no one dared to question why you chose the night shift; it was simply superstition that it was better not to ask. but, you were always in good company.
warnings; brief mentions of gore, ritualistic/cultish stuff, some lore things that may be confusing if you aren't aware of the series, roughly proofread
repost from 2kmps ➔ theoxenfree. would love to know if you guys would be interested in a full story!
No one dared to ask questions of you when you had volunteered to take up the lonesome night shift at the ranger’s station.
Workplace superstition wasn’t one to discriminate, whether that meant you were tweaking a bullet out of someone's chest in the operating room; sterile gowns splattered with carmine like a rorschach inkblot, adrenaline dampening the noise in the room while the surgeons honed into that sweet spot of impenetrable focus, or you were reclined in a creaky wooden chair, prodding agitatedly at your phone screen with a thumb because the service had turned to shit for the fifth time that night.
The reason why you were so adamant to burden the staggering quietness of the Atticus Forest behind aluminum walls that'd amplify the whispering winds and long claws of trees’ appendages trying to gain purchase into the metal went unchallenged, incurious—if no one knew why, they would be spared of knowing about you, bonding with you, catching your eye and expected to act in sympathy if you were to ever change your mind about the arrangement.
You, however, used the cover of nightfall, the endless shroud of darkness produced from a sprawling canopy of lush treetops to roam freely, uninhibited by the daytime shuffle of campers and hikers and other rangers scouting the trails for no-good-doers.
Every night you wandered out some ways from the station, somewhat nettled by the fact you were leashed from going far from the radio, needing to standby in case of contact, and whistled tunefully. It was a sweet sound that aroused the owls and sleeping doves, sometimes the tree frogs would chirp after you, suddenly turning the vast, placid place into a euphony of colorful sounds.
Only when the forest was at its noisiest did he come out from hiding. He did not know shame or fear of the sun, nor quail at the concept of walking among humans, but he preferred to share the forest with the untamed creatures and your company alone.
“Orruth,” you greeted the lumbering thing as he came away from the trees; the gray of his skin, and gleaming white elk skull were a seamless blend in the inky black all around. “Are you in the mood to walk tonight?”
He did not speak any human tongue, not any that you were aware of at any rate. You were no linguist, but the things he said couldn’t have been mistaken as latin nor some other dead language from forgotten empires and cultures buried by concrete and gentrification. They were guttural, strong echoes that anchored you with awe, overwhelmed by power, the unfathomable words of an ancient who always tried so desperately to converse with you. There could never be a middle-ground between what he said and what you understood because you were never meant to know.
So, he whined instead, lowered his hulking form close to the ground for you to reach his face. You felt the fissures in his long nose, how dry and brittle the bone felt under your fingertips and observed the glowing pupils within hollow sockets staring back at you. Apart from his arms and legs, which were long, sinewy, and gray, his head floated mysteriously by a thick vapor you had ever shied from touching and he seemed to not want you to touch.
“I heard a complaint about a fire about eight kilometers away. I'm hoping it's just a few campers thinking they're above the law of the land, but we can never be too sure.” You explained this while he tucked the flat bone of his nose into your chest, mindful of the sprawl of his antlers as you adjusted to petting him around the eye sockets. “We keep finding animals—gored, disemboweled, almost ritualistically at some campsites. If your old followers keep this up, they may try to ban people from camping out here at all.”
He would probably like that, you thought in hindsight once he had had his fill and pulled away from you. In his own tongue, he tried to say something else. It remained indecipherable to you, but you could have from how he nearly flattened his body to the ground that he was offering you a ride.
“Just try not to throw me into a bunch of tree branches again, yeah?” you sat on the broad shelf of one of his shoulders, arms wound in the network of forks and beams of his antlers as he rose to full height, walking onward off the trail and through the trees towards distant piles of smoke.