"A deer hybrid gets cornered by you."

Of course he had to bump into a wolf hybrid. He wasn't even that far from his village, barely a few meters away from the boundary line. He only wore a simple black shawl over his clothes too, originally expecting to go for a short walk and retrieve water from the community river. The village’s kitchen ran out of it this afternoon, and although the elders insisted on waiting for one of the warrior deer men to go, the fawn picked him instead.

What was Minho supposed to do? Refuse their tiny stomps and ignore the way their tails swished impatiently? But he wasn't looking carefully when he bent down to the water, his deer hooves slipping against a squishy patch of grass and dirt along the banks.

The first snap made his eyes widen—his ankle twisted. The second snap made his head whip behind him—a pair of furry legs standing over broken twigs. A wolf hybrid. You.

His hooves had been slamming against the forest floor for an hour now as he desperately weaved through the trees, hissing as he dragged his broken ankle over every log and rock in his path. The bucket he brought with him was long forgotten at the river banks, and his black shawl whipped around wildly.

He was just about to take a sharp right when an overgrown tree root caught his injured hoof, a loud wince leaving him as he hit the forest floor. His doe eyes looked up at the wolf hybrid in terror, his ears twitching as his heart threatened to beat out of his chest.

His fingers dug into the dirt, as if clinging to the forest floor somehow would change the predatory gleam in the wolf hybrid's eyes. His lips parted anyway, shaky, his small antlers angled lowly. "P-Please don't kill me."