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They say things about the Beast.
Whispered things, rumors, stories... legends.
Things from a time before, when the only difference between monster and god is one is feared and one worshiped. Of course none of them said his name explicitly, they referred to a dark beast, a monster, a shadow wraith, a siren of the night. The horned one, the antlered one they called him. With eyes like moons that shone in the night.
Stories of a creature that lured children with songs, a creature that's favor was everything, and it's wrath a curse. It lived within the woods long before there was anything but woods. Where it stepped there was world, and forest and there was winter. It was from before. When great creatures rose from nothing he trapped them, beneath dirt in snow and ice, trapped in the roots of trees as old at the earth.
Deep in his forest, where only the animals live with the witches and warlocks live happily, there is a temple, it is crumbled and old. An old rat eaten tapestry hangs in the front, its a tall dark shadow of a man, with horns that branch off, separating the temple into four quadrants, winter the largest, summer, fall, and spring. A lantern is held in its claws before it, and in the lantern figures twist and shimmer in the fabric as though they are alive. Other tapestries show moon eyes in the darkness, and creature beneath the earth, cowed by the beast's presence.
They tell of a keeper of the darkness. A last defense between the mortal and spirit worlds from the strange beings lulled to sleep by his song.
Sometimes there is a reason legends last as long as they do.
The breath of wind that killed the voice of the night was nothing really. Simply another wind that filled the lungs that blew the dark lord to smoke.
The eternal light extinguished. For a few moments nothing happened. Then the form of the lord of the wastes fell forward before the woodsman. Shadows bleeding off of the body into the soil the wood of the body began to decay rapidly. Deedaly worms were on the body in seconds decomposing the wood quickly. The shag of the cloak was soon decayed as well before in seconds the woodsman stood with the metal lantern clenched in his hand alone. Any evidence of the lord of the wastes existence was held in his hand in that moment. He dropped the lantern and turned pulling his axe over his shoulder and walking off into the woods. He had a foul taste in his mouth, he didn't ever want to see this land again. He turned and walked away.
In the moment that the eternal flame guttered out the queen of the clouds felt the four winds rip from her grasp screaming and howling whipping through the land buffering up thousands of souls released with the Beast's death.
The north wind tore from the queen of the clouds twisting angrily through the land screaming through the trees whipping about a lump of metal on the ground. Trying to rekindle a flame that's already cold in the dirt. The wind screams through the land gusting cold air across the land alerting all the world to its mourning.
Snow drips slowly from the branches of a great elm so ladled in snow that its branches creak as a decade of snow slowly trickles down the stump of the tree. Tiny patches of wildflowers pierce the white snow blooming in dark bloody patches on the face of winter. Bright green grasses crack the hoarfrost in small blinks of green in a sea of dull blues, purples, greys and whites.
The heart of winter begins to thaw.
Like starved wolves summer and spring leap on weakness in winter. Warm tendrils reach through solid earth thawing the cold ice. With warmth the trees begin to bloom, their roots shift.
Autumn stills the north wind shrieking in agony.
Pink flowers dot the edges of the snow as it slowly thaws and slips into the earth softening the cold dirt, warming a once frozen waste land. Warm fingers grasp the winter wood. Melting its icy arms and the frigid world of winter. Like the maw of a great beast, warm and slobbering wet it sinks its teeth into the snow which steams and melts with the coiling warmth. Like a ravenous beast it scrapes away the protective ice of the world.
Somewhere deep under winter, something cracks.
An ice prison.
Warmed by spring's embrace. The earth begins to shift.
Long frozen insects burrow through the soil taking to the skies eating everything. They descend on autumn and spring and summer devouring animals and plants alike stripping meat from bones and bark from trees. Some resemble lotus and devour crops and cloth. Some are huge winged moths that sap the blood from anything that comes near them. Some of the insects crawl on the earth and others flit through the skies. They eat anything and everything. But they are only the first plague to come.
Wolves fall to the ground howling in pain trying to claw out the rainbow eyes of the Beast as their eyes rot slowly in their skulls. They claw rips in their fur, through the muscle and tendons. Through the new gaps new eyes shone through. More and more eyes peer through their wounds. Their prey flees the land or rots with the beast and starved wolves pace at the edges of the woods. Frothing at the mouth and painfully thin they become desperate. They eat anything the insects leave behind. Their hunger fills the air around them. The Beast kept the land filled and full of order.
