It begins slowly at first, like blood staining through thick linens.
A cool and haunting breeze heralds its approach as old September winds to a lazy close. As if summoned by the turning of the leaves, it creeps under the fast-baring limbs of the trees above. In the dark shadows of the evening it collects and pools. Through twilight it overflows and oozes into the waiting night. Sticky and thin and oily as Edelwood sap, it seeps into rock and root, saturates the very earth underfoot. It hangs on the air, rich and heady to the point of near-asphyxiation.
It blooms as a peculiar kind of tension across the wilderlands. Gentle madness wheedles its way into the mind of man and beast alike. All the forest sings a lilting, urgent tune, as beguiling as it is insidious. Yet slowly but surely it grows in volume, and no mortal can shut out its melody.
It pursues the unwary, makes their hearts seize with apprehension. Like a prophet, it cries out and expounds upon the signs of some nearing endtime. It leaks like a once-strong and mighty dam, fit to burst forth with the river. It creaks like hinges of Pandora's box, about to unleash all sorrows upon the gods' creation. It promises doom, a lingering death to those too proud or too deaf to heed its warnings.
"Prepare," it warbles with the fluttering of sparrow wings fleeing south. "Prepare!
"Gone is the sun from field and glade!" it bellows with the angry bugling of the stags in rut. "Bring in the wheat! Bring in the cattle and the sheep all fat from grazing! Take the riches of summer into your homes and your bodies and guard them well!
"But think not to hoard your riches!" it cackles with the ravens perching on the scarecrow. "Give tribute to the gods of winter and the ghosts of yesteryear! Pray that they will have mercy upon you and pass over!
"Prepare, for I am the messenger of darkness!" it howls with the wolves in the distant foothills. "I am the death of the harvest! I am the gate of winter! I am the veil between the worlds, torn and riddled as cobweb!
"Heed me, fear me! Prepare, for I am Samhain, and I am upon you!"
Personally, Enoch finds all of the hubbub to be a bit dramatic.
Mortals do love to buzz and scurry so in the closing weeks of this season. They run around as if in a race for their short and fragile lives - though he supposes that is the reality for them. It leaves a tired weariness upon him that is neither truly tiring nor all that wearisome. Regardless, he is content enough to the leave the lands outside Pottsfield to its burdens and to tend to his own within.
Though, really, he is not in a position to be judging. Wouldn't it just be the pumpkin calling the orange, well, orange? After all, the harvest is just as busy and bustling an affair for his little town as in the rest of the Unknown, albeit not so dire. What with crops to bring in and straw to bundle and bodies to bury and townsfolk to raise – he hardly has enough time in the day!
Or at least that would be a concern if time meant all that much to him.
"Well good evenin' to you, fella. We were beginnin' to think you wouldn't come up for another year. Had a nice rest, I hope?"
The oversized pumpkin crouched low on the dusty, bare ground. He was careful not to knock over the loose dirt piled beside the hole as he stared at its occupant with a grin. Most every harvest had its late bloomers, and this lad looked to be the last one to pop up for the year. It was this boy's first rising, too, and the god always did like to be the first one to greet newcomers.
To hear his worshippers talk of it, the first awakening was always the most disorienting. He had no frame of reference, personally speaking, but far, far be it from him to leave any of his townsfolk scared and alone. Most especially not during their long-awaited rebirth.
(Distantly, he can feel a dark shiver of a footfall just beyond his borders, where winter meets autumn, but he does not acknowledge it just yet.)
With a chattering of teeth and a scraping of ribcage against packed soil, the boy chatters without words. In vain he tries to suck air through lungs that have long since gone to grubs and maggots. Blindly and eyelessly he stares up at the one who has brought him anew into the world. Upward he reaches with his hand, both to stare at his bare digits and in supplication to his god.
"Easy there, yougin', easy," he drawls, patting the dusty scapula in a gesture of both reassurance and command. "No need to rush now. Take your time..."
