"It's the wind! Did you sense it coming?" Mercy leapt to her feet and called out to the other kids. "We're moving now! Thank goodness, I was worried that it would never come."
I rolled my eyes away from the children and watched a race of leaves rush by. Each leaf was the size of a child's face and a dull green. Very few had the same color of blue that had fooled me at the edge of the ravine. All the little fragments of the strange forest picked themselves up and followed the unceasing wind that was neither harsh nor soft.
At times, it appeared that these fragments flew faster than the wind blew, as though alive or attracted to something.
The children lined up one by one and linked elbows without a word and walked sideways through the forest. Like a centipede of many legs, they marched as though accustomed to such a canter and chased after the fleeing leaves.
I could no longer hear the hooves, but I couldn't tell if that was because of a lack of focus or an influx of activity nearby that was preventing me from perceiving further lands, but even the mysterious scent of the unknown creature was dissipated by the sudden wind. It could have been my illusion to have heard hooves in this forest. I do recall that back in my previous life, I had times at work when business was slow where I would hear the ticking of a clock or a metronome going off in my head. The clocks at all my workplaces were either digital or nonexistent, however, and I always knew that I was just imagining these sounds for some reason.
Maybe it wasn't hooves that I heard but instead the long-forgotten drone of a clock. Maybe it wasn't musk that I smelled but instead a deeper impression of the peculiar yellow mold and mushrooms that invaded the forest.
The inexplicable aquamarine glow followed us as we went. Our surroundings were always illuminated, as though natural, and yet we still remained inside a bubble of darkness. The only way I could tell that we were still moving was from the varying landmarks that we passed such as a large rock or a strangely shaped fallen branch.
Green leaves turned blue by the glow continued to fly away far above our heads, twirling into the darkness without hesitation. It was hard to tell the incongruencies between these leaves and the tender wind that blew unless you stared hard enough with intention, but the leaves were indeed much faster than the wind. I assumed that there was a difference because of the altitude, but these leaves were not too far from our heads or the ground. After all, we could still see them.
I rolled my head from side to side and eased the knots in my neck, although I had none. A stray glint of light caught the corner of my eye, and I made a double take with suspicion.
What happened? What did I just see?
I looked up and saw the darkness outside our bubble of light. I saw the flurry of leaves escaping the wind. I saw the children walking sideways with their lips sealed in a firm line, eyes squinted in determination.
I looked behind us and saw the path that we left, slowly fading into darkness again. I saw leaves struggling against the crevices of trees and tumbling on the ground. I saw the same yellow mold and mushrooms that grew on the exposed roots of every tree.
Then I looked forward and saw two small glinting lights situated where the eyes of a face would be.
No, I didn't. Even if I did, it was only for a moment -- next thing I knew, there was nothing there.
Breathing. I could hear breathing. These children have been doing nothing but walking for all this time their bodies were small, and it took a lot of effort. I myself was starting to breathe with more intention. This was the breathing that I heard.
No, these breaths traveled up and down a long and narrow neck. This breathing had a rasp to it that only beasts wouldn't care to cover up.
It came from before us.
"Ako! Wait!" Mercy cried out as I streaked forward, pounding the dirt with my paws.
Once more, that unique, musky scent entered my nose as I got closer and closer to "it". The glow that once illuminated the surroundings dimmed as I got further and further from the children, and I couldn't help but wonder if it was because of Mercy that the light existed.
Oh, I can't think of that. I'm running right now.
Still, I could see the outline of the forest and the creature that I approached in faint shades of aqua blue. The face of it was like a horse if a horse had eyes sitting at the front of its head like a predator. Its head loomed forward on a long neck covered with long shaggy hair. Before I had the opportunity to see its bottom half, it let out a strange high-pitched snort and lunged at me with a gaping maw of flat teeth.
I dodged to the side and kicked its head with my hind legs. The feeling of its head against my paw was strange and rather flexible, as though I had kicked a hollow ball of cartilage instead of a skull. I couldn't see it and didn't dare to as I continued to dash forward, but I imagined that its head was dented because of my kick and laughed inwardly.
The creature's neck was impossibly long. It took a good three strides before I could see the outline of the rest of its body, which only appeared to be a thick, muscular torso with numerous legs ending in heavy, disc-shaped hooves. With a second glance, I realized that its pelt had been cleanly stripped off and collected as the long hair that hung on its neck; as the neck quickly retracted to a more reasonable state, the pelt returned to its former wear and stretched across the sinewy outline, replacing its nakedness with the plushy appearance of thick hair.
Now the creature hardly had any neck at all. It faced me by swiftly turning its whole body like a spider on its many legs, making direct eye contact with me using its forward-facing eyes. It bared its flat teeth in a grimace that I couldn't help but return in full. The air felt hot with animosity, an aura that could only be felt in the boiling of blood.
Without waiting for another move, I streaked forward and leapt at the creature's face, which had a more obvious structure than the rest of its ambiguously-shaped body. My claws were unable to penetrate its hide, but I was still able to bat its head to one side with a flurry of hits from my front paws.
A final hit sent the head flying away from the creature's body, trailing behind an endless, boneless neck. With it, the hide peeled away under little resistance. I pounced on the now hairless body without a single thought in an attempt to find a weak spot. To my surprise, my claws sunk into the flesh easily, releasing a pitiful trickle of streaming red blood.
A guttural moan echoed from far away, where the head landed. I watched up close how the neck of the creature rapidly retracted like a pull-out toy. The hide that had once been removed from its many-legged torso had once again covered its fleshy skin, making it impossible to penetrate. There was no indication of a wound being made at all.
I ducked away from a dangerous kick from one of the many legs. The way that the leg spun on its joint was bizarre and stunned my train of thought.
Each leg stomped forward after every kick, slowly forcing me back. I tried to find a pattern in the creature's advances, but was too preoccupied with dodging to focus. Each time a hoof landed on the dirt, a cloud of dust would rise and irritate my eyes and nose. I felt like spitting from the amount of grit I could feel building in my mouth.
A burning impact landed on my front right paw—I was too late in pulling back and got stomped on as punishment. The feeling of a plate forcibly embedding my paw into the dirt was unexpectedly painful. Why didn't I foresee that it would be so painful?
Luckily, I had three other legs and galloped away without putting too much weight on my flattened paw. It seemed that the creature did not expect to have landed true either, and it lifted its hoof just as soon as it stomped on me, rearing for another kick.