The spiders come next. They are massive, they lived in hovels beneath the earth lulled to sleep by the cold. On great stilt like legs larger than busses they come. Spindly legs carry them delicately. They do not feed like the wolves and insects they simply walk, passing over the land away from the forest looking for the chill to lull them to sleep once more. They leave a thin trail of silk behind them that glistens... like a lost winter's snow.
Creatures... start to come out of the ice. The ice held them in place, imprisoning them beneath the earth, and the Beast song kept them asleep. Things with too many eyes and legs, and horrible gaping hungers. With sharp gnawing teeth. Some of them had huge expansive wings and others long spindly fingers. They are hungry, ravenous creatures.
No one dares cut down even a tree of the winter wood. People draw away from the forest. Those living within it flee it in droves. The woods were hostile when the Beast was alive... but now they are lethal.
Enoch is the first creature to enter the woods after the thaw. Wearing a sleek black cat skin he trods on light paws through the strange spring land haunted by wisps of winter. Slowly he navigates through the strange land. He wanders until in the rotting leaves he finds it. A lantern buried in the leaves. Lifting it gently with his mouth he finds that a creature had made its home in it.
A black turtle. The harvest god is going to let the creature go when he thinks of the Beast who was known for despising the little bewitching characters. Cracking it's shell with a powerful strike he can smell the magic that coils up from the corpse. He makes his way slowly back out of the thawing winter wood. He walks along the border between winter and autumn until he finds the agreed meeting place.
The four seasons are odd, they don't just... meet. They don't run together like lands in the mortal world, the fact that autumn and winter melded at all was strange, an odd testament to the strange relationship of the seasons. The spring world was strange, existing in bubbles between realms creeping into the world in coils of thawing warmth. Summer hid in dark pools beneath the surface of the water, creeping out in bouts of hunger, warming the world with her presence a sweltering heat radiated from her when she was not submerged in the cool water. They chose to meet in the far reaches beyond the grasp of autumn in the dead lands. The queen of the clouds claimed the dead lands as her own as she was the only one who dwelt there. However the sickly edelwood trees that grew in the wastes meant that the land had once been the Beast’s. Out here there was little to claim so Enoch kept the complaint tucked in his heart, he was not one to cause disputes.
The land is sparse, only a few sickly shrubs and edelwood trees grew, with a run down windmill somewhere along his journey. Enoch doesn't know where their meeting place is, it tends to move about, but he can feel four immense powerful creatures waiting out in the wastes and he follows their presence. A fifth presence joins them as lady midnight leaves her post. He walks slowly until the old abandoned gazebo comes into view. Four figures stand there silently staring at each other in sullen silence. Enoch slowly approaches in his cat skin, the pads of his paws worn down and coated with a fine layer of dust.
Leaping nimbly to the banister of the gazebo he sets the lantern between his paws and purrs out a greeting. They each greet him in response before Spring cuts in.
"Ignoring all the pleasantries let’s please discuss this so I can get back to work." Enoch's tail curls about his feet as the spider goddess speaks, she seems on edge, she truly is a kind soul although her appearance suggests otherwise.
"I see no reason why we even need to be discussing this." The queen of the cloud huffs as she floats in the rotting rafters of the gazebo that creak with age. "The old man has been a scourge on the land stealing prey and wintering our territories."
"You do not mean that Queen of the clouds." Spring spoke in a silky tone, her mandibles clicking at the end of each word, her long spindly legs folded out from where she sat. "Things will begin to come out of his woods."
"Things have begun to come out of the woods." Enoch's words are solemn. It has been a long time since the pantheon gathered to discuss anything, they are missing many members the years have whittled their numbers from 20 down to 6- 5 he corrects himself, the Beast is now gone and they are now 5. When they did meet in the past the Beast stands a distance from the rest of them watching with cold glowing eyes. His companion rarely offers any comment and only seems to get along well with Lady Midnight and the harvest god himself. Spring had often reached out to the Beast in their sparse meetings but something must have occurred between the two of them because the Beast seemed unhesitant to show an unbridled anger at her whenever she attempted to draw him into a conversation.
"It is no concern of mine." The Queen of the clouds replies haughtily to their solemn faces.
