Title: Halloween S3. Moonshroom stalking

Summary: In which Taeyeon is a witch's apprentice and encounters a young werewolf on her monthly night-herb collection trip. Really, what better partner than someone who could sniff out the best spots? If only she didn't keep eating all the berries...

Note: Moonshrooms are not real lol, this is a fantasy au, I'm sure you'll figure it out.

A/N: Happy belated Halloween, my fellow creeps. It's only on this night we're not the weirdos... Hihi I'm kidding (or am I?). I hope y'all stayed safe and were responsible if you went out. And also that you had a good time if you didn't. Anyways, please enjoy my Halloween special. Any criticism you might have for me I'm open to, I love to improve. I'll continue doing my best for y'all!

♡ Damia

“That wretched, smelly old woman... Aish, she really gives me no breaks...“ Taeyeon muttered irritatedly as she trudged forward on the thin, almost unnoticeable path towards the moon mushrooms. Taeyeon’s master, a retired professor of a prestigious magic school turned bitter old hag, by the name of Jung Byungbyeol tended to send her every full moon to collect for her night-herb stock. Taeyeon had become her apprentice solely because she had connections to the ever-so-famous, magical Jung family. If Taeyeon ever wanted to make it big in the magical realm she needed connections, and to be able to refer to a Jung would be an ace in her sleeve. It was genius. But to get there was a long way to go... 

Cursing and grumbling as she struggled through the foliage, Taeyeon prayed to the deities that the fae hadn’t eaten all the moonshrooms. But as she walked further and further into the forest, it seemed to get quieter and quieter. The chirp of bugs died and the spotted light of the fireflies turned into an ominous silence. Only Taeyeon’s footsteps hitting the forest floor could be heard. The silence was deafening and only if she wasn’t so in her head, Taeyeon would’ve remembered her friend’s advice.

“It’s never quiet in the forest.” Tiffany’s words rang in her ears, but it was too late to turn back. “If you can’t hear any bug or the leaves rustle... You can most definitely figure you’re being stalked.”

So she was being stalked. Great. Taeyeon took a deep shuddering breath and tried to make her footsteps as light as her boots allowed. Clutching the woven basket to her chest, Taeyeon tried with all her might to transfer the undeveloped magical energy in her tiny body to her ears, trying to hear something — anything.

And she did hear something. Footsteps that weren’t hers, so quiet she wouldn’t have heard without magic. They were walking slightly behind her on the right, but it didn’t sound like human walking. It was on four legs. Taeyeon went through all her mental files on what it could be. It couldn’t be a nymph in animal form, they’d stopped bothering her ever since they figured out she was Byungbyeol’s associate. Not fauns, they only had two legs. Not deers or moose or elks, they didn’t stalk, unless for very good reason. She hadn’t done anything to offend the fae, so it had to be something conscious. Something was after her and her specifically.

A crack of a stick made her freeze in place. In pure instinct, she had stopped, which was probably her biggest mistake yet. They could jump any minute now, claws or jaws on her neck and back and just — 

Just like that, she fell to the ground. What felt like paws collided into her back and the momentum pushed her to the ground, knocking the air out of her. Laying flat on her stomach, wheezing and trying to desperately get air into her lungs as a furry body pressed her into moss. Taeyeon wracked her brain to figure out what to do. But nothing came up, all her knowledge on forest animals and defence techniques having vanishe