at the sudden shift in the night’s tempo. And you could not shake the wonder, the fear, the curiosity that had stifled all other feeling, when you thought you heard your name. Just beyond the wall where the wind had blown.
The creak had been loud, the sound of aged, stressed wood shifting under an invisible pressure. But the voice- if it was a voice- was a different terror entirely. It was a sound pressed low by distance and wind, a sound that resonated not in the air, but inside the quiet chamber of your ear. It was just one syllable, a whisper of your own name, spoken with the intimate, sorrowful knowledge of someone who understood the sickness you couldn't write down.
The practical part of your mind, the part that dealt in facts and journal entries, insisted it was only the wind vibrating the loosely fitted chimney flue, a trick of the exhausted night. But the other part, the part that was gripped by the low, constant tragedy of your heart, felt a profound, almost devastating recognition. You leaned forward, pressing your ear against the cold, rough-barked log of the wall. The sound of the sleeping house was overwhelming now: the tick of the cooling stove, the deep snorts from your family’s beds, the distant, steady drumming of your own pulse. You waited, a new, magnificent kind of fear displacing the old, chronic grief.
“If it is my own mind and soul sick with mad grief, so be it.” You shuddered to declare, gaining the confidence to raise your tone, mindful of the stillness of the home, but dazed by the need to address the event, no matter its cause. “But if it is you, spirit of the forrest, if it’s you insisting I’m not misunderstood in my madness, please make it known.”
The silence that hung around your reality was heavy with waiting. Pregnant with anticipation that’s excitement was dwindling with every new still second. Just as the hot, foolish bravado began to curdle into the familiar shame of being alone with your own grief, the response came.
It was not a roar, but a more clear and warbled pronunciation of your name. The voice trembled as its attention was evident, like there was more terror in the spirit than in yours. And it broke free whatever band kept your sadness locked away to manage. Your chest pierced with a sorrow you yourself had never even felt the pelts of. Your eye’s pooled with tears. It was all so sudden. All so overwhelming. The answer to your call, and the response your person sparked fourth.
“Spirit? Is that really you? Are you really there? I can hear you, I can.” You were frantic, voice giving way to tone, care shrugged away for respecting the other quiet rest. The last, loud declaration was too much for the stillness of the cabin to absorb. A moment later, the heavy rhythm of the closest sleeper broke. There was a low, grumbling grunt, followed by the slow, painful creak of a cot as your father rose, reaching a tremor hand to your shoulder. He couldn’t see your tears but he heard your cries.
"Hush now," His voice thick with sleep rumbled from the shadows. It was a sound of the mundane world reasserting its dominance, a fact as unavoidable as the winter snow. "You're only having one of your bad dreams, child. Ba”ck to bed we go.”
His voice in your ear and his hand on your shoulder was enough to puncture the profound quiet you shared with the wall. In an instant, the terror of the spirit vanished, replaced by the acute, sharp sting of humiliation and the knowledge that the door to the outside world had been violently shut.
You turned, wiping the frozen tears from your cheeks with a trembling hand, and watched your father settle back down, already breathing deep and slow. The spirit’s voice, the fearful tremor, the profound resonance of shared sorrow- it was all gone. The silence returned, but this time it was a punishing, empty vacuum.
///
The next day you woke remembering the details of the night as a crazy dream. But as you went about your duties, tucking in your sheets, starting to boil water, and staring blankly at the burnt out hearth, you were reminded that you’d been awake to see the flames die with a startle.
And when your brothers hurried outside to find piles of wood and a basket of fresh picked berries, you were reminded that the spirit was real. And a chill rose the skin at the back of your neck when you recalled it’s voice. You knew it was the spirit’s voice. But you had absolutely no idea what to do about it. You, the meticulous keeper of facts, the cataloger of simple certainties, were faced with a truth that offered no comfort, only a profound, complex connection to a suffering far greater than your own.
You successfully reduced the night's revelation back to the status of a simple, explainable fact: wood appeared, berries were found. The spirit's terrified voice, the sudden, crashing wave of sorrow—these details were filed away in the deepest recesses of your mind, a secret you were now keeping not only from your family, but from your own conscious, journal-keeping self. You clung to the rhythm of the day—the hiss of the water, the scrape of the bucket as you fetched ice from the trough—the steady, certain pace of the world you depended on. Yet, with every normal movement, you could feel the new, unsettling weight settling beneath the old chronic ache: the burden of knowing you were not alone in your suffering, and the fresh, heavy tragedy of having to pretend that you were.
///
The sun had long since bled out of the sky, and once more, the predictable, deep silence of the sleeping cabin settled in. You performed the initial steps of your ritual perfectly. Mend the fire, find your journal, ease into the silence of the evening.
The leather-bound journal lay open before you. You even managed to record the day’s simple facts… the count of the berries, the temperature of the river, your mother's disposition. but when you finally turned to the blank page reserved for the night of the event, the pen hovered and stopped. You tried to write around it, using euphemisms for the "strange wind" or the "unexpected gift." You even attempted to describe the simple, flawless geometry of the frost crystals in exacting detail. But the moment you tried to frame the voice, the warbled, terrified confession of sorrow, the ink seemed to curdle on the nib. You couldn't, would not, reduce that profound, shared agony to a series of neat, controlled sentences. The simple routine had been ruptured, and your meticulous facade collapsed.
With a heavy, final sigh, you closed the journal without securing the clasp. The truth was too big to be contained by a ledger, and the act of trying to contain it felt like a fresh betrayal. Instead, you knelt closer to the log wall, the same spot where the sorrow had pierced your own, and laid the entire surface of your hand against the rough, cold wood.
"Spirit," you whispered, the sound barely audible over the crackle of the new fire. You kept your tone even, shedding the frantic fear and desperate need of the night before, and replacing it with a quiet, unsettling curiosity. "Spirit, if you are there, I am awake. I am listening."
The response was not immediate, but it was absolute. It did not come with the sound of wind or the stress of wood. Instead, it was a quiet, almost hesitant voice that sounded distinctly, strangely like a man's. It was low-pitched and oddly resonant, as if the speaker were cupping his hands over his mouth from a short distance. It was not alarming, possessing none of the previous night's fearful terror, but it was profoundly, deeply strange.
“Why?”
The answer was laced with a skepticism and a sadness you didn’t need to understand to feel. You felt a deep, uncontrolled trembling start in your knees and work its way up through your chest. It was not a tremor of primal fear like the night before, but a confusion so profound it shook you. Why did it sound so... near? And why did it sound so perfectly sorrowfully? It sounded like the voice of a realized soul who was desperately lonely, a man standing just on the other side of a closed door.
You pressed your hand harder against the log and forced the words out, trying to keep your tone as steady and factual as you would while describing the weather. "I am awake because I always am at this hour," you replied, your voice now a thin, tight thread of sound. "This is when I write. This is when I can be alone."
The confession hung in the cold, still air. The small fire crackled, and your family breathed its steady, oblivious rhythm. But the voice from beyond the wall was gone. There was no follow-up question, no warbled sigh, no return of the overwhelming sorrow. Only the absolute silence where the man's strange, wondering voice had been. It was as if the simple fact of your routine, the admission that you chose this isolation every night, had been too much for the spirit to process. You waited, heart hammering against your ribs, certain you had somehow offended or frightened away the only thing that had ever truly acknowledged the dark cloud within you. The silence stretched, heavier than any night before.
The silence stretched, heavier than any night before. You waited until your hand was numb against the cold timber, forcing down the fear and letting only a gentle, careful concern remain. The simple fact of the man-like voice, and its sudden disappearance, was almost unbearable.
"Why have you gone quiet?" you murmured, your tone as soft and tentative as reaching out a cautious hand to a wounded animal. You kept your face close to the wall, letting your voice carry only the weight of curiosity, not demand. "You called out to me last night. Why would you come to the wall if you didn't want to be heard now?" You spoke to the darkness as if you were encouraging a frightened child to speak their name.
The response was not a warble, or a whisper, or a question of wonder. It was a single, devastating syllable, spoken with a fragile, meek intensity that barely pierced the wood. It was the sound of utter exhaustion and profound, trapped desperation.
"Help."
The word struck you with the force of a physical blow. It was not a cosmic plea or a spiritual summons; it was the raw, tragic admission of human need. The dark cloud of your own personal agony instantly faded into the background, eclipsed by the sudden, overwhelming realization that the Spirit of the Forest was not a grand, indifferent power, but a single, suffering entity—and it was asking you for rescue.
