Thistlewitch

She came. The night was high. The moon was only half full, shafts of light just barely managing to reach the earth, the stars far more vivid and vibrant than anything else in the sky. The clouds rolled in painted wisps across the sky, and for as far as one could see, the woods would appear to be...empty.
A will-o-wisp bobbed through the fogged underbrush, a ball of bone white that dipped and weaved through the grasses, parting them as it came. But as it drew closer one would see it was not a wisp at all, but a head, and this head was ghastly. Long and drawn, pale and gaunt with sunken and hollow cheekbones, a tapered and fox-like muzzle with jaws that hung slack, blackened and discolored saliva seeping like tar from stained lips, thickly-coated teeth and maw saturated in the ichor dripping down her front. Bat like ears were large and hollow, nearly bare of fur and devoid of anything, sans some minor wear and tear.

And the eyes--oh god, the eyes.

There were no eyes--just great, swarthy pools of inky blackness--two black holes, cracking and spidering in thin veins through and across the white porcelain that was the pallid face, thickly leaking sooty tear-streaks down the cheeks and jaws and mingling with the thick and coagulated blood and saliva that matted her throat and front, staining even her forepaws, which were saturated with whatever substance it was that leaked from her orifices. Fur was mottled and bedraggled, hanging off of her body like spiderwebs draped over a corpse, every tendon and sinew seen through parchment-thin skin, bone jutting up in wicked angles, sharp and harsh, poking against her flesh as if it threatened to break through. Ribcage could hold birds within it, her hips angular and sharp as they swayed, her tail thick and ragged with covered in vines and moss. Each step she took looked as if the grass bowed towards her, straining to reach and cling to her presence, seeking to reach down to caress her morbid form.

Too long. It seemed she had gone unheard and unnoticed for too long. Had death taken her? Small, fragile, lean limbs, frail body. Jutting ribcage rose and fell ever so slightly with shallow, limpid breaths. Soon she stopped, sprawled out atop a damp stone, the drooping branches tickling the tip of her tail, hanging off the edge. And yet she lived. She thrived. The moon rose high in the sky, the stars sweeping their blanket of twinkling light over the navy black, and shafts of silver light poured down upon the darkened woods...but not onto her. She was in shadow. And yet she was bleached, ethereal, ephemeral. There was no feminine curves, no gentle smoothness. She was sharp angles, harsh and jagged. Her fur, wispy, long, flowing. Spider-silk. It swayed in the gentle breeze--a ghost. She flickered.Jaws unhinged, the gleam of teeth glistening as a heavy sigh left her blackened lips, a gurgling sputter spilling out from her jaws--she was alive. And she perched on the stone, a skeleton, staring over the dreary domain, devoid of feeling.

Snake-like, sinewy, twisting, she moved, her gait an ambled shuffle that brought with it the uncanny appearance of a walking corpse. She came, and all would know her.



"I stole Something Precious"