FINTAIL

𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓

A powerful, animalistic rift like nothing I've ever heard before broke the joyful moment. Mighty by spite and fuel by strength, it startled both longsnouts into silence. Just a second took away all their courage; their eyes bulged, rapidly scanning the jaded facade of the tree-line for a source. Up and down did their dear snouts move, sniffing the scentless air, bodies tensing up in alarm.

What was that?

A second screamed followed. Closer now, just to the east of the marshland. Able and Thorn's breaths turned ragged. Their heartbeats soon joined along with the dead rhythm they carried, and it wasn't just them — the forest appeared to cease, too. Nothing moved: not a twig, a leaf, or the ivory ferns beneath the golden cycads. Even the ripples of the lake melted away, replaced by an eerie white calmness.

It was quiet for two minutes.

Until a third howl, sharper this time, shot out from the north. That something was moving. The brothers gasped, whirling toward the vapor embodying that awful cry. Only then did they start backtracking toward the water, whimpering amongst themselves as the world grew grim and cold. Like a blanket of death had fallen over them, feeding their fears with everything but promise.

Thorn's talons shook. He didn't know what it was; he could barely guess even if he tried. Frankly, he didn't want to — Thorn was too afraid he'd be right to name the monster in the fog. And he already allowed fate to fuel his little mind of dark, terrifying thoughts, what good would it be if he envied its lust?

Is it a carnivore? He wondered to himself. A herbivore? Is Jagger playing tricks on us?

Or perhaps this is something else. Something... worse than worse...

His pulse pounded away like a runaway drum. He could feel it now, those ravishing booms and earth-rattling cracks in the distance, lifting his spikes tall like mammal hairs to a goosebump. Why his courage was trying to escape him, he could not say. But he knew something was wrong. He could sense it in the air, but Thorn didn't know what to do about it. Neither did Able. There was no way of telling what was happening, or why. And they couldn't roar for help. Instinct was all they had left.

Friends, there is a reason innocence is a liability in adulthood; when this is all you are, you abandon the strength to fight your very demons. You lack thought. You lack control. And then comes that icy feeling, the one that drags the heat away from your nimble bones and flowers like a sickled ink rose in the dark, poisoning your heart with trepidations of woe. Yes, fear may be of surface pressure. But innocence turns your veins into puppet strings.

I had already foretold innocence to be a curse. And if I am right about anything, it is that the weak... are always the first to die.

Able yelped in response to another scream, pressing into Thorn's shoulder. His pointed snout sunk submissively to the blood-curdling voice, jaws wired shut to heed its warning.

"T-Thorn..."

Thorn rattled his head in denial. "It's forest noise..." he whispered. "There's nothing out there that can hurt us-"

BOOM!

They jolted further away to the unfamiliar noise. Now halfway into the water, both brothers found themselves waist deep, sensing a coolness of lapping water upon their underbellies. The deep end was on Thorn left, so they could swim away. But the forest had long vanished into the mist. In fact, everything around them had succumbed to the grayness.

It was just them now. Two longsnouts and a devil in the dark.

"F-Forest noise?!" Able quivered in the water, his helpless tears slowly rising to his eye. "N-No, it's not. It doesn't sound n-normal..."