The woods are wrong.
I know they’re wrong because I recognize them. Silver Moon territory, the birch grove near the eastern border where the trees grow too close together and the light comes through in slices. I haven’t been here in six years but my body knows the path. My feet remember the roots. My lungs remember the air, cold, green, heavy with pine and something else. Something that smells like iron.
I’m running.
Not jogging. Not for exercise. The kind of running that comes from the oldest part of my brain, the part that existed before language, before the invention of telling myself *it’s fine, everything is fine.* The kind that means something behind me has teeth.
I can hear it. Paws. Heavy. Rhythmic. Gaining. Something large and patient and unhurried because it already knows
