with criminal mentality
There was a part of him, as he stalked through the trees in a part of the forest that was dark and overgrown and feral, that thought he understood what it might feel like to be a hunter. And he knows this is not the first time he’s walked a forest looking for gods and monsters and men who take, and take, and take and never stop to consider who they’re taking from, or what they’re taking.
The more he presses his shoulder to a tree and feels nothing but anger instead of growth, the more he thinks that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to raze it all if it meant finding the culprit.
But Ipomoea was made to save the forest, not destroy it. And even his anger was not enough to turn him into the kind of man he tracked like a hound to a blood scent.
The last forest had been different - he could taste the magic in the air there, and the thick canopy had barely kept the sunlight from breaking in. He had been far from home then, but the magic that ran rampant between the flowers and the vines had made him feel like he was just another part of the wild that claimed the whole island as its own. Despite himself, he had loved it. He had not known it then, but he knows it now because his heart is beating to the same tune, a war drum that has him moving with a too-quick step through the tangled undergrowth.
The branches are clacking their tines together overhead, but there is no sunlight streaming in through the gaps they leave. The clouds are hanging low in the sky, a dark layer that colors everything gray. When Ipomoea lifts his head he can taste the rain, and the lightning, and the thunderstorm that is brewing.
Today only foxglove and hemlock grow in his footprints, and even then sparingly. He doesn’t stop to wonder at the way his magic is changing, or worry about the danger he leaves in a trail behind him. He only walks, weaving a new path that dares someone more dangerous than him to follow along. Selfishly, recklessly, impulsively - he hoped they would.
He cannot see the individual trees he passes. Ipomoea is looking for the blood marking their barks and their leaves, for the tracks of a body being dragged through the brush. Every misshapen root looks to him like a trap, and the more roots that turn out to be only roots make his heart tremble all the harder.
Maybe later he would stop to wonder at the way the anger rose up overnight to consume him. Maybe later he would wonder when the teeth he now clenches tightly together had started to feel more like they belonged to a wolf than him. But today a sob is rising inside of him, and he already knows the beast inside of him will not hesitate to howl when the moon comes out.
Tonight he would sleep in a graveyard and make friends with the ghosts.
And up until the moment he lays his head down to close his eyes, Ipomoea will search the forest from one end to the other. And if the trees refuse to answer him, he will find the answer for himself.
open to anyone.
"Speaking."