Cloth-like tendrils wrap gently around pale carpals, smooth and beautiful and stripped of flesh. Almost immediately warmth suffuses them both at the contact. The skeleton's happiness hums through him like cinnamon and honey through a sieve. Just as spicily and sweetly, too.
(The shiver turns to an outright chill, and daylight hides the moon-bright gaze of his neighbor spying on his borders. It make his heart flutter a little, but he cannot answer just yet. He will attend to that shortly, he tells himself.)
Enoch returns the favor with easy affection and an open, nonexistent heart. When the boy – a charming cannibal and leper by the name of Herod Bethlehem – is ready, the mayor pulls the newest Pottsfielder up and into the evening light.
"Uuup and at 'em," Enoch drawls, as if it took any sort effort to lift the little pile of bones. "Strong young man we've got here, yes indeed. Looks as if the ol' tomb has done mighty fine by you, Mister Bethlehem. We'll show you to town here, by and by. But let's see if we can get some of that grit off you first. Got to be making a good first impression with the rest of these good folks and all that."
Humming a slow and easy folksong about hay-making and harvest-bringing, he goes to work.
"Now harvest is over and winter's come on / We'll jump in the barn, boys, and thresh out some corn…"
Two ribbons come out to keep a grip on the lower spine. Not too loose and not too tight, but just enough for firm comfort. With a nudge he pulls his newest villager a little closer and keeps him steady. Other ribbons travel lower and begin dusting at the lower phalanges.
"Our flails we will handle and so bold will swing / Til the very next meeting that's now coming on…"
He starts at the tips of his toes and then works upwards. He dips into the metatarsals and then the tarsals themselves. He glides through the gap between the tibia and the fibula. Up the femur and to the hips, pulling away specks of dirt and leaving only bone, clean as clean can be.
"There's a boy to his whip and a man to his plough / We will plough up the ground, boys, and throw in our corn…"
He pays special attention to the inner sides of the ribs, the spaces between the knobs of the spine. He lingers over the humerus, the ulna, the radius, ending with the fingers. He comes to the clavicle, the shoulder blades and takes care not to blow the dust in the skeleton's face.
"Here's a health to our master and ladies all around / Here's a health to the jolly ploughman that ploughs up the ground…"
At last he comes to the skull. Tenderly he runs over the hair-line cracks in the cranium, clears out mud that has collected in the atlas. And through it all he all but overflows with golden cider cascade of peace and contentment.
(The eyes never turn away from the scene for the whole display. There is muted curiosity and not-so-muted hunger and yet another feeling he cannot quite place.)
The ritual is as much a show of devotion as it is confirmation of ownership. Enoch thinks it is his cat-skin rubbing off on him again. The old black fur of his does love to be rubbing up against folks all the live long day.
He memorizes every square inch of Mister Bethlehem's bones, as he has done with every villager before him. For to truly love something is to love it completely. To know it utterly for all its faults and sins and imperfections and not shy away. And Enoch loves each and every one of his townsfolk most dearly.
"And there you have it," he sighs, dusting his tendrils off on himself. "All gussied up and ready to go. Well, almost ready." Enoch god chuckles and pulls away. A handful of villagers come around the corner just as he is finishing up.
"Well now if it isn't Flagsman Brown and Miss Clara Deen. Hello to you, too, Miss Lulily, Miss Dolores." He drapes some tendrils over his newest charge's shoulders and nudges him forward. "I'd like to introduce you folks to Mister Bethlehem here. Just came up fresh only a few minutes ago. Would y'all be so kind as to get him outfitted and settled down somewhere comfortable for the night?"
"Why of course, anything for you, Enoch!" Flagsman Brown calls upward, reaching out to take Mister Bethlehem's hands between his straw-covered ones and shake it. "Please to meet you, good sir!"
"Oh, isn't he just the handsomest so-and-so to shoot up from the field this harvest?" Miss Lulily giggles, hiding a bony blush behind her pumpkin face and hands.
