@flowerbull continued from X.
The lake wasn’t the ocean, but Niamh could make do. She’d found a little cottage near it - someone’s old summer cottage, maybe, long forgotten and left to gather dust. She tidied it and made it into a little home for herself. Well, perhaps it would never be truly home, but it was comforting and safe. She could swim in the lake as well as she could the sea.
People hardly ever came to that part of the woods, so deep and dark it could be. Hunters came, sometimes, but she found they avoided her little home. Out of respect or out of fear, she wasn’t sure. She was glad for it either way. It meant she could go out and forage without worrying as much.
That was what she was doing when she spots the creature.
She hesitates, at first. He’s unlike anything she’s ever seen before - head and legs of a bull, body of a man - but he doesn’t look...frightening. Perhaps it because he seems afraid. Running from someone, maybe?
She goes to him, basket clutched in her hand. “You’re safe.” Those are the first words that slip out - she isn’t sure why. Yet when he finally looks at her and she sees how scared he is, she understands. Even on his knees he’s nearly taller than her. She should be afraid of him. Not the other way around.
“Yes,” she reassures him. “Hunters don’t come out this far. Or anyone else, really. I haven’t seen anyone here for a long while. Except you.”
Perhaps she should be more startled but she isn’t human, either. A shifter wearing a different skin. She doesn’t think he means her any harm. She hopes he doesn’t, at least.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