"It soon will become a concern of yours." Madame Summer looks as she had looked when Enoch and she had last crossed paths only a few years before. She looks like she just dragged herself from a grave at the bottom of the ocean. She is quite beautiful... there is no doubt. But it is hidden behind muddy hair and clothes, with seaweed and other dead sea plants stuck in her hair. "I have seen flying creatures... with eyes like his. They have taken to the sky in droves."
"Besides darling, I do believe it is a concern of yours as none of your winds have listened to you since he died." It was true, the weather had gotten out of hand as the winds processed the Beast's death. The north wind had been the Beast's closest companion when the Voice of the Night sang his alluring song to lure souls. The north wind was grieving. It would die down for long periods of time then blow up and whip through the air obliterating anything in its path. The east wind had also taken a hit and was ripping up crops. The south wind had more or less gone on what could be approximated as going on a quest to find the Beast. Enoch had found it coiled in the lantern with the turtle. It still slept in the lantern, far smaller than it should be. No one had felt the west wind in may months, it had retreated into hiding perhaps when it knew the world wasn't right.
The queen of the clouds looked enraged before gathering herself.
"Stop your foolish bickering." Lady Midnight silences them with her voice and her remaining eye. There is a reason many ancient texts speak of two moons, long before her battle with the sun god when she rendered the sun god crippled and made her remain in the sky where she could not easily hurt mortals with her fiery tendrils. The moon god now only had one remaining eye, in the mortal world she watched, blinking rarely over the course of month and in the unknown she watched with a half lidded eye at all times.
Lady Midnight sat on one of the banisters across from Enoch her hair shimmering like the night sky it billows out around her in the air. It stretches out and upward wanting to take its rightful place in the sky. Enoch feels a spike of jealousy and briefly wishes his fur was as beautiful as her hair. It was not to be he supposes, he is a lord of death and she a queen of night. Enoch sits back on his haunches and licks the fur into place on one of his paws. He nestles the lantern between his paws. The Beast is dead but with his lantern there it almost felt like he was among them. Watching silently in that passive thoughtful way.
"What we are experiencing has only been the creature's frozen in the top most layer of the ice. Simply put they are the least of our worries." She folds her hands on her lap and sighs. She turns her head to survey the circle narrowing her single eye at anyone who looked to be challenging her authority. "What we need is knowledge and a strategy." She turns to Enoch and the message is clear. He was the Beast's closest companion, if anyone would know it would be him.
"There will be creatures, who come to try to take his place. Many years ago I encountered one with him, they are ruthless and will try to reclaim winter." He speaks low and measured as he tries to recall anything the Beast has told him about creatures under the ice. "He rarely spoke about the things under the ice. He sometimes complained about some of the bigger creatures drifting in and out of consciousness and causing small earthquakes before he can put them to sleep." Enoch tries to think, the Beast was a creature of isolation and would rather not talk to anyone at all, the fact Enoch could ever get him to speak much less actually hold up a conversation is a miracle.
"How did he put them to sleep." Spring's mandibles click as a spark ignites in her eyes. Enoch allows a feline smile to pass over his face.
"His song was not only for luring in prey." Enoch feels the metal of the lantern digging into his flesh, its unbearably cold. Like someone had dunked it in ice water moments before.
"He sings to put them to sleep." The queen of the clouds laughs. "How cliché!" Midnight silences her with a withering glare then turns back to Enoch a suggestion on her lips.
"Do you think if you sang his song they would sleep?" Enoch's eyes widen in surprise and his ears flatten back. It was something he had never considered, perhaps it could even work, he and the Beast sang in the same general range, me might be able to mimic it. He was nowhere near as good at mimicry as his neighbor had once been, but he could sing the crow's song and play the mouse's waltz, it wasn't so far fetched he didn't think it was possible. The Beast's song wasn't just words and notes like other songs though, his true song was in a language much older than death. Enoch was well familiar with the song; he listened carefully for any peep from his neighbor. It would be truly startling if he didn't recognize and know the Beast's most common song.
"Perhaps, it is worth a try." They look at him expectantly. "Apologies, this skin is not really suited for that song." They nod and wait for him to take a new form. Instead he drops the body and collects his consciousness from where it is scattered across the land. He's not sure he should attempt this without being whole. Few can hear him without a physical body, and perhaps that is just as well.
