Word Count: 1,823
"Hey there, little red riding hood; you sure are lookin' good. You're everything a big bad wolf could want."
Music played eerily in the background as Eren walked through a sun-dappled forest, alone. Sprites and wisps whispered and chatted amongst themselves in their own language, hovering and weaving through the air. A few circled around his head, laughing their high-pitched laughs.
He crouched down as though he were a cat, stalking his prey, and carefully tiptoed through the underbrush to a place where there were no patches of sunlight to be seen on the ground.
He felt the soft, crumbling dirt between his toes, the velvety softness of the peat moss on his pads. He could smell the delicious, earthy scent of decaying twigs, of the fresh mountain air. A chilly breeze tugged at his fur and nipped at his nose, causing him to dig his toes into the already loose dirt.
Critch. Crunch. Critch. Crunch. Eren's ears perked up.
Critch. Crunch. Critch. Crunch. What was that sound?
Critch. Crunch. Critch. Crunch. It sounded like the crushing of dirt beneath shoes.
From his peripherals he saw something out of the ordinaryㅡ someone in a red cloak walking the forest path.
It was a girl. And quite a fine-looking one in his opinion, too. He could feel a predatory growl forming in his chest, begging to rise to his throat and be voiced. But he hushed it. If he was going to get anything from this girl, she couldn't know what he was.
He got down to the floor and twisted and rolled in the dirt, and when he was done, he was a human. Out of habit, he struggled to remember what he used to look like. Green eyes. Messy brown hair. But that was all he could ever recall.
He snarled at himself and brushed the dirt off his clothes. He never knew where the clothes came from when he became human again, but he wasn't complaining.
He glanced behind him and saw a small patch of wildflowers. Girls liked flowers, right? Right. He delicately picked a few sprigs of a small, yellow flower whose name he forgotㅡ primrose, was it? It didn't matter. He picked a few of them and leaned against a tree near the path and waited for the girl to come to him.
"Little red riding hood, I don't think little big girls should go walking in these spooky old woods alone."
The girl looked at him with a curious face. Her large, grey eyes were full of a childlike innocence.
Oh, he was going to hate taking that innocence out of her face. It made her look so beautiful, so appealing, so enchanting. But alas, he was going to anyway.
"Sweets for the sweet," he purred, giving her his best charming, crooked smile that often made girls swoon as he offered her the flowers.
With wide eyes, she cautiously accepted them. Now was his chance, he could grab her by the arm andㅡ
"What big eyes you have, my darling. The kind that drive wolves mad. Why don't I walk with you for a while, just to see that you won't get chased?" he found himself asking.
The girl didn't say anything, but she nodded. Clutching the flowers he had given her in her right hand with a simple wicker basket, she offered him her left.
He gladly took it, thinking that this time would be all too easy, that this was his golden opportunity.
Strangely enough, he found himself not taking it.
The cloaked girl led him through a meandering path through the woods, swinging their clasped hands back and forth slightly as they walked. Neither one of them said anything, but she smiled at him after a while.
His heart was hammering away at his chest for ages afterwards.
They soon reached a cottage in the heart of the woods, but something seemed off. It smelled of flesh decay, of the metallic stench of rotting blood. The roses were covered in reddish brown stains, there wasn't a light on in the entire house. The window up front was broken, fragments of sparkling glass littered the ground in front of it.
The girl beside him trembled visibly beside him, her hand squeezing his so hard he was sure his fingers would break. The basket slipped out of her other hand as did the flowers. The contents of the basket tumbled out, revealing a simple tinderbox, a waterskin, a brush, and a silver dagger.
He squeezed her hand back in an effort to reassure her. He wasn't sure why he was doing this. He could have taken her already and been satisfied.
"What a big heart I have: the better to love you with. Little red riding hood, even bad wolves can be good."
The sprites and wisps had long gone silent at this point, but that line whispered itself to his mind over and over again. His ears twitched in irritation; why wasn't he leading her away? Why was he following her as she nervously opened the already slightly ajar front door?
She stepped inside and her grip on his hand instantly slipped away. Curious, he opened the door even wider and entered the cottage.
Blood.
The stench of it rotting filled his nose.
Blood.
A steady drip-drip of it falling into a puddle.
Blood.
Bright crimson splashes of it all over the wall.
Blood.
He opened his mouth to breathe, only to get a breath full of the thick taste of it.
Blood.
It soaked through his thin leather shoes, getting between his toes, drying up and crusting and feeling icky overall.
