Cold Eyes
The fresh fallen snow, a new layer of soft powder over old hard packed deposits, swallowed nearly all the sound in the air.
No birds, they’d all flown south.
No bugs, dead and or buried.
No creatures to slither and scurry, frozen stiff or stuffed deep into burrows.
No plodding, bulky beasts to lumber over the underbrush, hibernation’s gentle hand had them quiescent over the winter months.
Barley a sound stirred the air, save for the crunch of snow underfoot.
A booted foot.
A man.
Dressed in modest, but appropriate, attire for the environ. He plodded through the snow, his boots plunging down through the powder to punch into the compressed old snow, earning his heavy boots the squeak-and-crunch of compression.
He was loud. Almost irreverent of the winter’s silence around him.
He was watched.
Something in the trees caught his sounds and angled in.
The other didn’t move like a man. Didn’t move like a mouse or a squirrel, though it was quick. It didn’t move like an elk, though its limbs were long and spindly.
It didn’t move like a bear, though it did share one’s appetite.
The creature moved like quite unlike anything on two legs or four. It was quick and quiet, no. The only comparison the animal kingdom could draw would be to that of an owl, swift and entirely silent.
Its flight through the trees, was as silent as it was swift. Drawn in by the sound, and even more by the scent.
The scent was fresh. The scent was faintly warm, chilled on the wind as it was, but the closer it got, the warmer it became.
The Creature with old eyes found the trail, and it led through the trees.
Through the trees, the cold eyes looked.
Through the trees, it could see the man.
He wasn’t aware it could see him.
He wasn’t aware of where it was.
He wasn’t aware he was being held by those cold eyes.
He was just like the One Before, to walk these hills, between these trees. Irreverent.
He wasn’t paying heed, mistaking beauty and tranquility for passivity, just like the One Before.
He would be prey like the one before, too.
And The Creature would be free. All that was left now was the strike.