The sky was illuminated with the whole circle of the moon, and still it was not enough to shine through the darkened fog that crept through the streets of the city, past the silent 2 AM highways and the equally as hard-working as the moon streetlights that, in contrast would only blur as they were encased by the clouded air, where the ball of light in the sky was entirely obscured. It was the cold sort of fog, the kind you see in a late winter, when the snow has melted but when it is still perfectly as chilly as it was two months ago. The kind that blends in with the puffs of heat that spiral from ones mouth as they breathe out into the cool air. It was the kind of fog that gave the illusion of eating up everything it curtained, which made it nearly impossible to see the shadow that swept from alleyway to alleyway stealthily.
If you were close to the shadow, however, especially if you were clinging to the warmth of a street lamps light, it's far more likely you would see it, and it's far more likely you would be scared out of your wits, like the young man was. He wasn't the criminal sort of streetfolk, really, even though he was commonly referred to as a "street rat," but rather he was simply a poorly dressed fellow who quite enjoyed the simplicity of the blackness of night. Admittedly lacking in a proper home, but nonetheless, of poetic enjoyment of the night.
It is custom for children to be afraid of shadows that take a less than human form outside of their windows, a thought that, as slightly more grown children, seems ludicrous. The street man certainly didn't normally classify as phobic of shadows, being a fully fledged adult and all, but he couldn't say the particular one he kept seeing swooshing about wasn't a tad frightening.
It ominously darted back and forth, appearing to not have a source. Of course, this could have just been the street mans vision failing him, or the fog, or both, but even if it did, it was moving too fast to be anything more than a humming bird. That was thing though, it couldn't have been a hummingbird! For more obvious reasons, of course, hummingbirds don't find their way about in the night too much, especially not in the cold season, and for other reasons, the form of the shadow was too large to be a hummingbird, even if the outline was currently an unidentifiable blur.
It would disappear one second, and reappear in five, something which was making the street man very uneasy. And he kept thinking he was hearing a low sort of growling.
And then the lights went out.
All of them.
He only heard a hissing whisper of "goodnight~" in his ear, and saw a pair of glowing orange eyes before there was a surge of pain, like all his living was being sucked out of him.
The street man died.
Terezi Pyrope awoke from a violent slumber at two in the morning, soaked with her own sweat and unstintingly shaking. There was a brief moment of peace before the flashing memories of the unusually clear dream came back to her.
"They're back." she muttered to the darkness.