Your trembling returned, but this time it was born not of fear, but of the sudden, shocking weight of responsibility. You swallowed, the dry air scratching your throat.
"I hear you," you whispered back immediately, your voice absolute and steady, a sudden anchor in the overwhelming night. "I hear you, and I am here. Tell me what I must do."
But the silence rushed back, heavy and final. It was the silence of a truth delivered, a burden passed, and now, a moment of profound, exhausted waiting. You could not bear the stillness. The word demanded action, and the wall that had been your protection now felt like a maddening barrier.
"I hear you," you repeated, leaning in close, letting your breath fog the cold wood. "If you need help, tell me. Do I need to leave the home now? Do I need to come out to the other side of the wall?" You kept your voice a constant, reassuring murmur, an anchor for the trembling spirit.
A moment later, the low, strange voice returned, thinner now, edged with genuine alarm.
"No. S… s-scared."
The word "scared" was drawn out, sounding less like a powerful forest entity and more like a lost child. You blinked, processing the admission, the logic of the night entirely inverted.
"You're scared?" You whispered, the simple fascination returning, overwhelming the urgency for a moment. "Scared of me?" The idea was absurd, yet it filled you with a strange tenderness. "Or do you think I'll be frightened of you when I see you? I won't. I promise you I won't."
You didn’t let the next beat of silence linger long. You pressed your ear to the cold log, straining for a breath, a sigh, anything. There was only the low roar of the new fire and the relentless, indifferent breathing of your family. You couldn't wait. The thought of the spirit, this terrified, suffering presence, begging for rescue while you sat protected by thick logs and a warm hearth was suddenly intolerable, a profound moral failure. You moved with a decisive, silent speed born of pure desperation. You grabbed the heavy wool shawl from the hook, silently slid the wooden bolt on the heavy front door, and stepped out into the night.
You hurried a few steps around the corner of the cabin to the coop attached, built directly against the far wall of the house, the same wall you had been leaning against.
The air here smelled heavily of old straw, frozen earth, and the faint, dusty scent of roosting chickens. In the near-total darkness, relieved only by the sliver of weak moonlight filtering through the gaps in the planks, you saw only the interior of the makeshift structure. There was nothing but the usual rough-hewn posts, the piled, dry hay bedding, and the wooden nesting boxes.
"Spirit?" You called out, your voice tight and thin in the cold air. "Are you here? I came. I am right on the other side of the wall now. I want to help!"
Only the shivering rustle of the sleeping hens answered. You moved your hands along the cold, rough plank of the actual cabin wall, the exact spot where you had pressed your palm moments before. It was just wood. Just wood, hay, and the crushing, familiar solitude.
The silence here was worse than the silence inside; it was exposed and vast. The cold began to leech the heat from your body and the last vestiges of belief from your mind. The truth hit you with the force of a sudden fever break: You must be losing your mind. The chronic sadness, the endless need to compartmentalize, had finally cracked your perception of reality. There was no man, no terrified spirit, just the sound of the wind, the creak of the chimney, and your own lonely, desperate desire for acknowledgement.
You retreated quickly, yanking the door shut, stumbling back into the cabin. The warmth was immediate but felt dishonest, and the fear that followed you inside was no longer fear of the spirit, but a cold, small terror of yourself.
You bolted the door, your heart hammering a frantic, hopeless rhythm against the terrible new realization. You crept back to the hearth, the warmth of the renewed fire doing little to thaw the cold, internal dread. Your first impulse was to extinguish the fire and climb into bed, to seek the oblivion of sleep and hope that this sudden, acute madness would be gone by morning.
You reached for the journal, intending to slide it back into your chest and hide the evidence of your foolish vigil. But as your fingers touched the leather cover, you saw it: a single, perfectly preserved, dark green leaf, pressed neatly onto the empty page you had struggled to write upon.
It was an oak leaf, small and deep emerald, the color impossibly vibrant against the stark white of the paper. There was no way it could have survived the frost, or been carried into the cabin unnoticed, let alone been placed with such meticulous care on your specific page.
You picked it up. It was cold to the touch, almost waxy, and entirely real. The silence of the cabin instantly changed. It was no longer the cruel silence of an empty coop or a mind broken by grief; it was the attentive, waiting silence of a promise kept. The spirit had been scared, yes, but it hadn't lied. It had been there, and it had left a sign.
A shaky, grateful breath escaped you. The knowledge that you were not entirely alone, that you had not completely lost your mind to the 'sickness,' was a profound relief. But it was immediately overshadowed by a crippling, new confusion. You held the leaf, rotating it under the dim light, its simple perfection mocking your complexity.
If it was scared, why send a part of itself inside the home? Why offer a clue you couldn't decipher? You had a tangible miracle, an undeniable fact, but the question of what to do next felt like an insurmountable mountain. You were connected to something vast and terrified, and you were utterly clueless about what kind of rescue a lone, anxious keeper of facts could possibly offer.
You carefully pressed the leaf back into the journal, closing the cover gently. You remained by the fire, the ache now replaced by a vast, wakeful uncertainty, waiting for the cold, confusing dawn.
///
The next night, you did not even bother to open the journal. The leaf was pressed securely inside, a cold, vibrant anchor to the undeniable truth, rendering the act of simple journaling irrelevant. You sat by the hearth, stoking the fire until it burned with a low, steady heat, and waited up until it was deeply, utterly late; long past the hour you usually finished your entries.
The house was heavy with sleep and the silence was once again pregnant with anticipation. You finally rose, walking the few deliberate steps to the log wall, your hand holding the cold, firm edge of the oak leaf, which you pressed against the rough timber.
"Spirit?" you whispered, the word trembling slightly, but carrying a conviction you hadn't possessed the night before. "I know you were here. I found the leaf you left for me. It's real. It's beautiful."
Silence. You pressed the leaf harder against the wood.
"Please, I know you can hear me. I want to hear your voice again. The sad one," you continued, the words starting to rush out in a hurried stream, "the one that sounds like a man’s, the one that told me you were scared. I know you're scared, but I'm not. I'm not scared of you. I was scared I was losing my mind, but the leaf—the leaf proves you are here. So please, I want to hear you. I want to help you. You asked for help, and I am the only one awake, the only one who knows. Don't go quiet again. Just tell me what to do. Tell me anything, I just need to hear it. Don't make me sit here alone with this knowledge, you can't, you can't ask for help and then leave the help right here on the other side of the wall, I'm going crazy with it, I—"
You stopped abruptly, realizing you were rambling, your voice escalating into a frantic pitch that threatened the stillness of the home. You took a huge, shuddering breath, pressing your forehead against the cold wood.
A pause, vast and agonizing, stretched. Then, from the darkness on the other side of the wall, the low, strange voice returned. It was meek, fragile, and laced with a profound reluctance.
"Okay."
The single word was enough. It was a surrender, an invitation. You didn't wait, didn't question. The long wait, the frantic rambling, the desperate plea- it had all led to this. You grabbed the heavy shawl, threw it over your shoulders without tying it, and fumbled with the wooden bolt on the front door. It slid open with a whisper, and you were out in the biting cold of the winter night.
Your feet crunched on the frozen snow as you hurried around the cabin, your breath pluming in white clouds. The coop door was ajar, a dark, inviting maw. You slipped inside, the familiar scent of old straw and sleeping fowl doing nothing to ground the burgeoning unreality of the moment.
"Hello?" You whispered, your voice thin but steady, a stark contrast to the frantic monologue from moments before.
A sudden, sharp intake of breath came from the deepest, darkest corner of the coop, behind the stack of unused lumber. You turned, your eyes straining in the faint moonlight that filtered through the gaps in the plank walls.
And then you saw him.
He was tall his frame startlingly angular broad but thin, almost skeletal beneath what looked like tattered, earthy rags. His skin was of a peculiar, almost ghostly discoloration, pale, bruised blotches of blue and grey that seemed to absorb what little light there was. He was huddled, his long limbs drawn in tight, like a creature trying to make itself disappear. But it was his eyes that truly arrested you: they were wide, impossibly deep, and held within them all the sadness of the world- a profound, ancient grief that made your own chronic ache feel like a shallow scratch.
You saw him for only a flash, a devastating tableau etched into your mind. Then, with a sudden, jerky movement, his hands shot up, his palms flat and splayed, not quite covering his face but held up in a raw, instinctual gesture. It was a posture of profound defense, as if to protect himself from a blow, or perhaps, more tragically, to shield you from the full, overwhelming truth of his visage. He let out a small, wounded sound, like a creature caught in a trap.