He gathers himself up in the area, his magic laps at the land, green grasses spreading in the desolate plain, eating greedily at the sudden source of plenty. He lets the song ebb and flow out of him filling the land. He pauses, reaching out to feel the winter wood with his magic to feel any change, it will take a few seconds for the song to reach it.
"What. Was that." Summer's damp hair falls around her and she stares at Enoch's crumpled vessel. "When you said his song I thought you meant the song he uses to lure in children." Enoch lets an apologetic breath of magic into the air. They still as they each listen to winter to see its response. For a long time nothing happens. Suddenly there's a sound, like something great shifting and the gods worry they've only hastened what is to come and then something peculiar happened.
A voice, deeper than Enoch's, far more like the Beast's rings out. It calls back the song, not quite singing, more repeating in a warbling tone like a mocking bird repeating a call. Enoch drags himself back into the cat skin which now feels unbearably cramped compared to the space he had just taken up. He blinks in the general direction of the winter wood.
"Was that an echo?" Spring asks with a tone of fretfulness that implies she does not think it to be so but would rather be told she is wrong.
"No." The queen of the clouds says trying to hide her surprise with a mask of arrogance. "My winds carry the echoes and none went to carry that cry."
"The earth has stopped shifting." Lady Midnight says. "It is not final. But it has stilled. Could it be winter has a new warden already?" Enoch feels a pang in his chest. He hopes not, he knows how greedy and selfish that sounds but he wishes to cling to the small hope the Beast could still live.
"We should greet the new warden." Summer says with a note of finality and they begin walking. The walk takes less time than Enoch's journey with Spring folding the distance between the two points considerably. They stand at the edge of the winter wood. The north wind stirs greeting Enoch. It whirls up to Lady Midnight breezing through her floating hair. She offers a hand and the wind settles in it.
"North Wind, we heard the call of a winter warden. Take to the sky and find them, bring them here to the edge of the forest." The wind whispers around her skirting around the Queen of the clouds and brushing over Spring and Summer before whipping around Enoch once before it screams into the forest. Have you ever heard the wind move so fast it sounds like a haunting scream? The winter wood heard that very sound as the wind moved between the trees trying to locate winter's new song.
It turns up leaves which flutter through the air and crackle. Shudders of now abandoned houses slammed. Doors creaked and wood moaned as the wind stressed it. Tree's branches snapped under the weight of the wind, the smaller trees snapped, the larger bent and fell groaning. Birds were swept wide and long, lifted high and smashed into the ground. The north wind was fast, but the winter wood was massive. Even when melting it was an immense force to be grappled with. Much less thoroughly searched.
A minute passed the gods stand there. Enoch holds the dark lantern in his jaws, clenched between small sharp daggers of teeth. His long black tail swishes in the dirt flicking oddly about. Impassive golden eyes peer into the darkness of the woods trying to see... wishing to see two twin moons moving in the darkness. A tiny pink nose twitches. The slitted eyes narrow a few times, opening and refocusing. The winter wood seems to shift a twisting pattern of shadows and darkness. His claws extend and dig into the dirt before retracting back. His skin itches and he wants to leave it. To trade this skin for a crow's or raven's and take to the sky to join the search.
Half an hour. Summer drips salty water creating a small puddle beneath her bare dirty feet. He clothes look like they were left at the bottom of a lake, her hair damp and ratted. Kelp woven into her hair falls in front of one of her eyes, the salt covered plant sticks to her face. Her mouth feels like an ocean, salty water crashes against the inside of her mouth creating frothy sea foam which bubbled out of her lips and the corners of her eyes. Her left arm is rotted in several places revealing bone stained the color of ocean muck. A dead fish is tangled into her hair making her reek of rot and death. She looks like a picture of beauty hidden behind grime and the ocean. The only thing clear about her were her piercing eyes. They shimmer a deep grey and writhe like the ocean's face. When she opens her mouth to take in a breath water drips out and runs down her face and neck down her chest staining the damp clothes and falls to the ground.
