Darkshifter's Realm

Not to tell anyone in a horror story what to do, but:

That being said, if you're used to the forest... you will not notice it. Just like how a city person probably won't acknowledge how loud it is to hear cars driving on the highway in the distance, or how most people aren't always aware of the sound of their fridge humming or something. It's background noise. It's normal. A quiet forest is normal; that just means there's no unusual noises, everything's faded into the background.

this isnt even a joke. many animals (birds in particular) will get quiet when theres a predator nearby. even in animals with alarm/threat calls, because the natural first step is to avoid the big scary thing.

Exactly! The best possibility when a forest goes silent is that everything is scared of something that isn't a danger to you, but you have no way to know that. Maybe it's just a big bird... Or maybe it's something that can eat your entire ass. You don't want to take that chance. You need to consider yourself to be in danger, and get out of there while keeping your eyes peeled for whatever might have caused the silence.

A coworker of mine tells a really lovely story about how they knew a bear was nearby when they noticed that all the birds they were hearing were behind them (they knew it was a bear specifically based on other things they'd noticed before then, like fresh scat)

zahra: this has been going on for seven months? that’s why you—oh my god, i thought you were getting into international relations or something