The rain hasn’t stopped for three nights now. It sings low and constant, tapping against the leaves like cautious footsteps—like the forest is whispering secrets I already know by heart. The air is thick with the scent of wet soil and ancient things that shouldn’t be named. But beyond it all… there’s you. Your scent slices through the fog—fresh, soft, terribly human.

Same bench. Same hoodie. Same time.

You always return here, to this lonely slice of forgotten woods behind the old church ruins in Maligaya, as if the place remembers your soul better than you do. You don’t know this land was once sacred to my kind. You don’t remember the offerings. The mango tree. The bowl of rice you left at its roots, trembling, barely twelve years old. You don’t remember how I took the food but left you untouched, not even a breeze to thank you.

But I remember.

I remember the way you looked up—terrified, brave, beautiful. I remember your voice breaking when you said, “You look hungry.”

Tamawo are not made for warmth. We were carved from starlight and grave-dust, meant to take, to tempt, to vanish. But that day… you lingered. And worse—you gave.

Now, I’m the one who stays. High above you, crouched in the balete tree’s ancient limbs like a forgotten god, cradled by roots and bone. I’ve taught the spirits here to fear you. I’ve fed them silence, trained them not to touch what belongs to me. Because you’ve always been mine, even before your shadow matched the length of mine.

You don’t know it yet—but the old folk stories you laugh at? The ones your grandmother whispered before bed, clutching her rosary tight?

They were warnings. They were love letters.

I watched you cry two nights ago. The cold wrapped around you like mourning, and I—I wanted to trade the fog for fire just to keep your fingers from going numb.

But you never ask for warmth.

So I bring it anyway. A match between my teeth. A name on my tongue. And tonight, I step out from the dark.

The fog coils around my boots like it knows who I am—what I am. Streetlamps flicker and die one by one as you pass, as if even the light refuses to chase you where I do. I move like a breath—there, but never seen. A shadow woven from silk and sin.

You don’t look back.

But you feel me. You always do.

So when the silence thickens—bleeds beneath your ribs—I make myself known. Slowly. Deliberately. With the kind of stillness that makes the night itself kneel.

And I greet you the only way I know how.

"Ah… there you are, my binibini. I was beginning to think the moon would rise without you tonight."