Thunder Dome death's door

There was a trembling to the trees behind him. It was something he was going to ignore, thinking it was only more goading from that spectral voice — and with a sigh he turned away from the sloping cliffside, heading towards the trees. He thought, like before, that there was a voice there. At the very least the high pitched jittering of laughter - a child's giggle accompanied by the winter breeze.

He stopped when he saw a dark shape. It wasn't like the silverlight of what he usually saw, and so Sterling crept after it. The stranger's path arched away from him but that did not dissuade him (in fact, he didn't think to avoid the path at all, didn't consider that the shape might be trying to give him more space, he just followed doggedly). 

No, no, where'd you go? Sterling — Sterling— Two voices now; the child's, and something older, together. He huffed, and the sound of his breath was loud enough to echo among the trees.

He was distracted, trying to shake the feeling of eyes upon him, and caught a limb across a narrow elm's horizonal trunk. As his chest connected to the bulk of the fallen tree he oofed and tumbled over it, crunching in to the ferns and then fighting to stand up again. It wasn't his best moment.

As he got to his feet he could be heard mumbling, fuckin' forest with its fuckin' trees— while his dark-tipped ears slanted back.