An hour. Spring's mandibles click, her long spider limbs shift. The fine hairs on her legs and feet twitch in the air. Her two largest eyes focus on the woods. As the time ticks past she opens her second set. She can see small warm bodies in the wood, it will do her no good, winter's warden will be colder than death. She opens her third set of eyes, a flash of prophecy flits before them, it matters not, foresight is only useful when it tells things related to you, not when it foretells of a young girl in the mortal world learning arithmetic from a man she would throw a rock at in her childhood. The third set of eyes focus on the woods and find nothing to foretell yet. Instead they show her flashes of the past, when this place was all forest, the Beast passing by, a deer stripping bark from a tree, a wolf gnawing on a bone to get to the marrow inside. Nothing important had happened here, and if her prophecies were correct nothing would for many years. She cracks her fourth eyes. She does not know what she expects. It is the same as it always is, she is looking into spring. Like a blooming flower it takes root she can see where it grows and where it withers. She shifts her legs again and sighs.
Two hours. The queen of the clouds floats above the ground her arms crossed, she will not admit it but she too hopes to see twin moons emerging from the woods chaperoned by the north wind. She does not like the Beast, he and she are quite similar, they often but heads. But he is something familiar. He will trade with her and he with endure her. Who knows what the new warden will be like. Perhaps they will be standoffish or meek. Perhaps they will hate her, perhaps they will love her. Its this unknowing that sparks a fear in her.
Three. Lady Midnight’s hair drifts about her, lengthening to take up the sky as day bleeds into night. She gazes with her singular eye out to forest, she looks past the trees into a sheer darkness beyond. She has missed the winter warden. His songs so often bring a smile to her face, they have never once spoken to one another directly, but as far as she is aware the Beast was never one to seek out company. She had often watched the dark hunter as he thinned the population and raised a forest from nothing. She often cast her eye upon him for he was unlike anything else within the wood. His song rose to the heavens and filled the sky, sometimes in the deep lilting tone that so often marked his presence. A less common sound was the soft sigh of a child or the warm voice of a mother, or a choir of haunting voices. The Beast was nothing more than a conductor of the night, his voice trained to perfection, he could mimic the call of an elder sister and lead little ones deeper into the forest. He could be the voice of a worried wife, or a young man long since dead and dirt. He could be one voice or many. He could be the chirp of crickets or the trill of a mockingbird, the hoot of an owl, the warble of a sparrow, the croak of a bullfrog. He could be breath of wind through dead leaves, the crashing water of a river, the creak of old trees, he could be the soft sigh of the earth or the crunch of fresh snow. He could be the song of footsteps that are only a step behind, or the hymn of a wolf’s howl. He could be the lullaby of a forest, all on his own.
The quiet of the night slowly began to settle.
The wind howls back to them. Enoch began to gather himself, the parts of him that floated above the land and the ones deep below that slept beneath the earth.
Enoch was not a spirit of fall, he was the god of death, a lord of plenty, a holder of autumn, he was many things that would never fit into one body, no form would hold all of him so instead he allows himself to drift apart only to gather enough to be present in whatever body he took. He did not need to be in one place to function as we do, thought he could not split his attention, no he had far to short an attention span as it was, he needed not temper it more by splitting his focus into two bodies.
Gathering himself around the cat body he held his form in now he sang without ever opening the mouth of the tomcat he held. His voice rang out across the land, the first line of the reaper’s waltz. It was a song he had sung on nights before the Beast had shown himself years ago.
Drifting at the edges of the fields the harvest deity had tittered short ditties and hummed half tunes to himself, when he came about an urge to sing the reaper’s waltz. He had gotten through the first few verses when he thought he detected a voice, unlike his own, deeper and fuller in a way only an opera singer can match. He had paused in his song and had sung out the next line of the song and waited in the cool autumn night as the breeze stirred his ribbons and the golden red leaves that decorated the ground around him.
After a pause the voice began to sing the next line following the one Enoch had just sung into the darkness. It continued on after a few uncertain pauses where Enoch waited silent scared he might scare off the owner of the voice, and what a beautiful voice it was. Slowly Enoch had joined in and the duet had risen above the trees. Their voices filled the sky.
For many weeks Enoch returned to the borders and sang out into the darkness, often joined in his singing. For some songs the voice was silent, Enoch assumed the voice did not know these songs, but it joined in on choruses and repeated lines. Eventually he would hear the song singing chants in languages he did not know, it sang ballads of mortals and gods, carols of quiet night and dark hunger, it sang, sometimes the voice was further away and sometimes it was close enough that Enoch was sure they were separated by a mere five or six trees.
His four companions remain quiet as the last echoes of Enoch’s voice are carried by the winds around them.
