The Hunters were out in full force this evening, each eyeing the other suspiciously, each certain they, and only they, were destined to catch the Beast. If one were to mistake them for a group, one would have to conclude they were hopelessly disorganized. Once the fall equinox had come and gone, their competitions ramped up, and the Hunters were forever working at cross purposes. Despite this, they always roamed in packs of four or more, just in case.

This was, Jordan thought, for the best. The Beast liked to be hunted, but if any of the Hunters (the capital H granted by hundreds of years of tradition) thought hard enough to trap it, the result wouldn’t be pretty.

Jordan was petite for her age. Their chubby, dark face, surrounded by kinky curls, had what their sister called RHF -Resting High Face. Never got mad, never got annoyed, just a slow, dreamy smile that shone more or less bright depending on how happy they were. Today, watching the Hunters, the smile was clouded by what might be, to the discerning observer, concern.

Tonight was the Beast’s Night. The moon had been waxing gibbous for the past few days, and the full moon was expected to last two nights. The Beast almost always chose the second night, but there was always the chance that the first night would bring the terror out. The year Jordan was born had been a first-nighter, and one of the few in the records where there had been two deaths. They had been a husband and wife, and the police had found a variety of bone fragments -nearly all human -buried under their foundation.

Jordan had always thought that the first few people here must have shivered in cold fear for the first few years. The ones who stayed were the more perceptive ones, the ones who saw that the Beast’s victims had just as many victims of their own. Years where none were deserving were rare, and Jordan always wondered why the guilty didn’t simply flee. It wouldn’t be hard. The town had grown larger every year, especially once the tourism angle had been fully explored, so taking a long vacation right before the second full moon in autumn could be a coincidence. And yet, year after year, they stayed. Sometimes they had even shown up from outside the city limits the night before, as if demanding judgement.

Perhaps it was the limited number of souls devoured. After all, there was always somebody who had done worse. And at times the town and the forest around it felt like a black hole, an aberration in the gravity of fate. People got stuck here. Tourists who had only meant to stay the weekend found themselves visiting every few weeks, then every weekend, then deciding what a nice town it would be to raise children in. Not all of the tourists became victims of that geographical gravity, but enough did. Jordan’s mother had only been in town because it was the nearest hospital when she was giving birth, and there were complications, because they were a premie, and then it had made sense to rent a hotel, and then it became too expensive and there was a basement just now available that was just in their price range and so the new family stayed.

And so the Beast was fed.

Jordan watched one of the Hunters, an older woman named Nellie, break from the pack for a smoke. Nellie had a floral tattoo sleeve up both arms, and a small white scar on her lower lip. She noticed Jordan watching and winked. “Don’t worry kid, we’ll catch the monster!”

“Why?” Jordan’s voice carried a bit further than she meant it to. Some of the other Hunters glanced up with looks of intense dislike. Internally, they winced.

Luckily Nellie the Hunter only snorted. “Why? Because it’s a monster. It kills innocent people.”

“It kills the bad ones,” Jordan corrected. “The ones we don’t know about.”

Nellie actually looked at Jordan now, taking in their ratty jeans, their shoes falling apart at the seams, their puffy tutu peeking out from under their baggy hoodie. Her opinion on Jordan was masked by another inhale of her cigarette and an expelling of the nasty smoke.

“Ok, I’ll bite.” Another drag. She smoked like she had a grudge against the tobacco. “How do you know it’s all the bad ones if you don’t know about them?”

“We find out after, usually. Like with Father Hart. Or the Drapers. Or Mr. Harold, when his wife started talking after he got eaten. Or…” They shrugged. “You can read about it in the papers, you know.”

“Don’t believe everything you read.” Nellie laughed as if she had said something funny.

Jordan said, quietly, “I didn’t have to read most of it. We all watched them dig up the Draper’s basement. And I know kids -I knew about Father Hart. We prayed for the Beast to take him. And it’s not like the Beast comes for, you know, stealing. Or even all the bad things we do.” It’s known us since we were born, they thought. It knows us better than we know ourselves.

“But where’s the -the due process? That’s the whole point, you know, you bring all the facts, and you lay them out, right?”

Jordan shrugged. “You get it wrong though. Humans are bad at figuring out what’s real.”