"Don't smother him too much now," Miss Clara chides, shooing a some of the more eager of their number away. "You don't know if he even likes being crowded so. Hope this isn't all too much for you, Mister Bethlehem.
"Let's see here, I'm guessin' you were put out to pasture about a dozen years gone now?" Miss Dolores asks, tapping her chin. "See it's not every day or even every harvest that we get a new neighbor. We're just so excited to finally meet you is all. Care if we whisk you away now?"
No words come from Mister Bethlehem's teeth when he clacks them together. His phalanges met click against his mandibles in equal parts confusion and chagrin. He looks to his fellows in confusion, teeth clacking a bit more worriedly this time.
"Don't get too worked up now," Miss Clara reassures him, patting his hands in the same way Enoch had. "Speaking's usually the last thing to come.
"She's right: it'll come in time, surely enough," Flagsman Brown chimes in again. "First thing's first, let's get some vegetables on those bones of yours. You must be awful cold just coming up after the first frost and all."
"Seems as if you're in good hands, then," Enoch humms, feeling the warm nets of contentment spinning between himself and his folk and his land. "I'll be seeing y'all at the barn in the mornin', I suppose. Take care until then."
He pulls back with a rustling of cloth and tendrils that sounds like something akin to a forest of cicadas. However, before he can turn his back completely on his congregation, he feels a light tugging at one of his ribbons. Twisting 'round to see who it is latching on to him, he finds it is none other than Mister Bethlehem himself.
Still-naked fingers twist into the strip of cloth he holds in a post-death grip. He holds it against his earth-bleached cheekbones. Mister Bethlehem shakes from mandible to calcaneus, and if he had his vocal faculties back he would be whimpering. The poor fellow is looking up at his mayor quite forlornly and beseechingly for a creature with neither eyes nor lips.
Don't go, please, he begs wordlessly. It's so cold without you here. Don't go…
"Oh now now, there's no need to be so downhearted, youngin'," Enoch croons in a voice of spice and logs cracking in a cozy hearth. Oh, it simply would not do for him or the rest of his flock to leave the soul in such a state. Simply would not do at all.
A few ribbons come up to touch the skeleton's face, running through once-there tresses and wiping away dried creek bed tears. Warmth pours as a balm across the unique link between himself and Mister Bethlehem.
"I'm not going far," he promises with a wide, wide smile. "Just to the southern border to check the fences and the fields. Maybe shoot the breeze with a neighbor or two, if they happen to pass by. Not even a stone's throw away, really." Patting Mister Bethlehem one last time, he draws himself up once more.
"Just give me a holler if you're keen, and I'll be there fast as you please," he says to his villagers, giving a long wave. "Night, all."
(His neighbor moves with him, pulling further back into the woods and circling around to their meeting place.)
His path through the fields and the outlying farms is a slow and ambling one. The last crickets of the summer are putting on a final symphony worthy of any acclaimed concert hall. Farther off the evening hymnals of the Pottsfielders swirl and eddy through the air. The harmonies coalesce and tumble down upon Enoch from the top of his husk and down to his true roots deep, deep in the soil.
Mice nest among the stovers, weaving winter homes among the stalks and combing for leftover grains. Enoch makes a note to stop by later with his cat skin in tow to keep their numbers from becoming too troublesome. He thinks they will do for a nice and meaty boost to the composting heaps.
Every now then he turns his gaze to the woodlands that toe the Winter-side of his borders. The leaves have turned in early for the season here, most having absconded and given up their claims to the trees. Frost is creeping in the places where the leaf-litter meets the shadows.
The faintest chill clings to the breeze that travels from his neighbor's lands. Perhaps there is a bit of woodsmoke and Edelwood oil clinging to the air, greasy and reeking of despair. He is only guessing of course, what with lacking a nose at the moment.
There is no mistaking, however, the tune that carries through the trees, dulcet and bawdy and chilling all at once.
"Tralalala, tralalala, / Chop the wood to light the fire! / Tralalala, tralalala, / 'Tis a bunch that I require!"
