Funny that she should leave one forest behind only to find herself in another one, alone as she’d been before.

It is surprisingly comforting. She curls up against the roots of a rather large evergreen, her snout pressed into her front paws and closes her eyes, imagining that she’s back home in the forest she’d forced herself to leave, surrounded by the familiarity of the makeshift den she’d called home for years. The smells are different, the trees are different and yet the setting is so similar that for a moment, she allows herself to rest in peace without bother from the paranoia that hovers, always, on the edge of her mind.

Per usual, the feeling doesn’t last nearly as long as she’d hoped. The darkness is a parasite with hooked claws and needle teeth; it gnaws at her insides and whispers wickedness in her ears. Look at you, little death bringer. Have you forgotten what you are? No, of course not. Never. She grits her teeth against a snarl and stands, shaking the dirt from her coat and the exhaustion from her bones. Her coal black eyes search the dark until they find the path she’d followed in and she heads for it now, suddenly feeling sick with each breath of humid, tree-green air.

It is no longer a comfort to be here with the darkness closing in, ensnaring her heart and bleeding demons inside of her. She shakes again - this time to clear the thoughts from her mind - and breaks into a trot, desperate to be free of the gnarled, reaching branches of the trees as they seek to claw at her and keep her trapped here. Panic, raw and hot, ignites in her veins and she reacts with a growl, her teeth clicking together in warning at the invisible enemy riding her back like a shadow, always there even when it is silent.

Then, she hears it.

A crack of twigs, the swish of foliage being shuffled aside.

She is not alone anymore. Inside her chest, her heart slams a drumbeat against its bony cage.