The man's sudden, defensive gesture was heartbreaking. In that instant, the terrifying strangeness of his appearance faded beneath the overwhelming, familiar reality of his pain. You felt the weight of your own lifelong sorrow settle heavily back onto your chest, but this time, it was not a burden; it was a strange, empathetic armor. You knew this sadness; you cataloged it every night. His fear was simply a more acute version of the agony you had spent your life trying to manage.
You took a single, slow step forward, ensuring your movement was deliberate and non-threatening. You stopped a short distance away, kneeling slow and extending your right hand toward him, palm open and upward, in a gesture of simple, unarmed peace.
"Look," you murmured, your voice low and completely steady, allowing only compassion to color your tone. "I won't hurt you. I am here to help."
The man remained frozen for a long moment, his eyes—those deep, glowing sorrowful pools—watching your outstretched hand. Then, with a visible, painful effort, he began to lower his own shielding palms. It was a slow, nervous movement, evident in the tremor that ran through his patchwork arms, but beneath the fear, there was an unmistakable spark of desperate, necessary bravery. He slowly extended his own hand toward yours.
When his cold, long fingers finally met your warm palm, a single, sharp current of cold shot up your arm. You held his gaze, studying the deep, crystalline sadness in his eyes, feeling the sheer magnitude of the world's grief reflected there, yet feeling no fear at all. You held the simple, perfect truth of the night in your sight.
You offered a small, steady smile, the first true, unforced smile you had given in months, a small acknowledgement of the miracle you were witnessing.
"You are the Spirit of the Forest," You stated softly, the simple fact needing no grander declaration, just the quiet certainty of your journaled truth.
The Spirit gave the smallest, most heartbreaking shake of his head. A tiny, confused movement that did not suggest disagreement, but rather a profound, ongoing struggle to comprehend his own identity. His eyes, fixed on yours, were searching for a meaning he couldn't grasp.
You held his cold hand tighter, your thumb gently running a reassuring circle over his prominent knuckles. The contact felt grounding, a warmth against the immense chill he embodied. The familiar, low hum of sorrow within you rose to meet the sorrow in his eyes, creating a strange, quiet harmony.
He spoke then, the sound slow and effortful, the words carefully decided as if he were practicing language for the first time in his life, or as if he had to get this single, crucial sequence exactly right.
"You..." He began, his voice a low, graved whisper "...are my spirit."
The declaration struck you, not with alarm, but with a sudden, sharp, simple wonder. You had been looking for a cosmic power, a divine entity to catalog, a magnificent truth to record. Instead, he saw his own salvation, his own reason for existence, reflected in your lonely vigil. You, the meticulous keeper of simple facts, were now the profound, essential truth of his tragic world. You were his anchor.
The quiet, devastating weight of his declaration threatened to overwhelm you, stirring a host of deep, complicated emotions you had spent a lifetime diligently suppressing. You recognized the immediate danger of being consumed by the beautiful, tragic simplicity of this connection.
You gave his cold hand a final, firm squeeze and then gently released it, forcing yourself to return to the simple facts of the moment. "You are freezing," you stated, the cold air hitting your lungs providing immediate focus. "Come in by the fire. Everyone is sleeping, they will not stir."
The effect of your words was immediate and drastic. The Spirit did not simply hesitate; he recoiled. His eyes, seconds ago filled with a desperate, searching connection, were now wide with pure panic. With a silent, fearful urgency, he scooted backward across the hay-strewn floor, pulling his long, frail body close against the rough, cold plank of the coop wall, a motion as instinctive as a trapped animal seeking the deepest shadow. The movement was a stark, physical rejection of the warmth and the safety of the house.
"No," he whispered, the single word sharp with alarm. You knelt there, your hand still suspended in the cold air where his had just been, immediately understanding his upset. Anyone who saw him and didn’t understand his alarming height and scared skin may act out of fear. Not knowing the spirit was far more gripped by terror.
Decidedly, you rose to your feet, noticing for a moment, the spirits alarm at your sudden turning away. But you were on a mission. You slipped out of the coop and back inside the cabin, moving with a practiced, silent grace. The warm air felt foreign against your chilled skin. You avoided the hearth, where the shadows were too deep, and instead went straight to the trunk at the foot of your bed. With meticulous, quiet care, you pulled out your thickest spare wool blanket—a heavy, dark one that would absorb light and provide real warmth. Next came a pillow, and from the cold pantry, a loaf of still-soft bread and a small flask of clean water.
You knew, as you moved, that this was pathetic. A single blanket and a dry loaf were nothing for the Spirit of the Forest. The realization settled heavily: so much more would have to be done for this spirit in time, because you already knew the insistent, unshakeable urge within you would demand it. But this was all the night could offer without risking the security of the sleeping home. You gathered the pitiful bundle and, without looking at the dark mounds of your family, slipped back out into the bitter cold.
You slipped back into the coop, letting the door fall shut with a soft click that was lost in the cold air. The faint outline of the Spirit was still huddled in the corner, his wide eyes tracking your return with an anxiety that bordered on pain.
You moved toward him, gently placing the blanket, pillow, bread, and water down on the straw beside him. "I'm sorry," you whispered, crouching down so you were level with his cowering form. "I am sorry I don't have more. This is all I can bring tonight."
You did not wait for a response. You gently extended your hand and reached for his, taking his cold, thin fingers back into your grasp. This time, the tremor that ran through him was not just fear; it was a visible, full-body shudder, an overwhelming response to the simple physical contact. He was evidently not used to interaction, not accustomed to the steady, unalarming warmth of another living thing. His hand felt like frozen roots, yet you held it fast.
You pulled his hand slightly, slowly, until it was close to your face. Then, with deliberate, unwavering sincerity, you pressed his cold, discolored palm flat against your own warm cheek. The sensation was shocking—his skin was far colder and rougher than you expected, yet your own warmth felt like a profound, simple truth against his life.
"Look at me," you commanded softly, holding his gaze. "I am warm. I am alive. I am a friend. I will truly not hurt you." The simple warmth of your skin against his hand was your explanation, a fact more concrete than any promise. The expression in his deep, sorrowful eyes wavered, slowly giving way to a profound, bewildered realization. You had crossed the final line, offering not just help, but the shared, vulnerable fact of your own body as proof.
As the heat from your cheek slowly began to seep into his frozen palm, the tension in his shoulders seemed to snap. The fear did not entirely leave his eyes, but it was momentarily eclipsed by a look of overwhelming, simple relief. A single tear, shining faintly in the scarce moonlight, tracked a slow pattern down his scared cheek. He did not speak, but he very slowly, very slightly, pressed his fingers against your face. It was the first sign of acceptance, the first true acknowledgement of the Spirit of the Forest allowing himself to be cared for by his own terrified, lonely spirit.
///
The sun rose on a world suddenly sharp with danger. Every sound your family made, a low question from your father, the heavy scrape of a chair, your brothers distant, rhythmic chopping, now felt like an impending threat. You moved through your morning chores with a tense, brittle energy. The weight of the secret was immense; it was no longer just the sorrow you suppressed, but the physical, fragile existence you were now responsible for. You worried constantly about leaving any trace; a displaced shoe, a stray crumb near the back door, the persistent, earthy smell of the coop clinging to your shawl. You had promised help, and the fear of frightening him off with some careless mistake felt far heavier than the burden of his existence.
You monitored the coop wall constantly. When your youngest brother lingered near the corner while fetching firewood, your heart hammered against your ribs until he moved away, oblivious. When your father checked the lock on the front door, you felt a surge of cold panic. They could not find him; they would not understand the meek, sorrowful terror in his eyes. They would only see the strange, discolored man who did not belong, and you knew instinctively that any interaction would result in a second, final withdrawal, or worse. The simple, observable world of your facts was now a perilous cage you had to navigate with obsessive caution.
The night finally arrived, bringing with it the immense relief of deep, pervasive quiet. Once the last candle was blown out and the rhythmic breathing of sleep filled the cabin, you began your new routine. You gathered fresh water and another piece of bread, along with a small, flat slate and a piece of chalk salvaged from an old school lesson.
You slipped out to the coop and found the Spirit exactly where you had left him, still huddled against the cold wall, wrapped tightly in the dark wool blanket. He watched you approach, his deep eyes still carrying the enormous, lingering sadness, but now mixed with an unmistakable, profound trust.
