[Draft] Kumiho story (#2)

Goche called out to the intruder. "You haven't left me an offering, human." Her nose picked up the scent of human dread, but she couldn't the usual nervous breathing that accompanied it.

The human had his eyes closed. Specks of white and grey light formed swirling patterns in the corner of his vision, while the center faded to pitch black, as he squinted harder.

"You know that means, right?" she yelled into the woods, before sneaking off to pursuit her prey. She kept low, silently leaped across the grassy forest floor on all fours, and came to a tree trunk before long. She stood up, her back stuck to the bark. The smell reached around from both sides, she was certain she was just behind him.

She turned to her left, and jumped out of hiding. The human wasn't in front of her, even though the scent suggested that should've been the case, but rather, he was dangling well above the ground, from a noose, his fingers trying to pry the rope off from his throat, and his feet shaking. His strength appeared to be waning quickly.

She stared, engrossed and repulsed, until he stopped squinting, and opened his eyes and mouth wide, and desperately thrashed his body around. Having seen enough, she shimmied up the tree, and to the branch the rope was tied to.

When she reached him he'd already settled down, and was no longer moving like before. With one arm, she held onto the branch, with the other she lifted up the man, and with her mouth she severed the rope with a single bite. When he was no longer tied to the branch, she let go. As they were falling, she cradled his limp body between her arms, and when she landed, she crouched, and made sure that his body wouldn't be affected by the impact of the fall.

She undid the noose, and brushed her lips against the side of his neck. He was still alive. She was intimately familiar with the desperate rhythm of the heart of prey that is a step away from death. She'd heard it before, she'd bitten into more necks and ripped out more throats than she could remember. But this was the first time she was listening to it in its raw form, and not filtered through the satisfaction of a successful chase and ambush, or the sensuality of passion and seduction. Stripped of its usual surroundings, that sound wasn't thrilling, but a nauseating reminder of how humans were pitifully fragile.