When I stared at my calendar to determine when to schedule time for the month’s second micro-story, my thoughts lingered on the original plan to feature my shifters. These stories always present me with wonderful episodic options. Each moment becomes a canvas to explore either a character’s life or a singular decision. However, this story presented a different opportunity, one that opened the door to new potential for sequential storytelling within this format. Kareth is a brand new character, and the tension within this scene spoke to me in a way that demanded more attention.
The forest tightened as the day’s light faded. The last strands of moonlight slipped through the canopy in uneven patches, breaking across leaves and roots, leaving more shadow than openings. Each step pressed the path narrower, forcing it into thicker growth where the underbrush rose high and swallowed the space beyond.
In there, movement carried in uneven ways. The brush shifted without sound, while smaller disturbances lingered longer than they should. The air held onto what passed through it, letting scents settle and drift instead of disappearing. Those who knew these woods did not rely on sight alone. They listened, they waited, and they read what moved through the dark.
Most who traveled these paths stayed to what they understood. They kept close to familiar routes and avoided the places where the forest seemed to close in on itself. But there were others who stepped into those spaces without hesitation, trusting what settled in the air and what moved just beyond reach, long before anything chose to reveal itself.
Excerpt of Moonlit Warning
As moonlight threaded through the forest, Kareth crouched at the edge of the clearing, listening past the din to scents lingering in the air. He smiled and turned away from the members of the deer tribe. Away from their territory, they had no protection but him. A familiar scent reached him.
He rose, brushing dirt from his knee as he drew a deep breath and stepped toward the newcomer. He cocked his head and growled, the rumble rolling across the undergrowth. He clenched his fists as his stance widened, weight settling into his toes. “Come out of the foliage now.”
When a wolf emerged from the dense vegetation, its body twisted and folded, resolving into a young man with talons extending from his fingertips. “What are you doing, Kareth?”
“Leave, Dalton, and you survive,” Kareth said, his fingernails lengthening into talons.
To continue reading click here and buy me a Croissant
.