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“Hello?” calls Aoife, her voice echoing back to her from the shadow-dappled forest she’s been wandering in for what feels like ages. Its foliage lush, oversized, and wet with morning dew. Shadows creep and skitter, despite no sun Aoife can see – the canopy too massive and too thick to tell what goes on overhead.
She startles as, from deep in the undergrowth, come snarls from strange throats, and the strangling cries of prey being rent under sharp teeth. She doesn’t understand why she’s here. The last thing she remembers is hands around her throat, gasping for air as—
“No…” she says quietly, remembering. Aoife has to warn the others. Has to warn Sadhbh. She’ll be coming for them. If she hasn’t already.
But Aoife can’t reach them. She can’t… Aoife looks down at her hands, confused. And hunches low to begin skirting swiftly through underbrush as something rustles in the forest nearby.
When Aoife first found herself wandering the velvet, barbed greenery of these bloodstained paths, she hid at every sudden sound, every whisper in the dark. But despite the sounds of carnage all around her, she’s never heard another person in the dark.
Until now.
“Are we lost, little one?” whispers a disembodied voice. Feminine. Cold. And ever so slightly amused.
“Who’s there?” whispers Aoife, spinning around. Still low to the ground, hesitant to break cover.
“An excellent question…” says the voice in the dark. “But the real one”—it adds, voice gone softer, seductive, from right beside Aoife, its owner’s breath tickling the small hairs of her ear—“is who are you?”
Aoife whirls again, but there’s no one with her. She breathes hard, forcing herself to slow down, to stand and pause to track the shadows as plants and low bushes sway in unseen breeze. “Show yourself,” she says, keeping her voice mindfully steady.
The foliage all around her rustles. “Why? This is ever so much more fun…”
“Yeah, for one of us,” mutters Aoife, balling her hands into fists and half-raising them, waiting for an attack.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” whispers the voice, this time feeling like it’s coming from inside Aoife’s head. She staggers under its sudden weight, its timbre a heel pressed down on the back of her neck, driving her to the ground and forcing her face into the mulch until she can barely breathe. Aoife straining to cry out as that sense of a booted foot grinds against her neck, and sultry laughter peels on the air. “We’ve so much more fun to have yet.”
