Page 9 of Monster's Obsessive Hunger
I retreat to the cold, dark silence of my lair. The cave, once a simple refuge from the elements, now feels like a tomb. A monument to a lonely, brutal existence that I was content with until she showed me it was possible to feel something else. I stalk past the main chamber, ignoring the furs where she sometimes sits, and retreat to the deepest, darkest part of my domain, a small alcove where the stone is always damp and the air never stirs.
Here, in the absolute blackness, I try to find the cold, simple stillness that has been my companion for centuries. But it is gone. The silence is no longer empty; it is filled with the memory of her. The ache intensifies until it is a physical pain, a burning pressure behind my ribs.
My own mimicry is my last resort. I open my mouth and let her voice fill the darkness. I repeat the words from her stories, the soft cadence of her speech, the gentle lilt of her questions.“What is it like? The hunger?”Her voice, coming from my throat, is a perfect, hollow echo. For a moment, it almost works. The sound fills the space, tricking my senses into believing she is here with me. I can almost feel the warmth returning to my chest, the hollowness receding.
But it is a ghost. An echo without a source. It lacks the life, thefeeling, that makes her presence a balm. It is like looking at a painted fire instead of feeling its heat. The comfort is fleeting, an illusion that shatters the moment the sound fades, leavingthe silence deeper and more profound than before. The mimicry, my oldest tool for understanding and for soothing the curse, is failing me. It has become a cruel reminder of what I do not have. Her voice is no longer enough. I am beginning to crave the girl herself.
The failure of the mimicry forces me to confront a truth I have been avoiding. I am weakening. I can feel it in the subtle tremor of my limbs, in the way my movements feel heavier, less certain. I have not had a true blood meal in weeks, not since her visits became a nightly ritual. I have been subsisting on the emotional sustenance she provides, a diet that fills my soul but starves my body.
I hold up a hand in the darkness, studying the faint light that emanates from my own bones. The glow seems… frantic. The warm gold her presence ignites is still there, but it is now constantly at war with a deeper, more insistent color. A feverish, hungry red pulses of light, a sign that the physical curse is reasserting itself with a vengeance. The two hungers, one for her presence and one for her blood, are beginning to merge. They are twisting together into a single, terrifying obsession.
This is not sustainable. She is a temporary reprieve, not a cure. Her presence soothes the spiritual ache but sharpens the physical need. How long can I maintain this fragile balance? How long until the red consumes the gold entirely? How long until I look at her and see not a source of comfort, but the only meal that can truly satisfy me?
The realization settles deep in my bones, a cold, heavy certainty. This path leads to only one destination. I am becoming dependent on a fragile human, my entire cursed existence now revolving around her. She has not tamed the monster inside me. She has simply focused its gaze. I am becoming more dangerous to her with every story she tells, with every laugh she shares. My control, honed over centuries of solitude, is eroding. She ischipping away at the stone walls of my restraint, not with force, but with a gentle, persistent warmth that is far more effective.
I lower my hand and let the darkness of the lair swallow me whole.
“She’s undoing me,” I murmur, and the words, spoken in my own true voice, are the most honest prayer I have uttered in a thousand years.
14
LYSSA
The air in the clearing is different tonight. The space between us is no longer filled with simple curiosity; it is charged with the weight of his confession.There are parts of me you should still fear.The words echo in my mind, a constant, chilling reminder of the truth of his nature. He is a killer who once found joy in cruelty. I know this now. Yet, I am still here. My presence in this clearing is a choice, a silent declaration that I am not ready to give up on the creature who listens to my stories as if they were prayers.
He is still, a statue of bone and darkness in the woods, his heart-light a low, anxious green. Waiting for me to set the tone, to decide if his dark past is a wall between us or a bridge to a deeper understanding. I choose the bridge. I decide to offer him a piece of my own past, a story steeped not in simple joy, but in the terrifying, beautiful bond between a mother and a child.
“I was six,” I begin, my voice a soft thread in the vast stillness. “It was the first deep freeze of winter, and the creek had frozen solid enough to walk on. Or so I thought.”
“I was chasing a snow suru,” I continue, a faint smile touching my lips at the memory of the small, horned rabbit-likecreature. “It was so fast, darting across the ice. I wasn’t thinking about the danger, only about its white fur against the blue-white of the ice. I followed it right into the middle of the creek.” The smile fades. “Then the ice cracked.”
“The air snatches the warmth from my lungs, a brutal blow that steals my breath and turns my limbs to stone. Wool, heavy and waterlogged, drags me deeper into the black. Above, through the jagged rupture in the ice, the sky is a distant, distorted blur, a tantalizing promise of light impossibly far away. Panic ignites, a searing fire in my chest, whispering promises of inevitable death.”
“Then, a sound, sharp and desperate, slices through the frigid silence—my name, a frantic beacon. A hand plunges into the icy water, fingers closing around mine with the unbreakable grip of iron. It holds fast, refusing to release.”
“She pulled me out,” I say. “I was so cold I couldn’t even shiver. She wrapped me in her own cloak and carried me all the way back to the village, running the whole way, screaming for help.” I look down at my hands, remembering the feeling of her arms around me, the scent of wet wool and her fierce, desperate love. “The village healer said another minute and it would have been too late.”
I look back up at Thorrin, a small, self-deprecating laugh escaping my lips. “She saved my life, and then she scolded me for a week straight about chasing after a suru with more foolishness than sense. I think I was grounded until spring.” The laugh is a soft, watery sound, a release of the tension from the telling of the tale. It is a laugh born of love and the absurd, beautiful memory of being a clumsy, reckless child who was utterly, completely cherished.
The reaction from Thorrin is immediate and violent. A growl rips from his chest. He turns away from me in a single, sharp movement, his entire body going rigid.
His claws extend with an audibleschlick, and he drives them deep into the bark of the nearest pine tree, the wood groaning in protest. The sheer, unexpected violence .
The laugh dies in my throat, my blood turning to ice. I stare at his back, at the tense, corded muscles, at the chaotic, flickering light in his chest, and I have no idea what I have done.
My mind races, trying to find the offense. Was it the story of near-death? Did the mention of mothers and children stir some painful, phantom memory in him?
I sit frozen on the log, my heart hammering against my ribs, watching as he trembles with the force of some emotion too powerful for his monstrous frame to contain. The air crackles with his silent agony, and the clearing, which had begun to feel like a sanctuary, is once again the lair of an unpredictable, dangerous predator.
I have misstepped. I have crossed some invisible line, and I am terrified of what comes next.
After a silence that stretches for an eternity, he speaks. His back is still to me, his voice a broken, gravelly thing, scraped raw by an emotion I cannot comprehend.
“Don’t,” he rasps. “Don’t laugh like that.”
My confusion must be a palpable thing, a scent in the air, because he continues, his words strained. “I can feel it… here.”
His free hand, the one not buried in the flesh of the tree, rises slowly. It hovers over the center of his chest, over the pulsing, chaotic light that is the core of his being. The gesture is one of profound, agonizing vulnerability. He is showing me the wound.
