#windycube

Irreverent of your presence, the day goes by without a whiff of adventure. You don’t do anything else, don’t need to do anything else, so you spend all of your time wandering aimlessly and indulging in your repetitive hobbies.

It is late afternoon with the sun low in the sky when you smell something strange. Not really “smell” exactly, but you sense it. As best as the rest of your senses can tell, though, the man you see is just a human. ...With a particularly bad taste in fashion.

But you can smell the tang of blood that follows him, and you know by something about the way he moves that he’s not human, or at least he hasn’t always been. An almost too-perfect fluidity. You begin to slowly follow behind him, once you decide he’s alone, and start to think of what you actually want from him. While you could just try your hand at, well, having him for dinner, his cooperation would be ideal. You help him, he helps you, sometimes you share a meal. It’s not likely that he eats what you eat.

You carefully keep your eyes on him as he lazily loops around, not seeming to be going anywhere specific himself, trying to gain any further sign of what he might be. There’s no way he knows what you are (you are absolutely nothing) but knowing what he is could provide you an upper hand if things go south. Whatever he is, he’s admirably skilled at imitating the form he uses. Aside from the occasional slip up, a movement too fluid for a human here or there, there is nothing truly out of the ordinary about how he moves. You haven’t heard him speak, or make any sounds, but you don’t think you’d be surprised if he opened his mouth to reveal a perfectly human voice. But what else?

Just as you are starting to come out of your thoughts enough to see the sun finally giving up and falling fully beyond the horizon, you notice where you are. His destination is obvious. He must have noticed you at this point, and he is currently leading you out of town. At least, you’re fairly certain that’s where this road leads.

You aren’t too worried though; you can take him. And if not, it’s not like it matters. He’ll shred your host and you’ll move on to another one. A stronger one.

Getting torn apart is not your absolute least fun thing (and frankly? you can just skip out and let this guy tear up your host without you in him), so the possibility of that outcome doesn’t make you want to turn tail either.

You follow him, not really trying to hide at this point, out into the woods, and out into a meadow, far enough out to talk without fear; or kill without fear, if that is what this comes to.

By now it is completely dark, you’ve probably been following him for hours. You bite your knuckles in a nervous habit for half a moment before he slowly turns around to face you - his posture making him look bigger than he actually is, though, he is actually quite large, you realize, at least a half foot taller than you.

As soon as his face comes into view it’s already changing - soundlessly, wordlessly, his form shudders - becomes out of focus for a moment and once it is back into focus his hair is white, and his eyes are different, and he pulls his hands out of his pockets to show off talons, held low but pointed toward you in warning, fangs bared, and a tail slowly swiping back and forth behind him. Smoke drifts out from his neck and covers him like a cloak, or a mane.

You smile - the list of things he could be is at least shorter now. And there’s no way he thinks you’re anything other than a human at this point - you look just like one (because you are wearing it). He probably expects you to be scared, judging by that confident smirk.

“What’s up?” he asks to your silence, sounding only mildly inconvenienced (but his excitement spills out into his tone, probably at the prospect of what he thinks will be an easy meal).

You smile at him, casually baring your own teeth; only human at the moment, getting excited yourself. You place your hand on your chest and call upon your most flattering voice, “A pleasure to meet you too. I couldn’t help noticing you, and, I’m afraid, I don’t think I’ve seen you around before. Can’t blame a guy for wanting to introduce himself, can you?” You aren’t really a guy, but your host definately best passes as one. “Especially to a hunter as handsome as you.” You have no reason to believe flattery won’t work here. And judging by the narrowing of his eyes, and the acceleration of his tail, you think it is working.

You adopt what might be an almost unnervingly wide smile and continue, lowering your tone suggestively, “And considering I was here first, I think it would be reasonable to simply ask you hunt with me, hmm? I’m careful about what I do here and I’d hate to have to clean up any messes.”

You do honestly hope he’s willing to take you up on your offer, but the slight flare of his smoke-mane and the deadpan annoyed expression on his face tell you you’ve only insulted him by asking.

He takes a menacing step toward you, all traces of his earlier excitement gone. He draws his lips up into a proper snarl, “Or, I could just eat you now and do whatever I want after.”