A voice rose from the heart of winter, warbled, twisted, warped. It does not sing the next line of the song but instead parrots back in a key that Enoch could never hope to sing the same line. Something shifts in the forest, as if settling back down to sleep.
A creature lands on a branch near to them. It’s vaguely avein, four wings tucked close its seven rainbow brimmed eyes blink rapidly in quick succession. It opens its mouth and a strangled note comes out. It lights about the branches of the trees for a few moments.
Deep in the wood the same strangled note peals out its held longer than the creature held its song.
The creature shifts its wings and cocks it’s head listening to the note. It takes to the sky and spreads its wings flying above the forest, it starts to fall, plummeting it crashes through the leaves and they can see it no longer. The wind whips into the forest following the bird like creature.
When it returns it carries a breath of cold and a few icy snowflakes which settle in the hair of Enoch’s companions and in his own dark fur, speckling it like stars before melting into water. There is a song on the wind faint and whispering, fading with every passing moment.
Enoch is the first to gather himself.
“Ah, I see now. An echo of him.”
“A what?” Spring clicks her mandibles and turns her head.
“You are not old enough to remember the death of another one of us.” Lady Midnight says simply.
“Hunger, fear, hope… they don't go away which means even though most of him is gone that part of him must remain in order to play it’s part, an echo of sorts, and the forest… it remembers his voice. So it echos it, by singing on its own.” Enoch says and as he says it he lets his hope die in his chest, before he could hope that it was not the forest singing back.
“It is enough.” Midnight drew her hair behind her ears gathering it as it tried to spread out in front of her eye. “It is enough to keep winter sleeping. Enoch, you must sing to the forest so that it sings his songs and quiets the monsters within.” Her voice is somber.
It is agreed. Spring folds herself into a thin tiny spider spider and scuttles away. Summer is reduced to sea foam in the dirt. The queen of the clouds takes to the sky and Midnight drifts and lets her hair spread filling the air and cloaking it in a night long past overdue. And Enoch… Enoch sits staring into the forest.
He has a wish, it is a selfish wish, but a wish all the same. His wish is to hear a faint hum, a deep voice not parroting his own. To see branch like antlers not connected to the head of the deer. Two glowing orbs that glint in the night.
Deep in the woods there is a tree.
It’s a very large tree, it’s branches laden heavy with snow despite the fact that the area around it was in the midst of a thaw. It’s wide branches intertangle with those of the other trees, as if it had been growing there for decades.
Slick black oil dripped down it’s bark falling from its branches and dripped onto the dead leaves and dirt staining them a dark black.
Years begin to pass, with a song drifting over the trees and echoed back by the winter wood on every eve. Cold seeps up from the ground frosting the ground and slowly creeping up to ladle the trees deep in the wood with snow. The large tree drips black oil onto the snow. A song graces the winds each night, sometimes short, sometimes long, but each midnight a song causes the tree to quiver.
The trees around the large tree begin to twist and warp over the years, watered by dark viscous oil wich turns them sickly and grey. The tree grows there unperturbed by man or beast for years.
Decades had passed from winter’s partial thaw when one cool winter’s night two glowing eyes opened in the tree’s bark. They snapped open and cast a bright glow on the tree, a sharp snapping sound like a branch breaking fills the air as they open. The eyes flash in rings of strange color, unknown in a wood of deep blues, greys, and faint purples, the yellows reds and glimmering blues are foreign.
There is a cracking snapping sound that accompanies a tree being felled as a figure tears itself from the tree. Long thin twig like legs break from the tree accompanied by a dark strong torso and two long arms accompanied by spindle like fingers which creaked as they moved. The head was the last to tear away from the trunk of the tree and with it the branches spread from the head like the antlers of a stag.
It takes a firm assured step. Then falls to its hands and knees in the snow. Pain wracks it’s inside and a groan escapes from it and shakes the trees. It quivers there barely able to hold itself up partially. It shakes from the hunger which consumes its mind. The groan brings the attention of an animal, a female doe, the creature on the ground grapples with the frightened deer.
It rips open the deer’s stomach and grasps at it’s innards eating shoving the warm still-throbbing organs into its maw. Its hunger wells up inside it and the creature let out howl as its hunger grew still. It feeds on the deer but still it is not sated. Dragging itself with fingers that scrabble against the earth like claws. It devours more creatures in its hunger but none of them quell the thirst which wells up inside.
