The Shining Trees

The runner skips across water, ripples spreading from the kiss of her feet.  Something folds out of the night sky and drops with a nightmare screech that registers only as a chill in her spine.  She leaps and turns, throws bright white steel at the darkthing, and it fragments, stutters, lurches.  They tango in the air, but the runner lands and keeps going, leaving broken shadows.

She’s bleeding from a cut across one leg.  The wolf will have her scent.  She picks up the pace.

In the forest ahead, the trees bloom with shining white petals, a second starry sky.