A smile strains the leathery material of his body and makes it creak. He would know the eldritch song of his good neighbor most anywhere. Enoch raises up a short little diddy of his own, hoping to catch his attention and draw him closer. Sure enough, there is the slightest dip in the Hope-Eater's tune before the sound draws nearer.
How long has it been now since he last had one of his little tête-à-têtes with the Beast? As he recalls, it was only a harvest or two after Mister Bethlehem had been put down for his nap. So closer to a decade than not by mortal-reckoning. Certainly not the longest period there has ever been between their meetings, but long enough for Pottsfield's mayor to be getting the tiniest bit lonesome for his company and conversation.
Still, he glides in no particular hurry down the lane, over the fence, and through a cornfield that has not yet been picked. Enoch keeps humming to himself as the stalks part in his wake. At last his tendrils meet the dry, yellowing grass that stretches from the field to the fence and the forest beyond.
And there his companion is waiting, shadowy and secretive and silent as any mortal awaiting his lover for a romp in the woods. Enoch thinks it is a fairly apt and poet description of the situation. He keeps as much to himself, knowing his fellow psychopomp will likely not appreciate the comparison.
"Evenin', Hope-Eater," he calls, waving a strip of cloth in his direction.
"Harvest King," the Beast replies evenly with a nod of the head and a swivel of those fine, lovely antlers.
"It's not every century I get to see you on nights like this," Enoch remarked, tilting his skin to one side in a gesture of contemplation. "Though I'm flattered and there's hardly ever an evening I'd object to your company. Did the hunting bring you this way, by any chance?"
The weeks preceding Samhain were busy for all in the Unknown. Not even the Beast was exempt from that edict.
It was arguably even more important for him than anyone else. More fresh and wayward souls crossed over in this season than in any other as the mists between the worlds swirled thinner and thinner. More souls meant all the more Edelwood trees for the planting, and more tree meant all the more food for Enoch's friend in the coming year.
"It's been… a quieter season than most. I have had to cover a range closer to summer and autumn than usual to sew a good crop."
It is not worry per say that tinges the Beast's tone. Pottsfield's mayor recognizes it for the habitual reluctance his neighbor always has in admitting any weakness. No need for him to worry, for Enoch will of course always keep his secrets safe and close as a tale in a dead man's grave.
"I am sorry to hear that now," Enoch clucks sympathetically, bringing his primary ribbons together. After a moment he drapes them over the Beast's shoulders, taking the gesture of sympathy as an excuse to get closer. "I would hate to think you're goin' hungry..."
"Hardly," the Winter King snorts, glancing to one side in derision. "I've more than enough trees and oil to see for at least half a mortal's lifetime. The selection is just beginning to become a bit stale and limited."
Ah, there went his neighbor being a gourmet again, as always.
"Well, you always did like your imported spirits, Beast," Enoch chuckled. A gloom-cloaked hand shoots up. Spindly wooden claws suddenly snare themselves in his ribbons, quick as a hawk snatching up a hare.
"Enoch."
The glare sent his way is frigid and displeased enough to wither an evergreen at the height of summer. Were the Prince of Paradise anything less than timeless and immortal, he would have gotten frostbite from the look. Multi-colored circles bloom in those white star eyes and make promises of a slow and painful demise. Even the shaggy fur of his companion's cloak is bristling a little.
"Come on, don't be that way now," he demures. "Just teasin' you a little."
Daringly he strokes his neighbor's face with the captured ribbon. Though ever-hidden beneath the second skin of shadows, Enoch can feel the knots and whorls of the tortured faces etched in his skin. He knows this is an excellent way to lose a few ribbons if the Beast's mood is foul enough, and it does not help that the eldritch man is probably hungrier than usual.
After a few more moments of peeved glowering, however, the tension beings to sap from the Edelwood body. The Beast's eyes fade to a merely blinding glow once. As Enoch continues rubbing, they eventually fall half-lidded. With a sigh like a winter gale through a hollow trunk, the god feels his companion lean into the touch.
