wendigo.
The snow fell quietly onto her mane as she stood staring at the rotting deer carcass. It was thin, hardly any flesh on it; a furry bag of skin and bones with glassy frigid eyes. The stink of death should have pervaded her nostrils, but winter had frozen the body long before it began to decompose. A twinge of discomfort sounded in her chest, that age old feeling of fear threatening to burrow its way into her heart and burn there.
Wendigo’s idling breath hung in the frosty air as she moved away, hocks clicking. The house of death was not a place for her, with her dull teeth and lack of claws. Something would find the deer eventually, and Wendigo did not want to be here when it did.
Her willowy, too-thin body sailed through the knee-deep snow, and after some time, she paused at a cluster of pine trees. Their lower boughs were buried in the snow, creating winding caverns underneath. With a huff, the mare swung her heavy head toward the trunk of the tree and using those dull teeth, broke off a chunk of bark to chew. Hunger twisted inside her more than fear now, and the weather had worsened: a crown of snowflakes and ice ringed her ears, while tiny icicles hung from her tail.
Wendigo crunched the bark as she broke through the trees and into the meadow, a grim expanse of white, made worse by the storm. She spat the bark out, a pile of slobber and tree, and pawed at the snow, digging her way down to the frozen grass.
Having found a better meal, Wendigo was mightily distracted by the urge to fill the yawning void that was her stomach and thus was largely unaware if anyone approached her in the snow storm.
mare | akhal teke x marwari | grey on black tobiano | 1o | 16.3hh | siat-s