Soon it finds a wolfish creature, that’s eyes resemble the hungry creature’s own. The hound’s mouth drips black oil. Their grappling is short and soon the creature has its arms up to it’s elbows deep into the wolf’s chest cavity ripping at the oil stained organs shoving them into its mouth. When at last the wolf lay empty on the snow the creature stilled. It’s colorful eyes blinked and returned to white as the sharpest edge of hunger was starved off. It did not still the hunger but it was enough he could draw his attention from the need inside. The creature looks down at itself and tears the wolf’s shaggy hide off and drapes it over its own shoulders. Slowly it staggers to its feet and orients itself.
Two forces in him battled for his attention. Hunger, and a need to find a lantern… he does not know why… not yet. The hunger draws him towards where it knew there to be plenty and the need pulls him to the lantern… thankfully they both pull the same way.
This time he does not leave such a trail of corpses in his wake, this time he knows enough to only eat the creatures corrupted by the oil. Each time he eats he gains more of himself back, he soon remembers his lantern, and he quakes with rage when he remembers how he was blown to smoke by an insolent woodsman.
He remembers more and more until he is able to piece together who he is, was, and will be. He changes from a formless creature into what he once was. He is the Beast.
He follows the pulling in his chest to his lantern and the plenty. Each eve a voice sings over the trees, it takes him many nights and feedings to recognize who the voice belongs to, and longer to realize why it is singing. He does not sing back, he dares not before the lantern is in his hand or hanging from his antler, the forest sings for him… soon it will have no need.
Within him he is eternally grateful for Enoch keeping his wood alive. But he can not spend time focusing on that gratitude, he must focus on getting to Enoch who he has no doubt is in possession of his lantern.
It has been a very long time since he talked to Enoch… sometimes the pair of them go decades without speaking… this is a fair bit longer than a couple of decades. He does not know if Enoch can feel his hunger or if the harvest lord has become so accustomed to his presence he would not recognize it. Either way he does his best to supress his hunger in the air in order not to tip of the lord of plenty, if Enoch were to realize he was alive he might do something foolish like abandon Pottsfeild temporarily in order to find the Beast leaving the land of the dead venerable.
Soon he finds he is only a few leagues from the strip of trees that separates autumn and winter. He quakes not from hunger as he has so often in these past few days, but from a faint excitement.
Night is soon to fall when he reaches the edge of the trees and he can see the maypole form of the harvest god drifting over the fields to sing to the forest.
“Come wayward souls, and wander through the darkness, there is a light for the lost and the meek… Sorrow and fear are easily forgotten when you submit to the soil of the earth…” Enoch sings out and stares out a the wood waiting for it to parrot back.
“Grow tiny seed… you are lost to the tree, rise… till you leaves fill the sky… until your sights fill the air in the night… lift your mighty limbs and give praise to the fire…” He doesn't bother pitching his voice like a child’s and instead sings in his low range. He relishes the look of shock on the harvest god’s face as he steps from the trees and stares up at the figure of green and orange fabrics which dwarfs him.
Reaching out with a dark hand the Beast offers his hand as a peace offering. Enoch hasn't quite gotten over the shock of seeing him here and the Beast can smell it. Cinnamon distress fills the air… it's not a scent he often finds on Enoch when he is around. A flash of rotting anger flashes through the air. Anger is an odd smell on Enoch… it doesn't ever stick around long enough for the Beast to analyze it, the smell is always something he can never pin point rotting. Cider joy and excitement overtakes the other two smells quickly. The Beast nearly has to step back by from the waves of apple, vinegar, and spices that suddenly flooded his senses. For weeks he has only smelled the dulled scents of the forest with the occasional strong tang of hope and fear in the oil. This is a bit much for his olfactory system.
A group of ribbons that seem to have knotted together in excitement reach out and wrap around his offered hand, they swirl and tangle around his arm and fingers, and like that the Beast’s flawless restraint went tumbling down around his antlers.
Enoch did not recoil when he felt the gnawing enormous hunger swirl through the air but the cinnamon smell of concern and worry fill the air. The Beast gives off a strained sound of assurance but is to busy trying to keep his urges in check to move or offer any other assurance. It's incredibly hard to hold off his hunger when there is plenty right in front of him.
