While moonlight gifts its snowy white fur with a metallic luster, the same beams are responsible for making its razor-sharp canines glisten viciously. Their length is eye-catching in the worst way possible; just so extraordinarily long it's no hardship to imagine them piercing a human neck from one end to another.
The part of me that sees the beast for what it is - a creature whose jaws can snap my head off at any moment - is secretly quaking with the urge to fall on my knees and cower in fright. But then there's the other part of me that sees past its spine-chilling visage. That part of me remembers that a god exists under all that fur, and it's that part of me that makes me feel I'm suddenly drowning in a sea of helplessness and hopelessness.
Why are you looking at me like that?
What's wrong?
He's still spelling out his thoughts in my mind without using his voice, and the despair inside of me grows. He truly doesn't want me to know anything about him, and that says everything, doesn't it?
Are you alright?
I'm full of shame at first, and then I'm furious. The fact that he's both a beast and a god is forgotten in the surge of my rage. What have I ever done to make this god want to play with me so? Why does he waste his time doing and saying all these things to make me think like he's truly concerned about me...only to fucking ghost me just when I've started to get used to him?
Speak to me—-
I cross my arms over my chest and glare at the beast. Make me.
There's a beat of silence, and then the god says in my mind—-
You just did.
The amusement in his voice is unmistakable, and it has me gritting my teeth and wanting to give his divine groin a good, hard kick. "It doesn't count," I snap at him. "I only spoke in my mind at that time—-"
While now you are speaking out loud.
Shiiiiiit. He's right again, and he totally got me now. He was able to make me speak, and...
Are you alright?
"Why do you keep asking me that when you don't—-" I snap my mouth shut in time, and I'm secretly aghast at what I've almost let slip.
Don't what?
I force myself to look away...only to have my gaze clash with Nia as she opens the door to our suite. Her jaw drops as she takes in the hole where our window used to be, and in the corner of my eye, I see the beast disappear just as my roommate recovers from her shock.
She rushes in and comes to a frozen halt when she sees that the window on her side of the room is missing as well. "What the hell happened here?"
Tell her you heard students saying something about Aura.
Nia's gaze flits from one window-less hole to another like it's a mathematically impossible equation she's been asked to solve. "Did someone window-crash into our room?"
"Uh..."
Tell her.
The quiet insistence I sense in the god's tone gets to me, and I hear myself say, "I...overheard a couple of students mention something about, uh, aura?" A part of me is already waiting for Nia to burst into laughter as soon as I finish speaking, but instead my roommate visibly relaxes, and my wariness turns into confusion. "You understood that?"
Nia looks equally astonished. "You didn't?"
"Uh...obviously?"
"Aura is one of the wind deities," Nia says with a wrinkle of her nose. "She lives around here, and she has a certain reputation...well, anyway, the main point is, if Aura's involved, we're lucky we've only had our windows broken."
I can't help looking at our floor, which has practically turned into a mosaic work of art with the sheer amount of broken pieces of glass scattered all over it. "This is lucky?"
"Trust me. Where Aura's concerned, this is absolutely nothing, and...oh." Nia looks at me in concern. "Are you okay, though? Were you here when it happened?"
I instinctively shake my head, not wanting to have to utter another lie, and the other girl sighs in relief just as we hear another knock on our door. It's the building manager, telling us she's received reports from other students about "a loud crashing sound", and just as it was with Nia, the older woman doesn't seem surprised when my roommate explains about Aura's involvement.
We're told to stay put and to wait for maintenance, and minutes later, I have a new item to add to my Most Surreal Things About Rosethorne list.
Maintenance turns out to be a couple of quasis, and in just ten minutes and one quick restoration ritual, it's as if nothing has happened. Our windows are back where they belong, and a lot cleaner, too. The way everything's so efficiently resolved feels anticlimactic, and I find myself dazedly parroting Nia's thank-yous and goodbyes as the quasis take their leave.