Nellie glared at Jordan. “So instead of figuring stuff out for yourself you just take pride in the Beast, is that it? You just hold on and hope that one of these days you don’t make a mistake, you don’t fuck up so bad that you’re sure you’re next? Because that’s what happens, is there’s something when you’re growing up, or something in the water -did you know about lead? Lead in the water and the gasoline? Because when they took the lead out that changed the crimes, because people didn’t have all that outside stuff hurting them, you know, and -” she puffed angrily on the quickly shortening cigarette – “Ah, shit, you don’t know. You’re a fucking kid.”

Jordan flinched at her rant. They didn’t reply. Nellie pinched the end of the cigarette then stuck the dogend behind her ear. She turned to join her pack then half turned back and muttered, “See ya.”

Ethne recited the fili’s instructions silently. Enter the great forest. Track the hare, but do not hunt. Follow the stag, but do not run. Cross the threshold, but only through adderstone.

The clearing was peculiarly silent. The birds had ceased their chatter as soon as the first foot had crossed through the enormous, circular adderstone and touched the paved circle, where the tiles were layed out in the familiar three-cornered knot. The fili had warned Ethne that the way would be strange; still, every hunter’s instinct in her screamed to run.

Nevertheless, the summons must be made.

“Cernunnos, I bring holly.” Ethne placed the fresh-cut bough at the center of the grove. “I bring oak.” She tossed the branch, with acorns still attached, on top. “I bring blood.” Not her hand -that would get infected before she could find her way back to camp -Ethne gritted her teeth and, with a quick, precise cut, slashed the back of her right forearm. Though it was a shallow cut, the blood came quickly. Holding it out over the oak and holly, she made sure at least three large drops had splattered the leaves before she wrapped the wound tightly.

“I bring fire.” From her pouch, Ethne pulled flint and steel. It took almost a quarter hour before the green wood lit. It was more smoke than flame, but it would do.

Ethne sat back, though still close to the fire. She closed her eyes against the acrid fumes and tried not to breathe too deeply. It was just a wood fire, after all; the source of life. She had sat by many a fire before, albeit better built ones, with drier wood. She opened her eyes.

Her field of vision was filled with white, thick smoke, more than the puny fire she had created could have made. A humming, like the string of an instrument had been plucked just beyond her hearing, filled the air. Ethne coughed and rubbed her eyes.

The smoke began dissipating into the trees, filling the forest with mist even as the grove itself became clearer. Cernnunos was here.

He did not walk in. Ethne didn’t even get the sense that he had arrived. He simply was where he had always been, and would always be, but now Ethne was there as well. A great stag, larger than one of the stone roundhouses that lay scattered across the land, sat with his legs folded under him. Great statues of serpents stood before and behind Ethne. Slowly, Cernunnos turned his antlered head.

Good afternoon.

“Good afternoon, my lord.”

It is good to see you again, bright one.

“I -it is the first time I have met you, my lord.” Ethne bowed her head and immediately wondered if she should have corrected such a being.

So it is. And yet here we are. You grow, break off, and form anew. Cernunnos snorted and shook his antlers. What do you seek this time?

Ethne looked up. The great serpents she had thought were stone were circling, moving incrementally, though she had an uncanny feeling they could strike as quickly as any earthly viper.

“My lord Cernunnos, we are at war.”

The great stag snorted again. Humans.

“My lord, they are not.” Ethne bowed her head again. “Some appear as men, but many -many do not have the patience for cunning. They slaughter us.”

You wish for victory? Ask the Morrigan. The great stag started unfolding his legs, ready to leave.

“My lord… My lord.” Ethne stood. “I ask you, my lord. Not for victory, but protection.” Failure. The thought of it made Ethne’s cheeks hot. “Please, my lord! As the champion of my people, I ask you. Grant us strength! The creatures -“

Bright one. There is no strength I can grant you that you will not yourself possess. The process of standing was completed. Cernunnos looked away. I govern the eternal. My balance is the only balance. If you want change, go see the Morrigan.

The mist hanging in the trees flooded back into the sacred grove, obscuring the great stag and his serpents. The holly and oak trees burned high and bright for an instant, and then were gone, crumbled to ash. The smoke dissipated. Ethne was alone.

“No!” She screamed to the empty air. “No, no, no!” She fought back tears, and instead slammed her fist to the stone ground. “Ow!”

The sharp pain cut through her self pity. She was a champion. She had failed, but this wasn’t the only option. She would return. Tell the village what Cernunnos had said. There would be more battles, more death, more killing. But she would save her people.

She had to.

Written for this prompt

Ever have a friend who takes things a bit too… Personally?

