Deepwood Weald arctocephalus

Set before sunsister

Snow fell but never reached the ground. Once he entered the woods, however, the air grew warm and the sky grew dark. He was a shadowcreature between these strange trees; he felt watched. Followed.

Invisible, somehow.

He had meant to hunt, but instead he drifted with his dark nose twitching only idly. He was too large to race between these knotted ferns and spindly trees. It would be all too easy to twist an ankle in an unseen rabbit hole. He imagined the floor was made only of fern and detritus, and that he might crash through entire to a subterranean world if he did not step carefully.

But it was a peaceful, contemplative sort of danger. A storybook kind of fear. He enjoyed it for a time, right up until another shadowcreature gave him a real fright. He almost passed it off as a trick or the light — but no, there was another wolf there in the distance, threading through the trees.

"You frightened me," he accused, his voice carrying strangely, thinly through the fog.