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The forest wakes slowly.
Not with birds, nor with wind… but with heat.
The sun bleeds down through the branches like molten glass, scorching the earth until the dirt cracks and curls. The leaves hang limp and the air tastes burnt.
Perfect.
I curl tighter into the patch of light like a dog that has found a warm kitchen tile. My knees are tucked, and my spine bends at just the right angle. My hands pull close to my chest. The heat presses down on my back and shoulders, trying its best.
“Trying”... but it never quite works.
The sun has burned the trees black and brittle, dried the so-called immortal moss into dust, bleaches the bones half-buried in the soil. The forest cooks slowly under it.
But my skin stays cold.
My body drinks the warmth greedily, the way starving things do. I soak in it lovingly. I let it press into my pale, loose skin until it stings, until the ground beneath me grows almost too hot to touch… but it's still not enough. I sigh through my teeth and roll over, rubbing my back into the dirt. The soil is dry today—good dust. I rake my fingers through it and toss it over my shoulders.It falls in soft clouds, coating my ribs, settling in the hollows of my collarbones.
I do it again.
And again.
Soon the ground around me is disturbed, clawed open where my hands have been digging and scraping like some rooting creature. The dust clings eagerly to my clammy skin, turning me the color of old bone and ash.
I shudder.
Not from cold... but from something almost like delight. The feeling crawls pleasantly along my spine as I drag my back through the dirt, shoulders grinding into the warm earth. The dust slips beneath my skin folds, collects in the crooks of my elbows, powders my throat.
It feels—Good.
Too good. A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. Thin and crooked and a little breathless. “Ah…”
My fingers rake the dirt again, scattering another small cloud over my chest.
“Look at you.” I grin at nothing.
“At me.” The laugh comes again, quieter this time… I feel amused and almost giddy. I roll onto my side and grind my shoulder deeper into the warm soil, sighing as the dust coats me further. My hair, my arms, the loose skin of my stomach—everything slowly turning the same dull earthen color.
Like I belong here.
I scratch my neck where the skin is pulled tight and strange. My nails drag lines through the powder coating my chest.
The forest smells like cooked bark and dry sap.
I sit there for a long time… Thinking. Or at least trying to. Something is wrong. The warmth fills my bones a little, but it does not stay. It slips through me like water through cracked stone. The sun works so hard to warm the forest, yet my body refuses to keep it.
I press a hand to my chest… and it feels empty. Not hollow exactly. Just… unfinished. Like a sentence that lost its last word. I tilt my head back and stare at the blooming sky through the branches.
“Strange,” I murmured to no one in particular. My voice sounds thin today. Brittle… and almost like frost cracking. The feeling crawls inside my ribs again.
Missing.
Something is missing.
The sun burns bright enough to blind the earth and still my skin feels loose and cold, like it was stitched onto the wrong creature. I roll onto my side, curling again like a dog guarding a patch of light…
And almost like an answer, the forest shifts.
Not loudly… or violently. Just enough to notice. Just a long breath moving through the branches. The wind slides between the trees in a slow wandering hush, carrying the smell of warm bark and dry soil. Leaves whisper together overhead like conspirators sharing a secret they shouldn’t know.
I lift my head. “…Hm?”
The sound moves again.
Not quite a voice.
But not quite nothing.
The branches lean… and the grass bends. The wind drifts past my shoulders and tugs lightly at the loose strands of my hair, curling around me in a slow, circling motion.
Like a hand. Guiding almost.
I sit up slowly, dust slipping from my shoulders as the breeze passes again—firmer this time, nudging at my back.
“Ah,” I murmur.
My lips curl faintly. “Is that you?”
The forest answers with another sigh through the trees. Lady Death has never been much for speaking plainly. She prefers gestures, or little nudges. Quiet suggestions whispered through the bones of the world.
I push myself to my feet, brushing the dust from my palms.
“So impatient,” I laugh softly. The wind drifts ahead of me now, parting the tall grass, slipping between the tree trunks like a pale finger pointing the way. I follow it… through the trees, past the brittle underbrush. The wind dies the moment the trees thin.
As if it has delivered me where it meant to.
Beyond the last crooked trunks, the land rises gently upward, the earth swelling into a lone hill crowned with a small house. It sits there quietly against the white blaze of the sky, its windows glowing soft and amber in the daylight.
Perched.
Like a nest.
I stop at the base of the hill… and for a moment I simply stare. “…Ah.”