You know, that really intense one, with a lot of feelings, and they’re fantastic in so many ways but you say something you think is an offhand comment and next week there’s a little folder with several research papers and citations and really well-laid-out arguments about why you’re wrong, and you know you have to read the whole thing because they’ll ask you about it later.

That friend. The one you kinda felt sorry for in any social situation but god damn did they get paid well.

Kesh was that kind of friend. She wasn’t really shy -she would tell you what she thought. Problem is it took her a while to get all her thoughts lined up. That’s why she was great at the practicals -highest score since Inrin the Mighty, because I do all her bragging for her -but failed every single timed test.

Kesh was a rare bird. One of those dual-specialty types. Me, I like a good fireballing more than the next kid, and couldn’t remember the difference between a ligament and a tendon if you held me at wandpoint, so into the front lines went I.

Kesh was a give’n’take. She could melt the faces off a hundred soldiers with one hand and sooth their burning skin with the other. The Academy wanted her front lines too -but she faints at the sight of blood.

Well, I suppose the whole thing is my fault, in the end. I was the one who took her out for drinks, and I was the one she got into a flaming row with over whether healing or battle magics were the more powerful. I suppose there was the weather witch who got into it a bit, but I told her to bug out, so she did. I was the one she had to prove it to.

Well, it took her some time, but prove it she did. She’d always been good enough to brink -you know, they’re seeing the light, calling for mommy, she puts some manna in and they’re ready to fight for the glory of the State -but going past that? Nobody. Nobody had the power.

Well, telling Kesh she was wrong was the best way to get the impossible to happen. She gave me the notes, I gave it to my girlfriend at the time, and she brought a broke-necked sparrow back. Her theories were sound, and the practice… well, the sparrow sang for itself.

It’s hard to fight an army that stands back up, no matter the cost. It’s even harder to see your own solders get back up and turn on you. The War of Infinity was made finite. Empire soldiers and mages alike lay down their arms rather than face her. The other healers could do it if the body was still warm, but Kesh -Kesh could walk onto a battlefield three days cold and wake them from the deepest sleep.

It felt too good to be true. Healing beyond the grave. You ever have that feeling that you’re missing something? Like that trick where somebody gives you a list of ingredients for a cake and it turns out the third step in is mixing baking soda and vinegar and instead of cake you’ve got an unholy mess to clean up. I felt like I had read the recipe, but I didn’t know all the ingredients. Magic comes at a cost; the Academy taught me nothing but that. Battle magic costs your sanity; healing costs your strength; weather costs your life. To heal the dead, over and over, Kesh’s body should have been sagging. She should have had to crawl to bed at the end of every day.

But she was limitless.

It was that limitlessness that made me watch her. As Academy friends, and well respected mages of the State, we were afforded more freedom than the rank and file. Wine at dinner, that sort of thing.

She didn’t eat any more. She didn’t sleep, either, not that I could see at least. She had always been intense, but as the war came to a close, her gaze could cut you to the bone.

Of course, the history books will note the Kensing Massacre. Two full companies, one Empire, converged on a neutral territory and wiped out the inhabitants in their desperation to slaughter each other. Both sides sustained casualties of 75% or higher. The city that formed their battleground was… God. It hurts to remember. The battle magics used weren’t legal, and their healers had run out of strength even before half their number were dead.

Kesh wailed when she saw. Her orders were to revive State soldiers first, of course, but she disobeyed. Neutral ground, drenched in blood, was her first priority.

The soldiers she raised pledged fealty to her. They always did.

Perhaps it was because I had to go to the bushes and retch while she was raising the city this time, so I wasn’t in the center of it all; perhaps I just finally noticed what had been there all along. But it was the massacre that showed me where it all came from.

The neutral territory was deep in the farmlands. Armies marching through are hardly conducive to crops. But what I saw went beyond the usual crushing or petty thievery. As they walked, a cloud of dead vegetation expanded around us. Birds fell from the skies. She was, I think, in control enough not to harm the livestock she saw, but she didn’t see the child hiding in the barn until it was too late.

We had a long talk, Kesh and I. I suggested that, with the war finally winding down, she might suggest to the higher ups that her infinite power source was, like the Infinite war, in fact rather finite and should be used sparingly. She nodded along.

But in the end, she believed with a passion that she was right and I was wrong, and as Kesh did, she had to prove it.

So. Now you know. The reason you’ve been asked to do the impossible, and stand against the God-Queen’s army?

It’s me.