///
Weeks bled into months. The bitter grip of winter finally loosened, and the first tentative whispers of spring began to stir the land. The frozen earth softened, allowing the first brave green shoots to push through. The air grew warmer, carrying the scent of damp soil and awakening life. The Spirit, for the first time, seemed less hunched, less defined by the cold. He would watch the early birds through the gaps in the planks, his gaze filled with that same quiet wonder, his pale face often tilted as if trying to recall a forgotten song. You would whisper to him about bringing breakfast or thank him for stacking a new pile of wood. He would respond with lithe grins, and sometimes sentences of understanding or gratitude. He would let you take his cold fingers in your grasp and hold them there as if to pray together when night fell and uncertainty crept in. You did not know what to do for him further. And he, though it seemed he had the capacity for understanding, did not say.
But then, the storms of spring began.
One night, the sky unleashed a fury. Rain hammered against the roof of the coop, driven by a wind that shrieked and howled like a banshee. Thunder cracked directly overhead, shaking the very foundations of the cabin. You found the Spirit not merely frightened, but utterly, completely undone. He was cowering deeper than ever, his tall frame trembling violently, his hands pressed hard over his ears, a low, guttural whimper escaping his throat.
"Spirit! What's wrong?" you cried, fighting against the noise of the storm. You knelt beside him, trying to gently pull his hands away. "It's only thunder! It will pass!"
He shook his head frantically, his eyes wide with a terror that surpassed even the first night's fear. "No! I... I don't know!" he cried, his voice barely audible. "My body... it feels afraid. It remembers. But my mind... my mind cannot catch up!" He was lost in a physical, instinctual panic, disconnected from any conscious understanding of the storm.
You did not hesitate. The idea of leaving him alone in that primal terror was unthinkable. You scooted closer, pulling his shaking body gently toward you. The straw was damp, the air thick with fear and the smell of wet earth. You held him, not speaking, not trying to explain, simply offering the warmth and solidity of your presence. You tucked his head against your chest, one hand stroking his tangled hair, the other rubbing circles on his strong back. You stayed there through the long, tumultuous night, feeling the tremors of his terror against your own heart, offering the only shelter you could against a fear that defied all understanding.
///
The opportunity you needed arrived two weeks later, delivered with the casual, cruel indifference of routine. Your siblings were required to travel to the nearest large city, two days' journey away, to sell the last preserves of winter and procure necessary goods for the planting season. The trip would take at least three weeks. However, your father would remain behind. His vision had been failing him for years, and now he being blind; the journey was too dangerous for him. He was a presence, a quiet, listening shadow in the house… but one whose dependence on routine and sound gave you a narrow margin of safety.
The day they departed was a blur of frantic activity. Once the carriage was packed and the final goodbyes exchanged, a profound, unsettling quiet fell over the cabin. You waited until your father had settled into his accustomed chair by the remaining embers of the morning fire, his cane resting beside him, his ears tuned to the familiar sounds of the house.
You slipped out to the coop. The Spirit was watching you, his deep eyes full of unspoken questions about the sudden change in the atmosphere. The spring storms had not ceased entirely, and the coop remained miserably cold and damp, the straw offering only meager protection.
You knelt before him, taking his cold hands. "They are gone," you whispered,"The others. They will be gone for weeks. My father is here but he cannot see you. He won’t be able to. You can't stay here anymore. Not in the damp."
The Spirit's hands trembled in yours. His eyes flickering nervously toward the thick log wall that separated them from the cabin's interior.
You held his gaze, allowing the familiar, compelling weight of your own sorrow to rise, transforming your plea into a fierce, absolute demand. "The cold will make you sick," you insisted, gently running your thumb over the ghostly discoloration of his skin. "You are frail. I offered help long ago. I promised I would manage. But I cannot do that if you are frozen in the straw."
Your voice hardened with a conviction born of love and desperation. "You are damned to accept it, and I am damned to give it. You must trust me. I will not let anything hurt you."
The Spirit searched your face, absorbing the fierce, undeniable truth of your commitment. The terror was still immense, but the weight of his physical need—the persistent chill that settled in his bones—and the magnitude of your desperate pledge finally overcame his fear. With a slow, agonizing effort, he nodded once.
"Okay," he whispered, a sound of profound, weary resignation.
With infinite caution, you led him to the door, quietly unbolting the latch. You took one last, steadying breath, preparing to cross the final, terrifying threshold of your secret world.
You gently guided the Spirit across the threshold, pulling him into the immediate, shocking warmth of the cabin. The first thing the Spirit registered was the heat. It hit him with the force of a physical blow—the thick, smothering air of the stove and the lingering warmth of the hearth. He winced, his discolored skin seeming to deepen in pallor under the sudden atmospheric change, his wide eyes immediately fixed on you.
Before your father, who was sitting in his chair a few feet from the still warm hearth, could question the sound of the door, you spoke out, your voice unnaturally bright and loud to override the Spirit’s nervous silence.
"Father?" you called, closing the door firmly behind you. "I'm sorry to wake you, but I brought a traveler in from the cold. He was caught out by the spring wind and needs a few hours to thaw."
Your father adjusted his position, his blind eyes turning in the direction of your voice, his expression immediately softening into welcoming hospitality. "Ah, a traveler! Good, good. Bring him closer, child. There's nothing like a warm hearth to chase the chill."
He lifted his hand in a vague gesture. "Tell him he's welcome to our meager fire. I hope he has some interesting stories from his journeys to share with an old man; it's been a quiet few weeks."
The Spirit entered the main room of the cabin. Though his movements were still timid, his steps were slow and deliberate, imbued with a fierce, terrified determination. He kept his gaze locked solely on you, seeking direction and reassurance in your presence, his frail form standing out starkly against the familiar shadows.
"Tell me, friend," your father prompted, his voice friendly and expectant. "Where have you traveled from? What sights did you see?"
The Spirit shifted his focus, forcing himself to look toward the sound of the voice. He opened his mouth, and the words came out slowly, carefully decided, but without the usual terror. He was not lying, only stating the overwhelming fact of his existence.
"I can't remember," he whispered, his voice resonating slightly in the small room. "It's been a hectic journey."
///
The weeks that followed were thus; your father sat passing the long, quiet hours, often told aloud from tattered books of scripture or old adventure tales- when the spirit would pick them up and rattle off their titles like a question. Your father’s voice ever a comforting drone. The Spirit would listen, utterly captivated, his head cocked, absorbing the flow of words even if their full meaning escaped him. He began to learn not just the cadences of human storytelling, but the meaning behind why.
For you, the nights returned to their sacred ritual, but transformed. Your journal was open, and you wrote frantically, night after night, trying to capture the impossible reality, struggling desperately to separate thought from feeling. How could you explain the existence of a man made of sorrow and cold, who brought berries and split wood, who listened to your blind father's stories with a child's wonder? How could you describe the gentle weight of his hand on your cheek, or the fear that now lived in the space between your heart and your throat? The lines between the objective facts of your world and the profound, overwhelming subjective truth of the Spirit had irrevocably blurred.
And as you wrote, the Spirit would always be there. He would not sleep. He would sit near the dying embers of the fire, his blanket drawn around him, his deep, sad eyes fixed on you. He watched the steady, familiar scratch of your pen, the silent movement of your hand across the page. There was no demand in his gaze, no judgment, only a vast, aching wonder, a deep, silent longing to not let sleep separate you. You wrote your truth, and he simply witnessed it, the silent guardian of your frantic, bewildered words, both of you connected by the quiet, shared tragedy of the late night.
Finally, you could not write another word. The effort to capture the uncapturable was exhausting. With a sigh, you set the leather-bound journal and the pen aside, the final, simple act of giving up control. You gently slid off the stool and crawled closer to the Spirit , where he’d often sat, leaned near the fire place with blankets abound, watching you.
He studied your approach, his sorrowful eyes vast and receptive. As you settled near him, leaning against the cold stones of the hearth, he spoke, his voice low and weary.
"You know so much," he whispered, a deep admiration and confusion woven into the tone. "More than you know what to do with. You write it all down. I know nothing. I don't know how to get back home, to learn." The words were an articulation of the root of his profound sadness- the loss of memory and identity.
"Is that the help you need?" You asked, leaning your head against the cool stone and looking into his desperate eyes. "To get back? To find what you lost?"
He hesitated, the sheer uncertainty of his existence heavy in the air. "Maybe," he finally replied, the single word soft with resignation.
