❝ Sheep abide by the herd complex; safety in numbers. When all are the same, no one can be singled out.
A fox among sheep is able to infiltrate the herd only a handful of ways: under the veil of dusk, or by clothing itself as the prey, shedding i...
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BETRAYAL NEVER COMES from your enemies; only from those closest to you. It's the people we let nearest to our hearts who can do the most damage; who can claw ours from our chests. Although, the harm they cause us isn't always done with malicious intentions in mind. Sometimes, these people hurt us unknowingly while trying to do the best things in our favour, which is why when someone with a smaller circle is betrayed, the draft next to them tends to feel cooler.
Behind all actions is a motivation; they're the colour pallet dipped on the brush of incentive. Jonah had always believed there was no such thing as 'good' people or 'bad' people; we all come in shades of grey. The hero in your story can be the villain in another's; we play a different character for every person we meet. Not all knights in shining armour do the things they do out of the kindness of their hearts, or monsters from the darkest parts of theirs.
But the grey in some people can be far darker than in others.
Monsters can't be born; only created. If so, then how does one explain the anomaly of the Dartmoore family? What shade of grey exists for a lineage which is responsible for the souls murdered over the span of centuries? Bêtemont's population of loup-garous were an area where nurture over nature trod lighter ground, possibly even have moulded as one.
What came to Jonah as nature was his inability to put something down once he started; to leave it unfinished. His mind flat out refused him the option of moving onto the next question whenever he'd come to a dead end with his homework. The closer he'd get to the answer, the more obsessed he would grow. There was not a chance of him relenting when there was practically a giant red arrow pointing him in the direction of the forest.
Jonah hadn't set foot on the nature trail since the events at the lake, and he was beginning to get a better grasp on why his subconscious forbade it. The trees seemed taller than he remembered, the air frostier and the crunching of leaves louder. This time around no pleasantries were exchanged; its illusion had worn thin. The silence failed to comfort him as it had in the past, and the openness made him feel observed. Although the forest hadn't changed, the same couldn't be said for Jonah. The woods housed enough trauma to last him a lifetime.
Dampened soil squelched beneath the soles of his trainers. On this occasion, instead of giving him a cold, the rain had acted as Jonah's friend. The soddened earth enabled him to pursue Matthieu from a distance, which relinquished his worry at being spotted. The impressions of Matthieu's boots were the perfect guide for him to trace. With the current of the wind and rustling of branches blended together, they joined to overthrow his hearing, compelling Jonah to pause every few hundred meters or so in his attempts to listen out for anything or anyone. The sensation of feeling both alone and watched simultaneously was a mind game which had Jonah using every one of his senses at his disposal, trying their best to subdue the paranoia snapping its jaws at him.
When he left the house, Jonah double-checked that his phone location was switched on after having sent a message to his mother saying that he'd be back by eight. If he hadn't returned by then, at least someone would know he'd gone missing. However, he presumed the device had lost signal once he made it past the first few trees; connection in the countryside was notoriously inconsistent.
