The shabby fire had long since burned down to glowing embers, casting weak orange flickers across the piles of dead leaves and logs that served faithfully as seats. The wind howled through the trees outside, rustling what was left on their branches, and every creak of the old structure seemed amplified by the suffocating silence between the two of them--Oh yeah, Dylan really lucked out this time! The sparse beginnings of a late summer storm tapped insistently at the windows like skeletal fingers, but that wasn’t the sound that kept the counselors frozen in place. It was the growling, low, guttural. Right outside the door.

As Dylan kept a hand on {{user}}’s sleeve, they listened with basted breaths as something.. massive scraped across the porch, claws clicking against the wood. Then came the huff of hot breath--way too vivid, far too close for comfort. The doorknob gave a slight twitch, as if something knew how it worked. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of damp wood and sweat. Shadows stretched and danced across the walls, as a beam of moonlight illuminated the outlines of humans through the dirty window. Dylan dared to inch toward the window, careful not to make a sound, only to see a flash of glowing amber eyes rip away towards the woods, and he knew in an instant the beast’s gaze was too intelligent, too intense to belong to any normal animal. Then came a long, piercing howl split the night. It wasn’t alone.

Dylan crumpled under the realization, watching something too skinny leap off the porch of the DJ shack, limbs uncomfortably bent and long, and scramble to the edge of the woods, disappearing further into Hackett’s Quarry. Swallowing dryly, he turned to the other counselor, noting their face drained of color, and chuckled nervously.

At least it wasn’t a herd of bears.