The sound of his own hooves against moss had been the only noise following Sage while he strolled through the forest.  During the start of this walk, he passed by several beautiful and exotic flowers, admiring and smelling the ones he knew wouldn’t knock him out. While he knew that even things like flowers could kill him in this forest, he felt at ease. Despite being a place that was teeming with wildlife and other magical beings, he was in his environment. Especially as a native satyr, he belonged there. However, he knew during his walk that day, that something was lurking out of sight, something that did not belong in his forest.
  It was when he noticed nothing was singing, buzzing, or burping, that the realization sunk in. That everything, in fact, was deathly quiet. Brushing one of his delicate hands against a tree with fluorescent mushrooms growing on the sides, he waited. There was now a tension in the air, and he was hungry for it. Mindlessly, he let his fingers trace along the dark and rich bark, before digging into it with his claws. The cool, earthy grains felt therapeutic. It had been during that simple action of sinking his nails into the bark that he had fully sensed the presence of another thing, another something lurking between thick and unkempt tree branches.
The timing was right.
Sage cleared his throat, waiting for a noise to indicate that they had acknowledged him as well. Seconds later, it happened. It was quick, a slight stir in an especially dark patch of droopy tree branches. Sage made out two eyes, comically round and bloodshot, peering through several layers of canopy. Sage stared right back, trying to piece together their frame, height, and build from where they were standing. He knew from the beginning that whatever was looking at him was not human. It’s eyes were more deer-like than anything. Maybe something in between. This thing not being a human wasn’t a huge issue, considering he wasn’t either, but something about it’s presence felt more as if they were a wild animal rather than something like a dryad or satyr, which would have been a much more common type of being to run into in these parts.
Nothing had happened for a solid 45 seconds, in which Sage continued to analyze whatever was looking at him. He knew that this thing stood roughly 10 feet tall, considering how high the eyeballs were in correspondence to the ground, but that was it. Breaking the staredown, Sage sighed a breath of frustration, looking away and back at the tree. Nonchalantly leaning against the damp wood, he made a finger wagging gesture for the thing to come closer to him.
Nothing.
Turning his head back to the branches, he saw that the pair of eyes were now gone. Feeling a sudden wave of uneasiness wash over him, he cleared his throat again.
“Are you going to come out, or not?”
A voice, which had come from his right, croaked in response.
“A..re… you going..to come out.. or not?”
The voice had rang out, sounding identical to his, but something was slightly incorrect about it. There was a metallic ring to it, that caught it from being fully believable. Sage felt his palms begin to sweat, the hairs on the back of his neck begin to prick. Nothing about this was as desirable as he thought it was going to be. While his signature personality trait had been to flirt and tango with danger, he had a gut wrenching feeling that he may have bit off more than he could chew.
Silently, he pulled himself away from the tree, straining his ears for any sudden cracking or snapping of twigs, leaves, anything that would force his body to start running. He gave a full 360 scan of his surroundings, before shooting from the tree towards the direction of the less dense parts of the forest.
Instantly, he heard another presence near him, keeping speed with his own. While he was naturally fast and knew the forest from the inside out, he could not help but feel as if the landscape was growing and writhing towards him, to slow him down and tangle his legs in vines and ivy. He forced his vision upwards, before quickly turning to his right. In that moment, his stomach dropped, and the urge to throw up had come up all at once, leaving a burning and scratchy feeling in his throat.
In between flashes of olive greens and rich browns, a gangly being was running alongside him, head fully turned to meet his gaze.The thing had a twisted, rotting deer head, with unnaturally big and grotesque teeth poking in odd angles. A snake-like tongue hung wildly from its agape mouth, flapping every which way while it ran. It had a bony and crooked frame, partially covered in matted fur. The thing ran with pure animalistic hunger in it. But, what had freaked him out the most was its legs. The legs moved in an awkward but steady pace, in a way that if you were to see it, you would know something was incorrect but you wouldn’t know what.
It was all wrong. The fear of death pounded in Sage’s head. It was going to catch up with him, and he would die.
But it never did, even when he found himself crudely stomping through the flower patches that he had dearly admired that very morning. He knew he was now close to a more populated area of the forest. In the distance, he could make out a group of people, oblivious to his situation. Nearly out of breath, he began to flail his arms, making whatever noises he could to get their attention. He didn’t care anymore, whether they saw him or not. If anything happened, he had eye witnesses. He turned around.
Nothing.