Navajo Pain || Marble Hornets Oneshot

Hunger. It was the only thing on Harleen's mind. Everything else was a longing urge for something but she couldn't place exactly what. Then again, all other thoughts, once they passed through her mind, became just another thought of the need to feed again.

She was not herself anymore, no, not even close. 

Atop her head, coming up from under her fiery red hair, were a set of large buck antlers. They were broken and cracked and tangled with dead leaves. Below the antlers sat a pair of small brown ears that belonged to that of a doe. On her lower back, just above the edge of her skirt, was a brown and white doe tail, bloody and with a deep claw mark in the side. Trailing down from under her skirt, her right leg was that of a deer. It was scratched and bloody in several places. The hoof at the end was chipped and broken.

The most terrible thing about Harleen was her eyes. Her red-framed glasses were gone. The eyes that used to lay behind them had turned the color of cognac, no longer that deep brown color that showed the wisdom of the tribe long ago.

Harleen's actual skin had patches of deer hide fused into the flesh, giving off the look of rot and decay. The mutations on her body made everything look so...painful. But she couldn't feel anything but starvation. The only pain she could feel was the sharp jabs from inside her caved-in stomach. 

Another sharp sting made her move faster. Before Harleen was just slowly stumble-walking through the woods she used to call her home. Now she was lightly jogging. Her breath caught in her throat with every inhale. When she had died, blood had seeped into her lungs. Every exhale brought gushes of blood spurting from her mouth and nose. 

The skinwalker woman paused when she heard it, that slow walking and crunching of leaves that both her dead and living selves were familiar with. A lone doe was stalking the foliage close by. She could smell every breath that the animal breathed out, she could feel its fear of her presence. 

Her wooden bow hung over her shoulder, broken and chipped, long since passed its ability to be used. But for the hunt, Harleen wouldn't need her bow. All she would need were teeth and nails, maybe a stick. Her stomach gave another sharp jab of that urged her forward.

She walked towards the doe as silently as she could manage, the semi-living part of her screaming to not do it and eat something else instead. But she ignored it. It wasn't like she had a choice in the matter. It was either slaughter and eat the doe right now or die. And Harleen didn't want to die a second time. So she had no other option but to proceed with the killing.

Her hoof snapped a twig when she was a mere few feet away, hiding low in the underbrush. Her stomach continued to jab pain into her abdomen and gave her that fire she needed to actually go through with it.

The doe's head shot up and looked in Harleen's direction. Its eyes were wide with fear and anxiety; that big-eyed look that used to belong to the now-skinwalker. The air went still as those cognac-colored eyes gazed into ones that mirrored her old look. The doe finally relaxed and went back to taking another bite of the forest grass. 

It was in that moment of false security and relaxation that Harleen pounced upon the poor doe and let her teeth sink into the throat. A sharp yelp shattered the previously still air like glass as blood stained her teeth once again. 

What caused the doe more pain than it should have was the fact that Harleen's teeth were flat and straight rather than pointed and jagged. She didn't even have canines. But regardless of which, this wasn't her first struggle to feed. Something in her mentality knew that once the body stopped moving and the blood ran cold, she could stop feeding.