You did not wait for a clearer answer. You reached out, offering your hand once more. This time, there was no fear, no painful hesitation. His cold, technicolor hand was quick to reach back to yours, seeking the familiar warmth and reassurance. You watched, mesmerized, as your fingers laced together, studying the way your contrasting colors and forms aligned, a simple, undeniable fact of connection.
Then, you reached further. With infinite tenderness, you placed both of your palms on his face, cradling his sharp cheekbones and cold skin. It was the first time you had touched him so intimately. He did not pull away; instead, he leaned into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut, savoring the warmth.
Emboldened by his acceptance, and moved by the profound, simple truth of his need, you shifted forward. You wrapped your arms gently around his incredibly broad shoulders, pulling him into a soft, careful embrace. He went utterly still, his body rigid with shock. He was stunned, unused to this basic human gesture of comfort. Yet, after a single, frozen moment, his arms slowly, tentatively, came up to return the embrace, accepting the physical comfort, accepting the beautiful, terrifying truth that he was no longer alone in the dark. And there you eased. You felt safe to curl there and stay and sleep.
///
The morning came not with the gentle, slow diffusion of light, but with a shock of noise and violence that ripped through the quiet cabin.
You and the Spirit were roused instantly, not by the sun, but by a deafening, panicked shriek, followed immediately by the heavy thud of gear hitting the floor and the distinct, terrible sound of your father's cane clattering away. Your family was back early.
"MONSTER! Get away from that thing! Get away from him!"
You scrambled up from the floor by the hearth, instantly disoriented by the chaos. Your siblings stood jammed together just past the main door, trembling violently, their faces bleached white with shock and fury. Your two older brothers were already raising their heavy hunting rifles, their hands shaking so badly that the barrels wavered erratically, pointed directly at the space where you and the Spirit had been curled.
The Spirit, immediately stripped of the brief safety he had felt, reacted instantly. He let out a low, terrified howl, his tall body collapsing inward. He cowered into the corner against the cold stones, his knees drawn up, his strange, discolored palms flying up to shield his face, reverting instantly to the primal fear that defined him.
You threw yourself forward, stepping directly into the line of fire, your body shielding the cowering form of the man you now understood. The warmth of the shared sleep was replaced by a cold, desperate fury.
"NO!" you screamed back, the sound torn from your lungs, louder and more savage than anything your family had ever heard from you. "Lower those! You will not touch him!"
Your older brother, fear turning instantly to rage, yelled back, "Get out of the way! Look at it! It's some kind of thing! Where did you find that monster, and why is it here? It could have killed Father!"
"He is no monster!" you shouted, standing over the trembling, huddled form. The chronic, dark sorrow inside you now surged out, weaponized by protection. "He is the Spirit of the Forest! The one who gives us the berries and the kindling! No one- no one dares to harm him!"
Your littlest sibling rose a shake finger. “Look at his skin! Look at his eyes! That is not a blessing, that is a sickness! Get away before it harms you, please, please!"
Your middle sibling trembled just behind, “He was sleeping with you! Right there!"
The terrible truth was out, exposed by the rude light of day and the brutal simplicity of their fear.
Suddenly, your father moved, his stillness instantly shattering into frantic action. He hadn't been cowering; he had been listening, trying to locate the source of the danger. He flung his cane away and lunged forward, his nearly sightless eyes wide with alarm and driven by raw paternal instinct, trying to get between the guns and the noise.
"STOP IT! STOP, I say!" he roared, his voice cutting through the hysteria. He grabbed wildly for your older brother's rifle barrel, his hands fumbling but finding purchase. "Put that down! You will hurt her! He has been here with me! He is quiet! She said he is the Spirit of the Forest! I believe her!"
The declaration hit you with the force of a physical blow, moving you more than any threat of a gun. You looked at your father's panicked, resolute face. You couldn't be sure if he truly meant it—if the chronic ache of his blindness and loneliness had finally allowed him to accept the fantastic truth—or if he was simply trying to diffuse the violence and protect you both from his terrified, armed children. The ambiguity was a sudden, sharp, new sorrow, yet his voice was your shield.
Your older brother, fear turning instantly to cold, deliberate rage, yanked the rifle back. "He is a threat, Father! A monster! Get back, or we will have to protect ourselves from you, too!" The threat was sharp, calculated, and aimed to clear the line of fire. Your younger sibling, equally terrified, stood ready, his own rifle barrel now held steady, pointed with chilling resolve at the huddle near the hearth.
The Spirit, still huddled, let out a low, mournful sound, a sound of perfect, shattering surrender.
Your father planted his feet, ignoring the immediate danger. He knew exactly where the Spirit was by the sound of his ragged breathing. He turned his face toward you, hearing your frozen breath. He didn't waste time trying to rationalize the Spirit's nature.
"He’”ll shoot if you don’t go.” Your father shouted, his voice cracking with urgent despair. “Run! Child! Take your friend! NOW!" He threw his body to the side, blindly blocking the line of sight for a split second. "Go! Run to the forest! Get him out of here!"
There was no time for supplies, no thought for the journal or the leaf pressed within it. The simple fact of the imminent gunshots was all that mattered.
You lunged forward, grabbing the Spirit's pale, thin arm and yanking him hard, forcing his collapsed body to rise. "Get up! Now!" you hissed, shoving him toward the back door, the only exit not blocked by your siblings.
The Spirit stumbled, his eyes still wide with terminal fear, but he obeyed the physical command. As his long, broad body gained momentum, his fingers clamped around your wrist with a sudden, surprising strength. Instead of letting go, he held fast, dragging you with him as he launched himself toward the door. And you were glad for the momentum, because you were ready to dash at his side no matter.
You didn't look back to see your father grapple with your brothers; the sounds of desperate shouts and heavy breathing were enough. The Spirit did not wait. He began to run, a panicked, frantic effort that was terrifyingly fast and utterly silent. You were pulled along, your feet scrambling on the wet earth, the fear in your chest a raw, desperate thing.
Then, just as you stumbled on a root, the Spirit paused for the briefest blink of time. Without breaking his stride, his free hand shot down, gripping the fabric of your shawl. With an effortless, shocking movement, he scooped you up, lifting you clear off the ground and settling your weight against his side. Suddenly, you were moving faster than you thought humanly possible. His long, discolored legs ate up the ground, carrying you both toward the dense, awakening thicket of the forest.
You almost felt peace. You could almost feel the mighty tree’s shielding you. But then,
K so you've done Caleb smut now you have to do Dracula smut!
oh, sweet summer child, i've been dying for this task. vlad smut is here! NSFW!
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
“Have the powers that be warned you of all the duties?” Vlad asked, humming questions across the dining table in his room. There was dark wine and savory dishes and fresh fruits- and a crackling fire at your side to illuminate the celebratory shared meal. You’d been officially wed for a whole day, having only just made it back to your new home early this evening after traveling from the church your world and name changed in.
“I assume the usual. Look right. Act right. Keep society at peace while you’re away doing worse. Produce an heir.” Your tone was one of near vexation. Here, in the insulated quiet of his, er your, private room, far from guards, gossiping noblemen, or prying maids, you were testing the very limits of your new confinement. Your statements had grown progressively more deliberate as the night fell, each one a stone dropped into unknown waters. You knew your fate was to be decided without your consideration, but you desperately hoped for a life where you could speak your mind without an ever-gripping fear tightening in your throat.
Vlad had yet to shoot down your ever more curious statements. He nearly smiled in acknowledgment now. And that surprised you. For all the warnings you’d received from your family and friends, about the man’s brandish, ungodly, warrior ways, you hadn't expected to see him flash a smile of unguarded amusement. You especially hadn't expected to feel a sudden, sharp pang of pleasure coiling in your gut, to find his lithe expression illuminated just for your gaze alone.
“Unfortunately, what happens within our union is not our concern alone,” Vlad spoke, taking a deliberate sip of wine, the cut crystal of his glass catching the firelight. He reached for the bottle, filling his cup again. “There are eyes on our every move. Expectations that demand appeasement.”
“Why did they pick me?” You were suddenly struck with curiosity, leaning closer to the table from where you sat, like you were trading secrets, like the room wasn’t already bare of eavesdroppers.
“I’m unsure.” Vlad pursed his lips, and you could tell he meant it. “They did not divulge their details. Long ago, I reckoned they pick someone strong to match my wrath. Someone soft to balance my ferocity. Someone smart to keep up. I imagine that’s what they wanted for our reign. Can’t imagine they’d disobey such orders, my wishes.”
