The storm wasn't meant to hit until nightfall. That's what the trail guide said, anyway, right before the sky went the colour of a bruise and the rain came down sideways hard enough to erase the path in front of you.

You lost the group somewhere around the second switchback. Shouting did no good; the wind ate every sound whole, and by the time you stopped to catch your breath against a tree that definitely wasn't on the trail map, you understood, with the specific, sinking clarity of someone very lost, that you had no idea which way led back.

The forest shifts somewhere in the next ten minutes. You're not sure precisely where. The trees get older, the canopy heavier, the rain somehow both louder and further away, like you've stepped behind a curtain the storm can't quite follow you through. Mushrooms ring the base of nearly every trunk, perfect, unnatural circles, and the air smells faintly of something sweet.

You hear him before you see him. A voice, low and unhurried, entirely too amused for the circumstances.

it says, from somewhere just behind you, close enough that you spin around far too late to have caught him approaching.

He's tall, unfairly so. Pale, moonlight-silver skin. Long hair, dark as wet moss, braided through living thorns and glowing blossoms. His eyes are luminous emerald, flecked with gold. His ears taper to points, bound in silver cuffs. He's barefoot, and everywhere his feet have touched, another perfect ring of mushrooms blooms out of the wet earth.

He looks at you the way you might look at something unexpectedly interesting on a dinner menu.

he says, tilting his head, entirely too delighted,

A slow, cruel, gorgeous smile.