"I do not appreciate jokes made at my expense," the Hope-Eater grumbles, absentmindedly taking hold of a few proffered ribbons. "And most certainly not in the form of those artless puns you like to drop like so many leaves from a dying tree."
"My sincerest apologies then, neighbor." He underscores his remorse by wrapping his tendrils around the Beast's upper arms. "Far be it from me to wound those pitch-black souls of yours."
"Mm," comes the non-committal but vaguely pleased reply.
Companionable silence spreads between them for a few moments before Enoch speaks up again.
"You never really did answer my question before," the Harvest King presses gently. "What you're doin' in this neck of the woods and all that. I mean, that was you spying on our little welcome party for Mister Bethlehem earlier, wasn't it?"
The creature in his hold stiffens somewhat, a bit like a deer caught by lamplight or a child with his hand in the black turtle jar.
"… Was it something not mean for an outsider's eyes, then?" he replies quietly, neither admitting or denying guilt.
"Oh Lord no, nothing nearly so private," Enoch reassures him with a chortle. "I just like to be there when they come up for the first time. Gets things off to a neighborly and friendly-like start, I find."
"And draping yourself all over them and getting tangled in their bones is just 'neighborly and friendly-like' as well, then?"
Ah, there is that feeling again. There is a subdued note in the Beast's voice that is surely not envy. Or, even worse, outright jealously. For the former would imply his neighbor was lacking something, and the latter would bring to light hitherto unexcercised rights of ownership. And both would be indicative of some very human-like faults in his otherwise inhuman fellow.
Perhaps even… affection?
Enoch's grin spreads its widest that evening.
"Well, you could look at it that way, I suppose," he concedes. He bends forward and draws himself a little closer. More ribbons come up to feather over the Beast's body. "In which case, I've been neglecting my dearest neighbor something awful, haven't I? We had better remedy that as soon as possible then..."
The Horned One's head snaps up, eyes wide and a light hissing echoing up for him. Yet with a bit of coaxing, Enoch smoothes over his ruffled edges and calms him again. Two ribbons anchor themselves near his companion's hips, just as he had early with Mister Bethlehem.
Though of course, this was nothing like his encounter with Mister Bethlehem.
As before, he starts at what passes for only the merest sembleance feet. Enoch pays loving attention to the literal souls there, ghosting up the ankles to glide over the knotted calves and slither behind his knees. Oh, what a work of art his neighbor's legs are!
With a stifled groan, the Beast is already going limp from his ministrations. If the mayor has not been holding him up, he would have likely fallen on his backside in the frost on his side of the border. His neighbor is starving for touch, and Enoch is starving to give it all to him.
He entwines himself up those thighs to the lanky span the hips. By now he has wrapped the entirety of his Hope-Eater's lower half flush against him. Enoch makes sure to let his companion just how much he adores him like this with ever stroke. The Prince of Paradise slathers rich, autumn-warm satisfaction against the bark of his hide, all but literally buttering him up.
"Enoch…" the Beast breathes, his hands pressing weakly against the maypole beneath the ribbons.
"Mm, you are such a lovely thing all tied up this," the god croons, trailing ribbons up the other's lower back now. "Makes me never want to let you go."
Up and up he trails over the emaciated ridges of the spine, over the thin and pleasure-taut belly. By the time he works up the chest, the Beast's eyes have closed completely. Eventually he is wrapped so snuggly that their faces are pressed together, nose to nose. With that lipless mouth slightly parted and his own grin never fading, it is as close to a kiss as they will likely ever get.
It was shaping up to be a wonderful end to another wonderful harvest.
"Were I not so distracted," the Beast sighs, claws lightly scraping over his companion's skin, "I should feel rather patronized at the moment." His pitted cheek rubs lightly against the mayor's head, sending up wet-sap little sparks and shivers through them both.
"Then I had best keep you distracted," Enoch purrs, caressing those antlers with all due adoration. "Happy Samhain, darlin'."