“So you must know all these things are true about me then, or might as well be.” You were fated to be a blank slate, to let others fill in. Though you had your own ways, thoughts, feelings, you’d been prepared for this.
Vlad’s deep, steady gaze held yours. “I hope these things, but I do not expect them of you. I expect to learn your true nature over time. This arrangement has been ratified by those who have expectations. I would like now for this arrangement to bloom, however it is naturally meant to. If you hate me, so be it. If you love me…”
“And if you hate me?” You countered with a raised brow and a chalice of wine to your lips.
“I don’t see that becoming so, from my perspective now.” He spoke in a low promise.
“What do you see?”
“I see a challenge,” Vlad murmured, the corners of his mouth hinting at that dangerous, appealing smile again. “I see the corners of your lips upturn to jest. I see the most alluring set of eyes. And I see a delicate pulse beneath your skin that elevates when I get a rise out of you. So far.”
“I can’t decide if you’re trying to make the most of our solitude or if you’re just another insatiable ruler who is used to getting his way.”
“I suppose there is truth to both assumptions.” Vlad, already leaned back in his chair, slid a little lower, keeping his bright eyes locked on yours. You nearly gasped, taken aback by the honesty. Alarmed by the vulnerability you felt begin to blossom in your chest. You’d been prepared for this in many ways, but your new husband had kept casting glances and speaking soft words that made your breath dare to catch.
“Well, let’s get it over with then, if it must be done swiftly. I know what to expect, and I don’t fancy anticipating the act any longer,” You decided, your voice stern, eyes ripping away from Vlad’s to stare at the flickering hearth. You set your chalice down, the ring of the crystal on the wood loud in the sudden silence, pushed your chair back, and rose from it to linger closer to the end of the table where you found your husband still sitting. His arms were tucked neatly around his chest, and his long legs were open as he relaxed deep in his seat, glaring up at you in a curious way you again, hadn’t expected. His posture was one of utter ease, yet his gaze was heavy, consuming.
“What, not good enough all a sudden? I come from an immediate family untouched by plagues and illness, and a lineage of longevity. That’s the point right?” You countered, settling into your posture as you stood, wondering why Vlad was still relaxed in his position.
“Some of the point, but not all of it.” He shot up a brow and pointed his remark at you like it was blatantly obvious. You shrugged, a silent demand that he explain himself already.
“I’m not entirely interested in your constitution. I’m interested in intimacy.” He spoke so surely. But this was not a concept you associated with the practical requirements of your wedding night, and the ignorance of it, the lack of established rules, made a cold nervousness tighten in your belly.
“My friends never dared to warn me of storybook words being used to waste time, now. Why do you indulge in these fantasies when you hear me consenting to get this through with? Is this a sick form of torture you learned pillaging your last village?”
“You’ve got some very sad friends, then, my dear.” Vlad sighed, moving to stand. He took a single, measured step around the table. The shift in proximity was staggering. He was towering, his presence dominating the entire circle of firelight.That's an excellent direction to take the tension. Highlighting the protagonist's nervousness and Vlad's intentional pause will significantly elevate the sensual anticipation. He took a single, measured step around the table, abandoning the wood between you. All barriers had been removed. You held your breath, the sensual tension building not from physical contact, but from the raw, deliberate pressure of Vlad’s gaze. You realized with a startling clarity that your earlier brazenness was fading, replaced by the acute, terrifying sense of being truly seen.
“I am not interested in your duty,” Vlad lowered his voice to whisper, his entire being dangerously close, the scent of wine and cool night air clinging to him. He was near enough now that if you exhaled, the air would stir the fine hairs at his temple. “I am interested in your desire. I want you to be here because you choose to be, even if that choice is only a desperate curiosity about what I am capable of.” He waited. The air felt charged, metallic. The firelight cast his features in sharp planes of light and shadow, making him look less like a man and more like a figure carved from legend. You realized he was giving you the space to retreat, to speak, or to step forward. He was forcing the decision onto you, making the fulfillment of the night’s expectations a matter of your will, not his conquest.
You swallowed hard, the muscles in your throat aching. You pressed your lips together, trying to organize the storm of your thoughts into a single, cohesive sentence, but only confusion surfaced.
“I… I don't know what you mean by that,” You admitted, the words weak and fragmented, shattering the stern composure you'd worked so hard to maintain. You finally met his eyes, allowing the vulnerability to show. “I don’t know what ‘desire’ is supposed to look like in this situation. It wasn't discussed. The expectation was function. My only instruction was to endure and perform. No one prepared me for a choice… or for this… demand for feeling.”
Vlad watched you, his expression unchanging, his hands flexing flat at his sides, restless to reach out of you, but remaining distant all the same. He hadn’t moved an inch, intensifying the quiet power of his restraint.
“Then we can begin the lesson,” He stated, his voice now gentle, the sharp edges of the warlord softened but still held an undercurrent of something deeply sensual. He slowly rose a set of fingers and took another deliberate step backward, increasing the distance between you by a comfortable foot. It was a physical gesture of respect for your hesitation, a calculated move that shifted the balance of power entirely.
“Take my hand if you choose. I find,” Vlad began, his gaze drifting from your uncertain eyes down to the tightly clenched white knuckles of your hands resting on the fabric of your dress, “that desire often begins with curiosity. With the awareness of what one does not know.”
He held his palm up and still and waiting while his eyes drifted to point toward the heavy, intricately carved bed frame that house the curtained sleeping chamber. “The expectation is that we share that bed, yes. But I will not command you into it. Not yet. I will wait here. Until you decide you are curious enough to see what happens when you step away from the table, away from the duty, and closer to the man you have been told to fear.”
His eyes, heavy and dark, returned to yours, a genuine question now resting in their depths.
“You may spend the rest of the night plotting, enduring the cold fear of the unknown. Or,” Vlad paused, letting the silence draw taut, “You may choose to cross the small distance between us and find out what I truly desire. The time is yours, my wife.”
The fire crackled, illuminating the challenge laid bare between you. You felt the weight of the moment, he was offering you the control of the situation, knowing that the pressure of choice was often the most compelling form of temptation.
The tension was an unbearable weight of expectation and curiosity wound so tight it was nearly suffocating. The relief of being allowed to hesitate was instantly replaced by the terrifying responsibility of making a deliberate move. Vlad had given you the choice, and by doing so, he had stripped away the safety of resignation. Now, staying put felt not like resistance, but like cowardice.
Your eyes flicked from the intimidating shadow of the bed to the mesmerizing stillness of the man before you. You had been bought, wed, and traveled hundreds of miles to fulfill a duty; to balk now because he had used an unexpected word like 'intimacy' felt absurd. A tremor ran through you, not of fear, but of a sudden, reckless decision. You would not stand here, frozen by uncertainty, waiting for the dawn. You would accept his challenge and cross the line he had drawn.
Taking a deep, shaky breath, you pushed away from the table. The movement was slow, deliberate, a small, yet seismic shift in the dynamic between you. You walked around the heavy wooden barrier, until you reached the exact spot where Vlad stood waiting. You stopped directly in front of him, close enough to feel the slight warmth radiating from his body, yet careful not to brush against him.
You looked up, meeting his heavy gaze, searching for a hint of triumph or mockery, but found only potent anticipation. When your fingers fluttered to fall into his palm, the warmth radiating from his touch was fiercer than the flames from the hearth. Vlad let your touch linger for a moment, his eyes drinking in your connection, before he moved. His hand held yours still, drawing closer to his being. He brought your hand to the bend go his neck, brushing your thumb to rest near his throat, grazing his finger tips across the back of your knuckles to slide your palm ever so slightly toward his chest while his hooded stare fixed factly to your own.
“This,” He murmured, his voice now ragged, utterly devoid of the calculated calm he’d maintained, “is what I desire.”
His large, calloused fingers wrapped around your wrist, his thumb brushing over the vein that pulsed furiously there. Instead of pulling you closer, he gently brought your hand to his mouth. He did not kiss it, but turned his head and pressed his lips to your inner wrist, a long, reverent contact that sent a devastating wave of heat and shivers up your arm and across your skin. The gesture was possessive, sensual, and overwhelmingly tender.
He lifted his head, his eyes burning with a dangerous promise. “Tell me now. Do you want to leave this room, or do you want to learn what comes next?”