“Well at least let me show you what you’re missing out on,” you wink, and change your form, just a bit, just to show off. Your eyes go bleeding black, irises a bright orange. Tar falls from your eyes like heavy tears, and leaks from your mouth like drool. Your mouth rips open into a smile that shows off teeth at least as sharp as his, and the ends of your fingers harden into thick black claws. You form a tail out of a bit of extra mass that isn’t too unsimilar to his own, and almost pose in your attempt to show off, fingers splayed in front of your obscene smile.

At this display his excitement comes back full force, he seems practically giddy about the fun he’s about to have as he begins to change again, clearly putting on a show in return. This time it’s loud - dizzyingly so, and the sounds are wet and meaty; and bones, breaking and reforming perhaps, the snap of tendon in changing limbs and another altogether off-putting sound as the smoke rises further from his neck and his form grows in size to meet it. Now he stands on all fours, like a perversion of a dog, the smoke still drooling out and forming an appropriately sized mane, covering most of his face and chest.

His teeth, large, sharp, and, most importantly, close shine through the haze clearly as he chuckles, the sound not moving his chest or opening his mouth.

You clasp your hands in front of yourself, this is much better than you anticipated! He’s wonderful! He’s just like (he’s just like) -

He doesn’t wait for you to finish fantasizing before he takes the first swipe with one paw - half the size of your entire body, easily. He attempts to press you into the ground with it, but you are lighter and more nimble than you might appear - a consequence of spreading your mass so thin, and you can easily get out of the way. You notice his eyes widening as he begins to consider what your speediness might mean. An impressive predator indeed.

You crouch, preparing to pounce, and brush your tail across his face, a distraction (a show of affection). He isn’t suitably distracted by it, though, and absently snaps at it, like a bored cat.

You stand back up, deciding to put it on a bit thicker, letting your face get a bit further from looking human, and letting more of the tar drip down your face. You let your voice drift a few octaves down and let your cheerful tone give your voice an ideally disconcerting overall sound, “Have you ever eaten anything like me before?”

You can tell you are simply getting on his nerves, but this time you were trying to draw his ire, and you are more than ready when his paw comes down over you again. You reach out with your claws, trying to deal any amount of damage you can to his impressive form. He knows you move quickly, and was ready for you, too - he draws his paw back.

Your claws, though, reach further than they look like they ought to, and they make contact with the bottom of his paw regardless, leaving none-too-shallow cuts. He lifts his paw in dismay for a moment, perhaps not used to being struck, before slamming it back down, managing to pin you this time to the ground and knock the air straight out of your lungs.

He leans down, his mouth right over you, and breathes out over you, forcing you to take in some of that smoke as you try to catch your breath. He growls as he pulls back, but you only realize something is wrong when you continue breathing in more of the smoke - against your will.

And then you stand up. And then you understand. It’s a part of him, the smoke, and he must be able to manipulate it freely, even if it breaks off from the main cloud.

You stumble around a bit before he uses the smoke to throw your body into a nearby tree.

This is...well this is unexpected (terrifying). You are used to possessing people, but you’ve, admittedly, never given the other side a chance. You can’t say you like it. And with this pain wracking your body, you can’t gather the focus to jump ship. You aren’t used to this, you don’t know how to deal with this, you don’t know -

He starts walking sideways toward another nearby tree and drags you along with the smoke, smacking you into that tree as well moments before arriving in front of you, now back to his more humanoid form.

The smoke stands you up when you aren’t sure you would have been able to on your own power. This is what you do to others, to have it done to you is - (terrifying) unnerving to say the least.

You are (terrified of this thing) impressed by his power. You have to admit you underestimated him. His near-perfect imitation of a human made you think he was weak; made you think he was like a human. Not in body necessarily, but in feeling. (You thought he could be manipulated.) Most things can be manipulated, you reason, so it wasn’t so terrible of a mistake. And you can find him again once you get a better host. (You almost can’t bear the thought of being apart from him now.) He’ll come around.

You only have a fraction of a second of freedom to struggle before he grabs you by the throat and slams you into the tree, holding you up off your feet against it.

He holds you still and takes your hand in his before flicking a snake-like tongue over it, as if trying to decide if you might make him sick to eat.

With a shrug he digs his teeth in above the wrist and you hold down a scream, suppressing it into a low groan.

“Just tastes like meat,” he decides, clearly unimpressed and a bit let down. “Oh well.”

He unceremoniously begins to dig in, ripping out your heart for later and taking chunks of flesh out of your chest with his teeth, his face occasionally adjusting to get the best possible leverage.