Dusk, the sultry satin of an ochre horizon after the death of the sun and its brilliant decent into the netherworld, was when Goblin felt the most at ease. The air was heavily laden with moisture nearly tangible to the touch. The curtains of fog wavering like a ghostly sea through the timber labyrinth spanning endless acres in all directions. And the stillness… was it death’s frigid breath taunting the world with its poetic tongue to the grave? Such stillness! And when the shadows began to grow, spilling inky fingers across the ground until they met, and pooled, and soaked the world in blackness…. Goblin would emerge from some solemn hollow seemingly lost in time. Always the enigma, the apparition, the beast who seemed to dance the line between light and dark, heaven and hell, good and evil…. It was a perilous line to straddle. But aren’t we all filthy little demons trying to claw our way into the light? Goblin wasn’t so sure he belonged in the light, not with the blood that ran through his veins, not a child of Kankaska. He still looked to the old gods to lead the way, even if that path lead to the realm of the night creatures and their bloody songs.

The brisk evening air enveloped the ghostly blue beast as he slipped from the shadows tethering him to solitude. His gait was fluid and he moved without hesitation in the placement of his paws, allowing his pads to grapple the loose leaf littered forest floor. The ground here was moist, heavily saturated with the river’s abundance. It squished between his toes and suckled them as he drew each step closer to the bank. There was a certain criticalness in the gaze that swept from one side to the next, peering into the ever-darkening landscape that was so alien to him. He had to remind himself that this was no longer his birthland, Kalkaska was far and away and this place… These wavering timbers had not witnessed the passing of his days, yet they held a certain sage wisdom of their own. Would they welcome home? The gargantuan elders of the forest kin? Would they one day look kindly upon him as if he was their own? But it was not the trees that he scrutinized now, it was others like himself that might come bearing tooth and claw, for nefarious motives are always nigh upon the breeze. After some time, he seemed to settle, his posture waning into a relaxed pose and with that he began to lap eagerly at the river’s surface, quenching a considerable thirst that had been nagging for miles. Aimless, he wandered further into the river’s current, the cold clear ripples rushing around his limbs as if he were no more than another stone on the riverbed. It paid no mind to him, but he felt it none the less… the urgency… the subtle prowess. It was shallow here though, and he had no trouble wading into the center of the stream, his parched tongue grazing from one point to the next as though the flavor would differ. Something caught his attention though, a subtle change in the air perhaps. Or had that been a sound from somewhere beyond his sight, through the bramble of undergrowth and between the looming trees? He was no longer alone, he wagered, and his seafoam eyes were soon thinned as the hackles along the back of his nape began to rise.