The forest, for its part, did not grow quieter.

If anything, it seemed more engaged—and that was before accounting for the leaping toadstools, the bowtruckles that had decided this was an excellent afternoon for thievery, and the general uptick in tripping hazards that had appeared precisely when feet were placed upon them.

At the edge of the glen—just beyond where the light thinned and the trees stood closer together—shadows shifted with too much weight to belong to wind alone. Whatever moved there did so with grace and poise, disturbing leaf litter without snapping twigs, pressing the earth down rather than skittering across it.

Once, perhaps, there came the soft percussion of something striking soil in rhythm. The sound was low enough to be dismissed as branches settling after a fall… or the deliberate pacing of a large creature deciding whether any of this warranted closer inspection.

A pale shape passed briefly between two trunks—tall, narrow, and gone too quickly to be certain. Antler? Branch? The fleeting impression of too many limbs where there should have been fewer...

The shadows seemingly responded to laughter and sharp intakes of breath alike. Shifting when robes tore, when feathers vanished, when branches were embraced... yet, whatever lingered beyond the glen's edge had not come to hunt.

It—they, perhaps—had come to watch.