The word slips out of me without thought.
From here the house feels higher than it truly is. Elevated… and almost untouchable. The way shrines sit above villages so that pilgrims must look up when they approach.
My head tilts back.
Up the slope.
Up to the window.
Inside, a figure moves.
Slow. Careful. This must be the Hermit those have whispered about…
He stands near a wooden basin, sleeves rolled, arms damp with water as he wrings out a piece of cloth. The motion is repetitive—twist, squeeze, shake, fold.
Domestic. Quiet.
Laundry, I assume.
The sunlight from the day paints warm gold across his shoulders… I wonder why he wears a sweater despite the sweltering heat.
Warm.
The thought stirs something restless in my chest.
I lean forward slightly without realizing it. The hill makes him seem even higher, framed against the window like some small and glowing creature kept safely above the forest floor.
Untouched.
Protected.
Mine..?
My fingers twitch in the dry grass.
A strange feeling crawls through my ribs—sharp and curious and terribly interested.
I press a hand flat against my chest as if it might explain itself.
“…What are you?”
The question is not for him. It is for the feeling.
It twists in my stomach the way hunger sometimes does. But it is softer too… Warmer? Something that makes my shoulders loosen instead of tense.
I watch him wring the cloth out near the window. Such delicate movements.
Such quiet little habits.
My head tilts slowly to the other side.
“Are you food?” I wonder aloud.
The idea feels plausible… Warm creatures often are.
I imagine it for a moment, just to test the thought. The hill between us gone. My hands around his shoulders. The soft skin of his throat exposed where the pulse lives.
My teeth pressing there… The jugular would be easy. I can already see the shape of it beneath the skin, that delicate cord carrying warmth through his body.
One bite, one clean tear—
It would be warm… salty and full of a familiar taste of copper.
Blood spilling hot over my tongue.
My mouth parts slightly.
“That sounds pleasing,” I admit.
The image lingers pleasantly for a few seconds longer than it should.
Then something in my chest twists.
Not disgust.
Just… disagreement. The moment would only last for a moment. My brow furrows faintly.
“…But not quite right.”
I watch him through the window again as he shakes out the blankets on his bed. Such small careful movements. Such quiet softness in the way he touches his own space. Killing him would end that. And the thought of that ending—It leaves an unpleasant hollow behind it, and it feels strange.
I rest my chin in my palm, still staring up the hill.
“…Perhaps not food.”
The other possibility returns to me then, slow and creeping.
“…Or a mate?”
That thought sits differently in my ribs. It's warmer… and far more heavier. The wind moves through the grass behind me again, rustling softly like someone amused by the confusion.
Lady Death has always enjoyed riddles. I squint slightly up at the house. “…You could at least clarify.”
Inside the house, Mikhail finishes his small rituals.
He moves slowly now, the kind of tired that settles into the bones. The basin is emptied. The last cloth is draped neatly over the line.
Then he pauses.
Just standing there for a moment, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand.
I lean forward slightly in the grass.
“…Ah,” I murmur.
The bed waits in the corner of the room, blankets already pulled loose. He shuffles toward it with quiet, uneven steps, the floorboards giving small sighs beneath his weight.
Humans always seem so delicate when they prepare for sleep. So unaware. He sits first.
The mattress dips under him as he exhales a long breath, shoulders loosening in a way they hadn’t all evening. For a moment he simply rests there, head bowed slightly, fingers rubbing absently at the back of his neck. Then he crawls beneath the blankets. He gathers the fabric close and turns onto his side, pulling his knees in toward his chest.
The movement is small, instinctive—almost animal.
Curling. Protecting the softer parts of the body.
My head tilts again as I watch him settle deeper into the blankets.
“…You sleep like a fox,” I whisper.
Or perhaps a rabbit.
Something small and warm that understands the forest can take things if one is not careful. He adjusts once, twice, tugging the blanket beneath his chin. His shoulders hunch slightly as the last of the day’s warmth escapes him.
Then stillness begins to take him.
Breathing slows.
Chest rising and falling in a gentle rhythm.
Sleep is simply the sibling of death.
Warm.
Very warm.
I rest my chin on my hand in the grass at the base of the hill, staring up at the window like a patient creature watching a burrow entrance.
“…Curious.”
The thought returns again, nudging the inside of my ribs.
Food.
Mate.
Something else entirely.
I watch the slow rhythm of his breathing.
And for the first time since the sun rose—I feel warm too.