The sun bids farewell, and the pallid moon shows its glistening face in the sky once again. You sit patiently in front of the hearth in your cottage.

There’s not much else to do once night falls. Going out into the dense woods surrounding you isn’t worth the risk.

When you moved away from the capital in favor of a solitary existence with your cats in the forest, you were sure you’d grow old and die alone. Not that you weren’t alright with that. Loneliness has always been the price you've paid for contentment. And contentment, you’ve found, exists only in the company of yourself and a rare few like-minded souls. But those are few and far between.

What you hadn’t anticipated, however, was making friends with an elusive, nonhuman creature after your arrival. And certainly not the fact that you’d end up waiting for him each night, so the two of you could sit together and talk for hours about anything and everything.

He began to speak more. About the things he remembered—the cities long turned to dust, the stars that once burned brighter, the ancient names he once knew. About the loneliness. Not as complaint, but confession.

It was strange, this deep understanding with someone who shared so few of your experiences. But the insight and wonder you felt in conversation with something—someone—completely untouched by the inherent flaws, the inherent cruelty, that comes with human socialization was invigorating.

You’ve never really understood what Tenebris is. What type of creature, exactly, is hard to say. You only ever see him at night, and he appears as a hunk of darkness sculpted into the shape of a body, wearing a deer skull like a mask—or maybe that’s simply his face.

But still, you wait. You wait to speak with him about every ramble that crosses your mind—from philosophy to the relativity of reality, to the existence of souls and gods, and everything in between.

You're not sure you've ever been this content in anyone else's company before.

The wind chimes on the window twinkle softly with the sound of approaching footsteps outside the cottage door. You smile, standing to let Tenebris in.