Eventually he drags his attention from the plenty around him back to Enoch and speaks in a strained tone.
“Do you have my lantern?” It is hardly a question. The green ribbons shift around the center of the maypole where a giant post should be, instead a ribbon wrapped around the handle offered the ribbon to the Beast. Pulling his hand from the ribbons which try to cling to the wood of his arm the Beast takes the lantern. Holding the dark lantern he opens the valve that leads to the chamber for oil.
Tilting his antlers he lets the oil that has collected on his bark drip down his antlers into the valve. There's a metallic dripping as the oil hits the metal bottom of the lantern slowly replaced by the sound of wet splashing. Soon the compartment is full of oil and the lantern only needs a spark. Unfortunately neither Enoch or the Beast are inclined to set fire by magic of their own use.
“I don't suppose you have a match or fire starters?” The Beast’s eyes flit to Enoch’s face.
“I do not… please allow me to fetch something.” The Beast expected enoch to turn, not for the black cat skin to walk out from the harvest god’s ribbons towards the center of Pottsfeild. The Beast narrowed his eyes. “I thought you did not enjoy splitting yourself.”
“I simply do not wish to let you out of my sights!” Though Enoch’s voice is cheery the Beast can hear the distrust and possessiveness… perhaps his absence had more of an effect on Enoch than he had predicted. Enoch was terrible about getting attached to things and didn't often experience the side of letting go of things as a lord of death everything came to him as their final destination. “You will pardon me if I do not keep up conversation this requires far more focus than I usually expend.” They stand there in silence, colorful swirling eyes shifting eyes meeting fabric ones.
Soon the cat form of Enoch approaches through the long fields passing between swaying golden grain. A single match is held in it’s maw. The Beast slowly crouched down and offered his hand taking the match from it’s jaws. The cat moves into Enoch’s ribbons and the two a one once more.
Striking the match against his antler, the Beast’s eyes fix on the sputtering orange flame. Flipping the lantern open he lights the flame within the lantern. It's like being at the center of a bolt of lightning, the flame doesn't spark to light... It ignites into a glowing white fire and with it the Beast’s eyes swirl together into white light.
Enoch lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. The Beast stares into the white flame as an outline begins to take shape in the flame, one with antlers, tall and slim. The Beast flips the lantern closed and turns to Enoch.
“I shall leave you to your town now.” The sewn smile on Enoch’s face twists into something darker. Ribbons quickly coil around the Beast’s torso and arms and the Beast feels something swirl in the air.
Enoch is… a lot of magic. Enoch is usually so spread out because unless he wanted to use a vessel larger than practical. But gathered around him was all of Enoch, or most of him hung oppressive in the air around Enoch.
“Enoch.” The Beast’s voice is low and steady.
“Beast.” The voice is a low purr. Ribbons coil around the rough wood of his body.
“Enoch we are not doing this now I have to reclaim my territories.” Green silk slides over his antlers
“Oh won't you stay and chat Hope Eater?” The Beast can't leave if he wants to now, with ribbons wrapped around his body in a loose way that will tighten the instant he moves. A noose of a ribbon curls around his neck.
“Enoch I have not been gone long enough for this.” His voice is sharp now, one moment of indecision and Enoch will know he’s won and the Beast isn't likely to be out of Enoch’s barn for the next week, and if he’s lucky the next month.
“Perhaps I need to reclaim territory too.” If the Beast were human he would be red from the tips of his ears to his toes.
“No.” His voice is firm but there is a slight waver that Enoch must hear because the smell of caramel fills the air. The ribbons start to tighten around his torso and the Beast makes a last ditch effort to resist Enoch’s temptations by pulling out of the ribbons and struggling. The ribbons close around him like a net pulled close around a fish and suddenly he is a fly in a web he could easily snap. He is turned by the ribbons to face the harvest god. The harvest god leans in towards him.
“Now don't be contrary… you look like your starving. Let me get you something to eat…” Enoch’s grin fills the air. He knows the Beast won't turn him down now.
“Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly.” The Beast rumbled with a huff of annoyance.
“Tis the prettiest little parlor that you ever did spy.” Enoch smiled in a lilting tone and slowly withdrew most of his ribbons and the two turned and accompanied each other to Enoch’s barn and a cold wind blew over the land and the rasp of leaves sounded like the laughter of the north wind.