My regeneration is really slow. This isn’t all that weird considering just how much needs fixing here, but I think I might know a solution. Specifically, a little food in my belly would be nice. And, no, I won’t drink any blood. I did something stupid, but I won’t do that again. Probably. Okay, it might happen again, but if it does, I won’t drink like a draught-struck dog.

So, I would like to get to the deer and have a bite. I can’t have been out for more than an hour or so because the deer looks just fine. It doesn’t even smell bad or anything! It might just be the blood making my head spin, but it smells really good.

Except, I haven’t got any arms. Or legs. Or even a tail, for that matter. It’s all splattered across the forest floor like rubbish.

I have a bit of a hypothesis. See, I have a feeling that if I just focused a little, I might be able to force a specific part to regenerate. The part I’m thinking of is obviously one of my arms. The reason I feel a bit more pressed to do this by the second is because I’m in a forest, next to the corpse of a deer. Frankly, if another animal just caught a single whiff of all of this, I’d be dead within seconds. One good bite from a mouse would take me out right now. It’s at that level.

I really have no choice. Closing my eyes from the brightness above, I concentrate all of my efforts into my right arm. The rest of my body starts to tingle and burn as air laps at exposed flesh and nerves but I can’t afford to bite my tongue. I’m recovering slowly but it is enough. When I open my eyes again, my right arm has gained a full centimetre of flesh and bone. No skin yet, but I can take it. I can take it. If I can’t, I might as well die.

Slowly, surely, my right arm regenerates. The rest of my body bleeds and spews pus, but I can handle it. In truth, I don’t need the arm to actually have flesh. I just need it to exist. That’s all.

I can’t tell how much time has passed when I finally gain an elbow and a stump of a forearm. Since I can’t afford to wait for a full arm to appear, I lift my arm, ignoring the pain the newly-borne muscles cascade through me, and stab the exposed bones into the dirt. It feels like white fire blossoming into my bones. I grit my teeth and pull myself closer to the carcass. Once I’ve gotten a few centimetres closer, I lift up my arm again, extend it and stab it down again. Dirt and grass finds its way into my bleeding bone marrow but its fine. I’ll survive it. I’ll survive this so I can live and fucking kill that deer.

The green grass is replaced by a bloodstained variant and I resist the urge to lick the dried blood from the blades. Once I’m close enough, I sink my teeth into the soft, exposed flesh. It isn’t entirely soft, a few parts are tough and stiff (how many hours does it even take for rigormortis to set in? Two? Four? Seven?) but my teeth are sharp and I’m hungry.

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Muscle threads are getting stuck in my teeth. I wonder if bone shards make for good tooth picks?

Lost in my own hunger, I chew and I chew and I gnaw on the deer’s spine. Since I’m no longer focusing all of my regeneration on my arm, I’ve stopped spewing blood and bodily liquids, so it feels better. Who knows, in an hour or so I might even be able to stand.

As my eyes start to regenerate properly, my brief POV of what it’s like to need glasses fades away. Apparently, it isn't daytime, as I had previously believed. The light that blinded me was the fucking moon, of all things. The moon and the stars. I can’t see them entirely, but they do look rather bright. Very pretty. And the sky itself is a lot darker than I’m used to, less dark grey and more actual black. That’s light pollution for you, I guess.

Either way, this day felt really short. It’s like there’s more night than day, which, considering the whole being-in-Sweden thing might make a bit of sense. Maybe.

As I’m mindlessly chewing, a sound I hadn’t noticed before is becoming all the clearer. The singing of birds.

Not that I haven’t been hearing birds as of late; the daytime is completely filled with them, but in the middle of the night? It’s just… eerie. And before you ask, no, I don’t mean an owl or anything. It sounds like the tweets of small birds. A lot of them. Almost a whole swarm. But they’re far away, seemingly moving together. If my ears aren’t too mangled to trust, they almost seem to be getting closer.

What little hair I have left on my back stands on end. Yeah, no, that is definitely getting closer.

Before I descend into a stupid panic, how about I think for a few seconds about any possible explanations for this? It’s possible that there are birds that sing at night and I simply haven’t been awake enough to hear it. But as a mossling, the night was all quiet. Or maybe these are some form of migratory birds that fly around at night? That would explain them being all in a flock, but why would they be singing for mates if they’re all in a group? Hell, do migratory birds even fly at night? Maybe dawn and dusk, but in the ass-fuck of night?

I doubt it.

The singing of birds is coming closer. Much, much closer. It’s starting to feel like it’s all around me, swirling, swarming. Neck aching from strain, I remove my face from the wound of the deer. There, just beyond the thicket, peeking out from behind the trees, I see them.

I think there might be around a dozen or two of them. Young, little girls… No, children. They seem to glow. Their skin isn’t white, it’s just glowing, like there’s a bunch of fireflies trapped inside their skin. Their eyes are curious and bright. I would call their hair blonde if it wasn’t to the point of whiteness.

As I stare at them with ever-widening eyes, they seem to giggle. All that emerges from their throats is the childish singing of birds. A few of them seem to be whispering amongst each other, pressing their lips against another’s ear. I would say they look like the Myling if they weren’t so different. These people, although similarly ethereal, have none of the corpse-pale skin that she did.

They approach, skipping playfully, chaining their little hands together in one big ring, and while still singing in the voice of birds, with their thin white robes billowing, they begin circling me and the carcass, giggling joyfully, dancing around and around and around. Like vultures.

Skogsälvor(B): Spirits of nature that dance through the forests at dusk and dawn, welcoming the new day and night. Should they invite you to dance and you are to refuse, they may send pestilence upon you and your loved ones.

That, uh, might not be so good.