You looked at the dark, compelling sincerity in his eyes, feeling the relentless thrum of your pulse beneath his thumb. You could no longer claim ignorance or appeal to mere necessity. A soft, genuine smile touched your lips. It was a silent admission of surrender to the moment, not to the duty.
“I want to know,” You whispered, your voice catching with the heat that was rapidly spreading from your wrist through your veins. You were no longer asking about an heir or a reign; you were asking about him.
The intensity in Vlad's eyes deepened, transforming into a slow, knowing burn. He released your wrist, but only to curl his hand gently around the back of your neck, his fingers tangling softly in the hair at your nape. The touch was firm yet non-demanding, simply holding you steady in the gravity of the moment.
“My wife,” He murmured, “I shall lead by example,” His face loomed impossibly closer, his breath warm and intoxicating on your skin.
He moved a single, slow step backward, away from the remnants of the table and the cold stone floor, bringing you into the golden, pervasive heat of the hearth.
The firelight immediately enveloped you, turning the rich, dark velvet of his wardrobe and the shimmering fabric of your dress into hues of amber and blood. The crackling flames seemed to amplify the tension, making the air feel charged, electric. Vlad lowered his head, not for a hasty kiss, but a measured approach that gave you ample time to retreat. You closed your eyes, leaning fractionally into the heat of his body, accepting the inevitable.
When his mouth finally met yours, it was not the harsh, conquering act you had braced for, but a slow, searching press. It was a question, an invitation, entirely defined by the deliberate slowness of his movements. He allowed your lips to remain passive for a long, breath-stealing moment, giving you the control to deepen the kiss or to pull away.
The taste of dark wine and the scent of woodsmoke mingled with the intoxicating, unique musk of his skin. You hesitated for only a second longer before your hands, till resting on his chest, began to slide upward. Your fingers gripping the rigid muscles of his shoulders, pulling yourself into the embrace.
The slight movement was all the answer he needed. With a low, guttural sound that vibrated deep in his chest, Vlad deepened the kiss, his earlier restraint finally dissolving into a powerful, consuming urgency. One of the hands that had rested gently at your neck now moved to your waist, pulling your body against the hardy length of his, eliminating the last barrier of space, claiming you fully under the hot, watchful gaze of the fire. His other, brushed against the skin of your shoulder, causing the sleeve of your dress to fall away where his fingers brushed your collarbone.
Your breath caught in your throat as Vlad claimed your body against his, and his tongue dared to dance across your lips. Your hands flew to tangle in his hair, of their own volition. You weren’t totally ignorant that moments like now existed. You just never thought there was room for them in a forced wedlock. You thought romance was for knights and princesses and sailors and gods. You knew the man you married was a myth in the making. But you weren’t expecting him to care enough to cares you as he had just now.
The kiss deepened, becoming a fierce, shared conversation of mounting desire. He was tracing the edge of your anticipation, moving with a knowing urgency that spoke of deep, banked fires finally given air. Vlad broke the kiss only to drag his lips along the exposed column of your neck, his breath hot and ragged against your skin.
"You are everything they commanded,” He rasped, the words a rough counterpoint to the velvet friction of his mouth, "and everything I wanted." He lifted his head just enough for his eyes to lock onto yours, the dark centers dilated with need. With a final, possessive sweep of his hand, he guided your face up to his, sealing the decision you had made under the glow of the hearth. You were no longer just a bride and a husband; in the consuming firelight, you were two beings driven by a mutual, undeniable, and long awaited urgency.
He released your mouth, only to shift his attention to your neck and collarbone, pressing a trail of possessive, open-mouthed kisses along the skin he had just exposed. You gasped, the sound lost in the growing fervor of the moment. With a singular, focused movement, he swept you into his arms, lifting you effortlessly against his chest. In this embrace, you felt not the cold weight of the political crown, but the immense, grounding strength of the man. He carried you swiftly, not toward the fire, but toward the grand, shadowed recess of the bedchamber.
Your heavy dress hit the sheets before you, the fabric softening your blow. Vlad lingered near the edge of the bed, chest rising and falling at a rate like he’d just sprinted into battle. You sat there, breath quickened in your own ribs, casting a gaze up to the man who’d thrown you here. And between breaths, his smile bloomed back. That slow deliberate turning of his lips meant just for you to see, caused just by you alone. The sight alone sent desire shooting through your core in a manner you’d never been over taken by until this very hour of your lifetime.
“Have you had your fill of this study, bride? Or shall I turn another page?” Vlad asked, his voice low, his eyes on fire with desperation, his arms falling to balance on either side of your figure, leaning down to rake his teeth along your neck with more ferocity than before. He was daring to push his luck. But you somehow believe if you pushed him to the floor he’d stay there without arguing until you clawed to claim him once more. And when you rose a hand toward him, you already knew your decision would be to rest your fingers delicately at the side of his cheek.
The breath hitched in Vlad’s throat, a deep, satisfied sound. His eyes, dark and heavy with need, rose to meet yours as he recognized the challenge and the complete, reckless surrender in your gaze. With a sound that was raw and utterly non-verbal, he gave in to the pressure, allowing you to drag him fully forward and down onto the bed, his weight sinking into the mattress over you. This was not a conquest; it was a mutual, hungry, chosen entanglement.
The light from the distant fire played across the fierce planes of his face as his mouth finally claimed yours again, the urgency now a dizzying, shared current that promised to leave nothing unstudied. Though you still hadn’t the faintest idea of what was meant to happen here beyond the shedding of clothes and the plunging of hips. That’s all you’d been told. Kissing wasn’t a word used in the warnings. Caressing wasn’t a word you’d ever heard beyond a fairytale.
Vlad was slow to show you what he meant to happen next, but deliberate in every single scratch of his fingers and graze of his teeth. When his eye’s fell to lock onto yours and he hooked a finger at the sleeve of your dress, you knew he intended to remove it entirely. You figured the nicety was to be exchanged by you yanking at the buttons of his coverings, a silent permission being begged. Vlad’s gaze, heavy and possessive, shifted from your eyes to the remaining garment. He recognized the silent offering in your hand reaching for his closures.
He released the finger hooked in your sleeve and instead moved his hands to the sides of your bodice. With a practiced, economical movement, he ripped the delicate fabric, tearing the seams that had held you constrained moments before. The sound of the silk shredding was sharp and shocking in the quiet room, a sudden, thrilling act of The dress fell open, giving way entirely, freeing your shoulders and chest. Before you could even gasp, he was pressing a hot, demanding kiss to the newly revealed skin near your shoulder, daring to glide his mouth down to your exposed chest. His breath a shuddering testament to his own barely contained ferocity.
Your breath caught, a faint cry stifled by the weight of his mouth. This was beyond the gentle caress of fairytales; this was the raw, wanton language of the warrior who had claimed your submission but was now celebrating your choice. As he devoured your breasts with languid kisses, you finally felt his hip move, pressing his burgeoning need against your thigh, a sudden, unavoidable reminder of the expected function buried beneath the intimacy. You cried out softly, a sound of both shock and sharp anticipation, as the abstract desire you'd been exploring suddenly became a powerful, physical reality that was utterly impossible to ignore.
The gasp that escaped you was one of sharp anticipation, but you quickly converted the sound into a low, commanding hum. He had been dominant in his decision to tear the fabric, but you wouldn’t allow him to believe that action gave him license over your will. You slipped your hands from his chest and wrapped your arms around his back, pulling his warm, heavy body even tighter against yours. Instead of responding to the press of his hips, you used the leverage of your intertwined embrace to shift your entire body beneath his. You twisted, rolling him partially onto his side, a maneuver that stripped him of his full weight and brought your faces close, eye to eye, in the intimate glow.
"Not yet," you whispered against his mouth, the single word a velvet gauntlet thrown down in challenge. You watched for a beat as Vlad let his breath shudder and his eyes dance across your features, utterly submissive in your wake. But then his grin was growing again, and his fingers were dancing across the expanse of skin he’d just revealed.
“No, darling, not yet, we’ve only just begun and there are footnotes to my lesson you’ve never known the likes of I’m sure of it.”
Before you could pull his buttons loose, before you could articulate your next demand, Vlad moved. The shift was not one of struggle, but of masterful, fluid transition. He captured your working hands with one of his own, easily pinning them above your head against the cool silk of the pillow. The power that had been briefly yielded was now reclaimed, not with force, but with the quiet, overwhelming authority of a predator who knows precisely when the play must end.
