A strange sense of urgency had forced Wendigo away from home in broad (relatively speaking) daylight. He'd just started walking, his chest heavy with anxiety, and kept walking with no intention of stopping. His thoughts raced too fast for him to follow and he was left unable to really process how he was feeling or what was happening to him. The one constant thing he did understand was an ever present feeling of dread. Every which way he looked the shadows lurked with face-peeling apparitions who waited for a chance to turn him into a coat.

Something dripped from his face. Wendigo lifted a paw to his cheek and wiped away a warm, sticky substance that glowed. He wiped at his other cheek and found the same substance there. Now both of his front paws were stained with the glowing liquid. Wendigo touched his paws together and felt the substance roll like oil between his toes. As he did this more began to drip off his face staining the ground below. He took all of this in and began to giggle. The liquid began to dribble out of his mouth and his ears too until it felt like he was going to drown in it. As he sat there a living fountain, all Wendigo could do was laugh.

He wiped his face again, coating his paws anew, and howled with laughter at the sight of them. His upturned toes, splayed wide, dripped with the viscous, glowing substance. Was it funny? He couldn't say.

"Speech"

Long years of hell had been Hati's lot since he had died, alone and in torment. The souls of those he had sent to the afterlife before him, and the souls as damned as his own were his constant companionship - any hope he might have had of seeing Daegmar or her children were dashed when he first set paw upon that hellish landscape.

Yet now in a swirl of mist he found himself having returned somehow to the world he had left his destroyed body upon years before - albeit he had a much more tenuous hold than once he had. His body was a mere foggy darkness, his eyes golden embers in the mist. His paws did not feel the land beneath him; his fur was unruffled by the breeze.

A mad gale of laughter reached him and despite himself Hati found himself drawn to the laugher. He had had no contact with life in so long that he could not resist the driving need to see someone breath, and talk, and watch their heart beating in their chest. Even when he stood over the source of the laughter and stared down at an adolescent, he could not make himself leave. A hoarse, rusty snarl bubbled up from Hati's... nothingness, in the vacinity of what might have been his chest once upon a time, but he could not yet form it into words. It had been so long...

At some point his legs caved under the weight of his laughter. He rolled on the ground while his sides heaved under the constant torrent of giggles. The stone under him was quickly made slick with ooze and as he rocked back and forth Wendigo smeared it all over until he and the stone were both equally gooey. Breathless and aching Wendigo threw his paws over his eyes and pressed down until color exploded across his eyelids.

His giggles were cut off suddenly by a perfectly timed hiccup that let the stranger's growl creep onto his radar. Slowly Wendigo curled his hind legs and tail up over his belly as his body went cold. The giggles were gone. He peeked out from between his toes and what he saw drained the warmth from the rest of his body. The boy sucked in a breath and then screamed at the apparition whose ever changing face surely meant he had come for Wendigo's pelt.

"Speech"

Having children scream at the sight of him wasn't really a new reaction for Hati, but he folded misty ears and reared back in affront. Did the brat need to ruin his miraculous return with shrieking. "Shut... up," he rasped, then with more force as he found his voice. "Fucking shut the fuck up!" He circled the boy with what would have been a grouchy, stomping stalk if he'd had a body - it was damnably disconcerting to move without actually feeling the eath benewth his paws. "What the hell is wrong with you? And the world?" Absorbed in the miracle of being alive-ish, of being delivered from hell, the taciturn monster had taken little notice of either the world or the disgusting, gooey mess of the boy. His nonexistent lip curled in disgust. Was the kid sick? And what the hell was wrong with the sky?

The shouting silenced him with a whimper. Wendigo covered his mouth with his paws to keep from making anymore noise and watched with bulging eyes as Hati circled him. The apparition was like nothing Wendigo had ever seen before. It moved with an ethereal grace that was at odds with its feral, aggressive movements. That and the changing face were difficult to swallow on their own, but the biggest mind fuck was that every once in a while Wendigo swore he could see through it.

He swallowed hard and then moved his paws away from his lips so he could speak. "I'm sick." He covered his mouth again and watched the apparition for several more seconds. The circling was making him dizzy. "The world is sick too."

"Speech"

Hati growled, taking a step back from the kid. He had left one hell for another, apparently. "Why am I here?" he growled, as mich to the universe in general as to the kid. "Why not leave me dead and in hell where I belong? What do you want from me?" The last came out in a rage filled roar as he took a menacing, unfelt step towards the sick stranger. Red misted his "eyes" as the rage threatened to overwhelm him. Why bring him here to witness the world he'd left behind dying? What fresh torture was this meant to be for him? Well, the joke was in the universe then, because he didn't fucking care if the world burned.

Wendigo

The sickness deepens... You feel short of breath, but every breath you manage glows with glowing mist.

Hati

You are allowed to temporarily exist again, that in itself should be enough for you...