Tay was… well, heavenly. It wasn’t usually this good. Usually there was a distant part, a separation, a wall that observed and jotted down every detail. But Tay’s scent, sweat and dirt and lavender soap, made xem more real. Xir calloused hands, arthritic from a young age, were gentle if not agile, and unmistakable to the skin.

I had gotten an eyeful already, sketching xem over these past few weeks in Charles’ apartment. Tay looked soft and plump, but underneath the gentle layers of fat had muscles that made my heart hum. Not short, not tall. Xe had stubble all over, from xir shaved head to their shaved pubes. It was a treat, feeling xir scalp under my fingers.

Xe was smaller than me, at least the me that existed in Charles’ apartment. This me was fairly muscular, though, and if there was an imbalance… I’d done it before. The trick was body fat and hair. I once became a girl so petite I had to grow her breasts another cup size and her hair six feet long. It was harder the other way around.

I breathed in through my nose, holding Tay’s scent in my memory. I let my hands drift over xir body slowly, exploring. Xe did the same, moving in rhythm with the music from the apartment next door.

I love big cities like this. There are so many people, so many sights. I once spent hours sitting on a rock, in the sun, in a park, running my hands over every crevice, sketching out the little details until I had it. That night I sat and thought myself into the change. It took hours, a whole night of me sitting naked with my clothes folded up under my notebook, but it felt like I was stretching muscles that had gotten frozen. Kind of an ache, but good.

Mother told me it was painful for her, especially inanimate stuff, but I think that’s because she didn’t pay attention. She didn’t have the artist’s eye for detail. She really is more of a broad strokes sort of woman.

My sibling was working as a model these days. Several, actually. A good living, even if it made Mother click her tongue about the impossible standards for beauty.

I don’t think either of them ever had the hunger that I do. I don’t change because it gets me something. I change because it feels amazing, like slipping into a new cotton shirt after taking a shower, or plunging into a bubbling hot springs in the middle of winter. And when my selves die, or are bulldozed over, or break, I still have them. I can remember them all.

In all honestly, I don’t remember which me I started out with. Mother can always tell who it is when a stranger visits, but I haven’t seen her for almost fifty years. She may have forgotten. She was a tree in Central Park for a few years, and I think getting leafy for that long makes her a bit dozy after. She likes being plants, especially when she gets tired of farming. She never becomes a man, though. I think she’s a bit old-fashioned that way.

Tay sighed deeply. I smiled and kissed xem on xir nose. “Not so bad, right?” I said.

“Mm. No, not bad at all,” xe smiled. “Is that really all you need to do?”

I grinned and changed. I took it slow -I’d rehearsed xir face, but knowing xem inside and out meant I could change from the tips of my fingers down to my toes. Tay watched in fascination as my features slowly shifted, the high cheekbones moving downwards, soft chin sharpening, my weight redistributing itself.

I could feel my organs shifting and gurgling. Most of the time I didn’t even notice, but with Tay… There was something wrong on the inside.

Xe must have noticed my discomfort, because xe reached out to touch my face. Brave thing, I thought. It wasn’t exactly pleasant to watch the change, much less touch me while I did it.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Pretty sure it’s just the cancer.”

Xe raised xir eyebrows. “Just?””

A wave of nausea hit me. I clenched my teeth. “Yup. Just some good old-fashioned leukemia.” Xe felt awful.

I held it as long as I could before I let my organs snap back to another self. I kept my outer shell Tay-shaped; I wanted to share this with xem, but I didn’t want to vomit on the carpet. I looked into xir eyes, trembling.

“Weird, very weird,” Tay murmured. “You’ve been doing this how long?”

“My entire life!” Tay smiled back at Tay. “So, like, a century, more or less.”

“Weird,” xe repeated.

We sat, naked and silent, for some time. Tay broke the silence first.

“It’s… I know I’m going to die, eventually, right? But I’m hoping it’s not this round. But I’m going to change. All the… all the fast-growing parts of me are going to change. And die. I’m not going to look like this for long.”

I nodded.

“Just…” xe hesitated. “Visit me, as me? Not as I will be but as I am, as I feel like I should be.”

I nodded again. I’d seen it happen lots of times. They shrink into themselves, they wither. Sometimes, like perennials in Mothers’ garden, they grow back. Sometimes not. I have to make sure I don’t use their face for a while after that.

I smile Tay’s warm smile back at xem and squeeze their hand. “I promise.” Maybe seeing themselves, as they could be, maybe it’ll help.