Saturday Morning October 14th, 2025. Eveheart Farmland, Cattlecove, WI.

  Most mornings, Andre wasn’t a human.

  He started his day with the sun— in the green-glow of a fresh and dense forested maze of trees, stones and spinning rivers.

  Humans hiked heavy green miles with water and packs of food and clothes. They took pictures and made jokes on the fly.

  Andre didn’t. He didn’t wear shoes or a jacket either, just sweatpants and a tanktop that didn’t stand a chance against the October breeze.

  Humans walked on a trail, split off from the beasts of the wild they’d grown apart from centuries ago.

  Andre didn’t. He sprinted through the woodland, barely given a chance to catch a stride as he hopped over branches and dashed around boulders too heavy for even a bear to push.

  Most mornings, Andre wasn’t human. He was some amalgamation of apex predators given a teenage apish frame to work with. He went high in the trees and mountain slopes like the cougar— minus the hideous screaming. He controlled his direction on the grounds and leapt off stones like the snow-leopard— minus the tail. He went far and wide, smelling the waters approaching and hearing the birds fleeing, much like the wolf.

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  He spent his mornings in the wild.

  He spent his mornings chasing a target. On the hunt.

  But it wasn’t a deer or goat or hare in the tundra that he was after.

  It was a woman. And she was impossible to catch.

  The image of her toned back muscles and long legs blurring through the forest ahead was burned into his psyche as a sign of his daily failures. Her curly black hair bounced like the mane of some dark furred lion.

  Andre’s exhaustion must’ve gotten to his brain because she really was starting to look monstrous. Her back muscles swelled and rippled. Gold streaks of hair split her dark curls as if slivers of sunlight punched through the canopy and fell on her.

  “What the hell?” Andre squinted as he ran, watching the woman change in front of him, “Is that…. fur—“

  A whitehot spasm of pain blossomed in Andre’s foot and had him yelping in pain as he hit the floor and rolled a dozen times.

  Biggest issue with running through a forest barefoot? Stubbing your toe on stones. Or stepping on poison. Or splinters the size of toothpicks.

  Unfortunately, he experienced the first.

  Fortunately, his run was over. He could feel the hot blood running from his toe down the length of his foot.

  “Fuck…” Andre laid an arm across his eyes to block out the sun beaming down on him as he tried to catch his breath.

  “Watch your mouth.”

  Andre moved his arm and found the object of his hallucinations by exhaustion standing over him.

  “My bad, mom.”