Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t human. Even if the massive wings weren’t a dead giveaway, it moved all wrong. It sounded wrong. His mind might have been playing tricks on him, irrational with fear, but he thought he could see red eyes glowering down at him. There was a low rumble coming from it, followed intermittently by clicking noises that reminded him of zombies from a video game, and it was coming closer. It was coming for him.

“No no no, please don’t …”

Henry’s back hit the trunk of a tree. The creature was right there at the bottom of the ditch with him now, wings retracting, and it crouched down low to lunge. He covered his head, screaming in terror, trying to shield himself from the impact, from teeth that would devour him.

… except nothing happened.

Nothing even touched him.

With his whole body shaking in terror, Henry had to fight his instincts to lower his arms, to make himself look. He half expected to see nothing at all, half hoping and half fearing that it had all just been another figment of his imagination, like the figure on top of that house a few weeks ago.

What he found crouched in front of him was far from nothing.

He couldn’t make out details in the dark, but he could see the shining red eyes clearly now, looking at him with keen interest and undeniable intelligence. They were wide set in a large, but humanoid face. The mouth looked odd though, even in the dark, almost invisible unless the creature clicked at him. Growths on the top of its head were sticking out, backlit by the streetlights above them. They weren’t horns, but rather insect-like, antennae?

It was an absolutely massive creature, well larger than he was, larger than even the tallest athletes he knew, but it was making itself small, crouching in a deep squat in front of him and ducking down, but not as if to strike.

There were sounds coming from it, and after a few rapid breaths, he couldn’t help but get the sense that it was trying to…soothe him?

“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck,” Henry whispered as the creature moved closer.

He wanted to pull away but there was nowhere else to go. He couldn’t do anything but watch as it reached out with its…fingers? It definitely had a humanoid hand, and it touched Henry’s sore ankle with deliberate gentleness. Henry’s pulse spiked, his heart pounding harder, but the pain he was expecting didn’t come. Instead, the creature shuffled closer, one of its large wings extending up to encircle Henry’s shoulder, almost in an embrace. Maybe it didn’t want to eat him?

Henry forced himself to exhale and then took a deep breath. The wing near his head had a sort of dry, woodsy scent. Like autumn leaves before the first snowfall made them wet and soggy. A kind of pleasant musk that seemed to ease something in his chest.

“Can– can you help me? Fuck, can you even understand me?”

The creature made a series of clicks in its throat, and that wasn’t exactly an answer, but it was conversational enough that Henry didn’t pull his leg back when its long fingers trailed from his ankle up to his knee, checking him over along the way, as if systematically evaluating him for injuries.