Ny's Writing Blog ✍️

The villagers whispered that the Blackpine Forest was cursed, but they didn’t know the truth. They didn’t know that something ancient watched them from the shadows—something hollow-eyed, bone-thin, and hungry.

A wendigo.

For centuries, it prowled the pines, driven by the endless craving for flesh. Its ribs pressed through its skin like jagged branches, its breath a cold hiss that carried on the wind. Nothing had ever softened it. Nothing had ever stirred its dead heart.

Until her.

She came at dusk, the witch with moonlight tangled in her hair and a lantern glowing green at her hip. She walked the forest as if the darkness bent away for her. The spirits whispered her name: Elora. Mortals feared her, but the wendigo watched with something strangely close to fascination.

Elora spoke kindly to the moss, soothed snarling beasts with a glance, and sang lullabies to restless ghosts. Her magic threaded through the trees like silver threads, softening the shadows.

The wendigo followed her. At first from afar. Then closer. Close enough to smell her warmth, her life, her beating heart.

It wanted to devour her.

It wanted to worship her.

It didn’t understand the difference.

One night, the witch stopped on a frozen trail and whispered, “You can come out. I know you’ve been following me.

”The creature stepped forward, towering above her, its antlers scraping the branches. But she didn’t scream. She looked into its sunken eyes as if she saw the remnants of the man it once had been.

“You’re lonely,” she said softly.

No one had spoken to it in centuries. No one had seen it.

And so, the wendigo returned to her, again and again. He brought her offerings—broken branches, feathers, skulls polished by snow. She accepted each one, unafraid. When she touched its hand, frost spread beneath her fingers, but she didn’t pull away.

A strange bond grew. Quiet. Unnatural. Forbidden.

But love—especially the twisted kind—invites disaster.

One night, hunters entered the woods, determined to slay the witch and earn her bounty. Elora sensed them too late.

When they raised their weapons at her cottage, the wendigo tore from the trees with a roar that cracked the sky. It ripped through the hunters with feral devotion, protecting the only thing it had ever cared for.

Blood steamed on the snow. The forest fell silent.

Elora stepped toward him trembling—not with fear, but with sorrow.

“You’ve doomed yourself,” she whispered.

“They will never stop hunting you now.”

The wendigo knelt before her, lowering its monstrous head. For the first time in centuries, it felt grief. And love. And fear… fear of losing her.

Elora cupped its face. Her magic glowed between her palms—soft, warm, pure.

“I can change you,” she said. “But it will cost you everything you are.

”The wendigo hesitated. Hunger clawed inside him. His monstrous instincts screamed.

But he looked at her…

…and chose.

The forest erupted with blinding light. Bones cracked. Antlers shattered. The scream was part agony, part rebirth.

When the light faded, a man knelt in the snow—thin, trembling, scarred by centuries of hunger—but human again.

Elora reached for him.

Before she could speak, a single whisper drifted from the shadows:

“Monster…”

More hunters.

More torches.

More hate.

Elora grabbed his hand. “Run.”

Together they disappeared into the Blackpine Forest, a witch and the man-who-had-been-a-monster. Some say they still live there, hidden by magic, bound by a love darker and stronger than any spell.

Others say the wendigo returned—because hunger never truly dies.

And on certain winter nights, if you stand alone beneath the pines, you might hear a whisper in the wind:

“Elora…”

Or worse…

You might hear her answer.