Whisper
The night was quiet and warm with a cooling breeze blowing softly off the Pacific. Out here the land was still rural: tamed but wild - a land of brush, scrub and orchard; of scattered farms and small holdings, and of dusty tracks. Out here the land was swathed in darkness - beautiful, silken and almost total. The Beast that called itself Wendigo padded, cat-like, from the rambling and forgotten shed that it had claimed the morning before. It was a stout old thing, lost in riotous growth and wild trees, hidden in the lee of a rise from the more manicured farm above. Now that it had chance to observe the landscape (as opposed to ripping through rusting chains that bound the shed) it could see that scattered farmsteads cast a few points of light here and there, indicating sources of food and pleasure.
The Wendigo felt Hunger. It always did: an ever present, gnawing, that whispered child-like words in his mind. Sometimes he could actually remember what the words meant. He surged forward, moving over shrub and tree and rock, pushing in a northerly direction. There is a dirt road up that way and the Wendigo knows it can use that beaten trail to move swiftly between the farms and homesteads, as it were a wine and the habitations were delectable fruits ready for the plucking.
And then he sees it. A line cutting across the landscape; a glowing line, bright as the dimly remembered sun; a fire without being a fire. It scythes almost from the ocean to the Bay like a great, glittering jewel and it banishes the night with its proud arrogance. Wendigo has not seen its like before...
...Neither has he laid eyes upon the magical contraption that bumbles its way along the dirt road, coughing and rattling as it goes. Its eyes can scare believe it: a cart that pulls itself without the labour of men or draft animals. The vehicle (or cart or whatever it is) slows to a stop close by. Human voices argue within.
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