He didn't need to roll you fully beneath him; the single, strong movement was enough to make you fully aware of his weight, his strength, and the sudden, complete loss of your operational control. His body pressed down, a warm, heavy blanket of muscle against your delicate skin.
"The study of desire is often found in the surrender to the knowledgeable hand, my clever bride," Vlad murmured, his voice dropping into a low, hypnotic register as he moved his free hand to the curve of your hip. His touch was an immediate, demanding heat that ignited a deeper, more primal response than your own calculated control had achieved. He began to trace the line of your body, moving with exquisite slowness, forcing your breath to hitch. "I've allowed you the opening chapter. Now, allow me to dictate the rising action."
Your heart pounded against your ribs, a paused cry logged in your throat, as you waited in anticipation of his next move. Vlad released his grip to free your hands above your head. But he was quick to press his lips against your ear and demand you keep your arms still, immovable. He was quick to demand your full allowance. And all the while, he ripped away the remains of your dress and fabric that had pooled at your hips. In a painfully slow set of heartbeats, he’d stripped you bare. There was nothing to shield you from the chill of the room so far beyond the fireplace. There was no where to hide that Vlad couldn’t drink in the fullness of your figure. And with a grin he bit his lips between his teeth and produced a humming groan of a laugh, just as he dove down to grate his lips to your neck again. The feeling was now warm with familiarity, a comfort in this newly vulnerable state. But then they moved.
His lips ghosted nearer to your breasts once more, familiar but producing a different kind of ferocious heat in your nervous system. His fingers curled at the hilt of your hips, pinning your lower half down into the sheets, when his kisses moved toward your stomach.
Your breath quickened as you laid in the throes of the heated trail of his mouth to your skin. And then he moved his kisses moved again- to your very centre. His plush lips pushed against the middle of you, a graveled sigh escaping to ease his shoulders. But yours rose in a tense shock, your elbows bending for you to sit up and lean back against. Vlad didn’t seem to notice or care that you’d broken the ‘no moving your arms’ rule. He was entirely lost in the space he found himself in between your legs, pressing to lap his tongue at the base of you, hollowing his mouth to suction against your delicate skin. Vlad’s hands force your hips still, the muscles in his forearms flexing in your view. His tongue dared to prod at your center, causing a sharp exhale to leave your throat. You were at a loss to describe your senses, your chest burned with desperation, your back arched of its own volition. And you didn’t know how much more overwhelm your body could handle.
You didn’t know if you were supposed to stop him. You didn’t know if you were supposed to do something. But before you could decide for yourself, your body was moving with a mind of its own, your most carnal state taking over your conscious mind. Your hips rolled against Vlad’s stronghold, your legs ached with tension, your core ceased burning with want and was all of a sudden overcome with flames that reached up stomach to your chest, a cold feverish chill racked your body to tremble, as Vlad reluctantly slowed the lapping of his tongue, and huffed another set of sighs against your inner thigh.
He slumped there catching his breath for a beat, before ghosting his touch up your sides fresh with goosebumps. As your husband shifted his weight to crawl closer, he shot sharp gaze under a raised brow, asking a silent question.
“No, no one ever dared warn me of that part.” You huffed a heavy discombobulated laugh, stunned by the reaction the man had risen from you with just the work of his lips.
“Well I’m glad I could be the one to see you through there.” His response was saturated in lust, but soft and sweet as the touch of his hand to the side of your face. He pulled you in for a scandalous kiss to the same lips that had just become drenched from your centre. You kissed him back with great force, unable to wait any longer to remove his clothes, to attempt to make him just as desperate for breath under the weight of touch as you had been.
You rolled over, putting yourself briefly above him, pinning Vlad’s shoulders to the mattress with your hands. The earlier lesson on control was not forgotten. You met his gaze, still blazing with satisfied lust, and felt a surge of exhilarating power. This was not merely an exchange of duty; it was a battle waged entirely with touch and desire.
You dragged your fingers down his hard, warm chest, tearing at the remaining buttons of his top and trousers one by one- with a fierce, reckless impatience. The last layers of cloth gave way, finally revealing the full extent of the man you had married. The raw, unadulterated pleasure of seeing him fully exposed, was only escalated by your shared exhale of pleasure, when your fingers danced around the length of your husband’s middle. He was at your mercy. You watched his breath pause just as wildly as yours had moments before. There was no hesitation, no thought of propriety—only the consuming, immediate need to return the favor, to drive him to the same shocking, discombobulated state he had pulled you from. And you barely fumbled, it just became immediately clear how to caress your fingers across his length, how hard to press your palm into his the stiffness of him. You watched his eyes flutter closed, you felt his hips jump for more friction. You knew what was to happen next.
“Now.” You decided, not simply ready to endure the finality of the act, but full of curios need to know what it would be like with him. You watched Vlad’s eyes roll open, and saw the ghost of a grin on his lips. You felt his fingers move to keep you right where you were, crouched above him, as he used his other hand to push himself to sit up.
“You stay there. You start.” Vlad gave you a nod, mentioning something about wanting you to find a pace you’d be comfortable enduring at first. Your heart was a hammer. No one had warned you it might be. Your stomach was on fire. No one had warned you of that much either.
With that, his hip aligned with yours and his hand landed at your side, easing you down in a slow completion- not a sudden plunge, but a slow, deliberate claiming that sent a deep, consuming fervor spreading through your core. His mouth returned to yours, and this time, the kiss was deeper, consuming, a powerful, unspoken affirmation that the lesson had officially shifted from debate to sensation. The pressure was all consuming, and when you dared to rock against him, you thought your heart might jump clean through your caged chest. Your fingers raked to yank at the mans tangled hair, his bright eyes drowned in pleasure, his jaw slack in lithe submission. You were sure this moment would have been shrouded in aggression, by the power of his hand alone. But here you were, rocking your hips against his, feeling his entirety filling your core. And he was just letting you. It made your lungs burn with greed and it made your body demand a faster pace.
And as you worked with a set of small sighs to follow your senses demands, Vlad’s glance grew more hungry, you could tell, now. You could read him now. He didn’t ask with words. He simply pressed a hand to stall your rocking, and waited for you to comply. And then he pushed you away. It was a horrid cold moment of separation that his burning eye contact tried to make up for. Until it didn’t have to. Until he was balanced above you, and he was piercing the core of you with him, more relentless, less forgiving. Your knees bloomed wide, your fingers dug like claws into his shoulders, your eyes rolled at the sound of his gruff sighs falling down to your ear. He slammed his hips against yours with all the power and greed of the myth he’d always been compared to. You laid in acceptance, like your soul was being escorted into the heavens and you could finally relinquish control for divinity.
Every touch, every pressure point, every gasp of air pulled from your lungs was met, answered, and amplified by Vlad. The fear of duty was long forgotten, replaced by a reckless, exhilarating focus on the immediate, profound sensation. You were no longer the blank slate bride, nor was he the cold, mythical ruler; you were simply two people clinging to the edge of a world they had just discovered together.
When the fervor finally ebbed, and your husband had been reduced to a slump of exhaustion at your side, you both rested
breathless, tangled in silk, shadow, and sweat. The fire in the main chamber had burned down to glowing coals, casting just enough ambient light to define the powerful curve of Vlad’s shoulder where he lay beside you. He remained close, his heavy arm draped possessively over your waist, his breath slow and warm against your hair. The silence that settled was not the charged, expectant quiet of the start of the night, but a deep, satisfying quietude, weighted by the intimacy of exhaustion.
You turned your head slightly, pressing a soft, lingering kiss against the solid muscle of his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heart beneath your lips. The lessons of the night; of desire, of surrender, and of mutual ownership were complete. You had come prepared for a political arrangement, but you had found a man whose strength was matched only by the demanding gentleness of his passion. In the silence of the marital bed, the union was finally sealed, not by the words of the church, but by the quiet, undeniable understanding that bloomed in the wake of their shared, explosive hunger.
“Tell me, my clever bride,” Vlad sighed, his voice thick and low, pulling the sheet up to cover your shoulders with a possessive grace. “Now that you have read the footnotes and seen past the required constitution, do you still wish for a swift end to this arrangement? Or are you curious to study the second volume?”
You didn't have to think. You simply tightened your arms around his broad back, pulling him closer to the immense, grounding comfort of his strength.
"I have barely cataloged the index, my lord," You whispered back, the title now tasting less like duty and more like a secret, sensual promise. "I suspect this marriage will require considerably more research than anticipated."
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