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Under the veil of night, Hana lets herself unravel.
The process is bittersweet: it is the tangled desire of a girl who longs to belong and the hunger of something much larger than the girl. It bays for blood and sacrifice, it snaps its jaws and writhes in a fury too large for her bones. Hana keeps it tightly bound by necessity, struggling to fit within the confines of polite society. She makes herself harmless, and it is tiring.
She is so, so tired of hiding.
Hana turns her face to the moon and the stars and lets the hunger in her prevail.
She drags her fingers along the bark of trees until they sharpen into claws, breathes in the forest air until her senses sharpen, one by one. Her pupils split, her fangs glint, tails spilling out from the space between reality and dream, unfolding as Hana finds herself at home in her skin.
Once, mortals had known her as kumiho, a terrible creature capable of terrible things. But, like many of her kind, the stories of her nature have been made tame by the passage of time, and the fear she inspired has faded like the smoke of a candle snuffed out too soon.
All the same, Hana is not without her power, without the edge of danger that creeps into the corners of nightmares and bedtime stories. The tendrils of her influence are scattered, but she can still taste the potential of blood on her tongue. She follows one, dissipating into shadow as she traces its pulse, steady and strong.
It has been far, far too long.