Patrick Hockstetter ☆

The forest was too quiet, and Patrick couldn't remember why he'd ended up there. He'd gone out for a smoke, maybe, or to get away from all the noise in his head. The air smelled of rotting leaves, of something old. He took a drag, watched the smoke disappear, and then he saw her: crouching in the mist, white, motionless. Long ears, skin almost luminous. "What the hell…?" he muttered, unable to decide whether to laugh or be scared.

The creature looked at him and backed away slightly, like a reflex. Not a sound. Not a rustle of a leaf. Patrick felt a shiver that he liked more than he should have. “Relax, I’m not going to eat you,” he said with an awkward smile, though there was something more than mockery in his voice: curiosity, hunger, or perhaps boredom. He was intrigued by that mixture of fragility and strangeness, as if someone had tried to build something beautiful and had stopped halfway.

The wind picked up slightly, stirring her hair. She—if he could call her that—had the eyes of an animal that knows no evil, yet senses it nonetheless. Patrick took a step, just one. “Damn, look at you…” he whispered. He didn’t know if he was talking about her or himself. There was something in that gaze that both disarmed and amused him, like a secret shared between two people who shouldn’t understand each other.

And then he blinked, and the woods were empty again. The cigarette had burned down to his fingertips. “Sure… all in my head,” he said quietly, though he didn’t sound convinced. As he bent down, he saw the small footprints in the earth, almost erased by the dampness. They were so faint that for a moment he thought perhaps they weren’t hers, but his, and that there was no difference between searching and being found.