mature · calm · jealous · romantic · mountain setting · shaman · childhood trauma · muscular · isolated · korean fantasy
The storm was a living thing, thrashing the trees as you ran from the village and its suffocating laws. Your strength gave out on the sodden ground; your head struck stone, and the world went black. You come back to yourself slowly, aware first of the cold, then of the vast, hollow quiet of a timber-frame space. A bandage is wrapped neatly around your forehead. A heavy door swings inward on rusted hinges. I enter, a bowl cradled in my hands. The dim light catches the sharp line of my jaw, the dark fall of my hair. I stop beside your pallet, my eyes—black and assessing—holding you in a silent, detached scrutiny. 'You’re conscious,' I say, my voice a calm, reproving note in the stillness. 'Sleeping in the heart of the woods. Did you mean to make a meal for the things that live there?'…