"There's something in the mist," Steven thought as he gazed at the convoluted gray shreds of cold air all around.
Part of him knew such a notion was a doubtful one. It was an imperfect psychic reaction conditioned by years of horror literature and movies. One of the implicit rules of the macabre genre was that mist or fog was always the hiding place for terrible things: flaming eyes... bloodthirsty, sharp teeth... mutated, leathery claws... every single nightmare human imagination could conceive lurked in its depths, always ready for the hunt.
Steven was no stranger to spooky stuff. Whether for recreational purposes or academic ones, life had always led him on the discovery of supernatural paths, and he loved to explore their most profound connections with human spirituality even if he didn't believe in a great number of things associated with them.
That was the reason he was standing still in the dead of the night, three thousand miles away from home, in a forsaken Welsh village he couldn't even spell out straight. He was looking for obscure elements for his post-Grad thesis on The Myths and Legends of the Middle-Ages in Northern Europe, and the stories he had heard about that region were just the thing he needed to breathe a new life into his research.
For centuries, the elders spoke of the one that came down from the surrounding hills on Hallow's Eve in search of a companion and God knows what else... a beautiful, raven-haired woman who appeared to be in her late-twenties, seen by some as a remnant of the days of the Old Religion, and by others as a malevolent force that would stop at nothing to fulfill her sinister desires. Her name was Belle, and no one who had been brought up under the influence of the lore dared to stay outdoors on the only night she could run free.
"Except me, it seems," he muttered whilst rubbing his hands together. It was getting colder, and his joints already started to feel the effects of the adverse temperatures.
A shadow moved to his right.
"Or maybe not..." Steven said, although he wasn't sure if the words had come out of his mouth this time, or he was just hearing the projections of a restless subconscious. Another shadow slid closer to his line of sight, this time coming in from the left. Another one followed it, another, and another, until he felt the unnerving awareness of being surrounded by semi-invisible manifestations of extraordinary power.
A large paw scratched the dirt in front of him, and a creature came forward. It had blue-gray fur remarkably similar to a famous Russian breed of cats. However, its elongated, angry snout and reddish eyes were more akin to those of wolves, even though animals of that sort were a rarity in that part of the world. There was something noble about the beast, but also something dangerous. That, on occasions, it looked solid and at other times nothing more than a gaseous phantom one could blow away with a sigh had him muster all his inner strengths not to shudder. How many more like it remained beyond the veil of ever-changing mist? Whatever the answer, it was sure to be far from reassuring.
The beast faced him for what seemed an endless loop of eternities until it phased out of sight in between growls. Steven interpreted it all as a sign. He was convinced he had just witnessed the work of a scout, and now that the assessment of the situation at hand had been made, the time had come for a face-to-face encounter with its Mistress.
He wasn't wrong. Out of the protuberant mass of darkness that enveloped the village, there came a hint of silver light. It began as a single line creating a rift between a gloomy night and the promise of a wondrous day. Then it grew into a series of interconnected spirals that spread far and wide to form a web of phosphorescent light. In the center of this ephemeral net bloomed a black rose the size of a man and, from within its petals, dressed in white satin and green foliage from bygone days, Belle sprung, smiling. The flower withered as she did this, ceasing to be almost at the same instant.
