Blackfeather Woods blackwater

Coelacanth was a wisp of shadow among other shadows, and not even the violent trembling that intermittently wracked her vividly gamine frame gave away her position. It was only when she opened her eyes, startled into doing so by the different sort of silence Atshen’s heavy-boned presence wrought, that she could readily be seen. Perhaps she startled him in that moment, bright Neptune globes winking suddenly through the dark, but if she did, she couldn’t tell. She hadn’t really been sleeping — the line between the nightmares both sleeping and waking was so finely drawn they were practically one and the same — but it was easier to keep her eyes closed. She felt invisible then. It was simple coincidence that she very nearly was.

Suspicion had her whipping around, a skittish, spindle-legged blur of ink. He was here — the orange-eyed, pale-bellied behemoth — and she feared that the gray phantom, too, might be regurgitated from the bowels of the Wolfskull as he had once before. Her slimly tapered muzzle swung toward the impenetrable dark as she skittered backwards, pressing against the wall, the belly of the Wolfskull to her left and the maw to her right. Her lips drew taut but did not quiver or curl — she had learned via the fangs of other tormentors that such behavior was not to be tolerated. Tufted ears flattened against the gentle curve of her skull as she made herself infinitesimal, tucking her small body as tightly as she could, the tip of her tail a frenetic flutter as her spine arched impossibly to fold in on itself. Why had he come?

What have I done?