There in the corner was another hooded figure, this one in white, though it was covered it dark brown-red stains all over. It was hunched over a raw and mangled corpse, pulling out broken segments of the small intestine and ravenously devouring it. It dug into the fleshier bits as well, snacking heartily on the meat that it gnawed off the cadaver's ribs, it's spongy brown lungs, and when the figure reached the heart, a fresh spurt of blood gushed forth, spilling everywhere.
The girl clung to his arm, and he could feel his shirt grow damp from her silent tears. His own cheeks were streaked with tears, though he didn't notice it.
Run.
He didn't even say it out loud, but he pushed the girl outside. His heart was racing so fast he wouldn't have realized it existed if it hadn't caused an ache in his sternum from all its pounding. Adrenaline flooded his head, he could no longer think straight, and his legs had to move. He was filled with the overwhelming urge to charge and to beat the hooded figure to death, but his legs refused to budge.
Something beneath the hood gleamed and grinned and he began to quake with fear. A shot was pulled from a pocket and he was about to bolt for the door when his arm was grabbed and he couldn't escape no matter how hard he struggled and all he could do now was claw at the groundㅡ
Eren's eyes shot open and he leapt to his feet, his heart pounding. He was on a bed. It was soft. It was dry.
He sniffed his feet. They didn't smell like blood. They weren't human feet.
Someone under the covers next to him was softly breathing. It was rhythmic and gentle. It was calming, and Eren tried to match his own breathing to its rhythm.
When he sufficiently calmed down, he looked out the window overlooking the bed on which he sat. The moon was still waxing; it was nearly full.
The pale light of the moon softly lit the features of the one sleeping in front of him. It was Mikasa, of course. What else had he been expecting.
He noisily sniffed her and licked her cheek over and over again, quietly whining until her eyes fluttered open.
"Eren?" she rasped. "It's probably three in the morning; did something happen?"
"I had another nightmare," he whimpered.
Mikasa sat up in bed and stroked his head. "Tell me about it, then."
The moon was beginning to set by the time he finished telling her about it. She listened intently, murmuring words of reassurance when his voice dropped away until he finished.
"That's a new one," she mused. "Did you see who was under the hood?"
Eren shook his head. "No, but something seemed wrong about them. It's hard to explain, but they seemed familiar in one way, but their actions screamed familiarity in another way."
The grey light of dawn began to light up their room, and it sent a chill down Eren's spine.
They were staying in a room at the top of a tower. It had been snug and cozy last night with a few dying embers in a fireplace keeping them warm and rugs all over the place to make the room feel fuzzy and comforting. The bookshelves had been filled with books and odd trinkets.
But now it looked like something had gone on a rampage, absolutely destroying the room. The floor was covered with a strange black grit, the rugs in tatters all over the floor. At least one bookshelf was toppled over, and the books and odd trinkets were scattered all around the room. The fire, as expected, was long cold and dead.
There was nothing new in the room besides the grit, and nothing removed as far as they could see. But the fact that they had slept through what looked like a tornado had struck could mean two things: since they were both rather light sleepers, then the vandal had done all this silently. Or, perhaps they had been drugged or enchanted so that they slept much heavier than usual. Neither idea seemed very comforting.
Eren jumped down from the bed and sniffed the grit on the floor. Beams of sunlight were beginning to shine into the room and when it hit the black dust, the dust fizzled out into nothing.
Eren and Mikasa exchanged glances. They'd seen this before when they were with Armin, when they were slicing through the thorns in front of Annie's castle. If there was any connection between the two, then as it seemed, this was the witch's doing.
"Let's go find Armin and see if he got anything similar," Mikasa whispered, tiptoeing out of bed and grabbing her cloak. She didn't bother to change into daywear, since the clothes Hange had left for her last night didn't appeal to her and her regular clothes were out for a wash. Together they slipped out of the room and down the stairs in search of Armin.
Author's Note vii. I! Have been waiting! To post! This chapter! For an entire week! I might even post it early; who knows. Before any of you say Eren acted OOC: it was a dream. Okay? A dream that was originally going to be about cannibalism but ended up as I suppose half backstory, half foreshadowing. But maybe foreshadowing, I'm not too sure myself, to be honest. I have to say, this is probably my favorite chapter so far. Anyway, if you like the story so far, feel free to drop a follow or favorite, they're always appreciated. Leave your thoughts in the reviews below (if that's what you're into), and as always, have a greaaat daaaay~~