The forest is lost for the trees.
Edges trimmed to forget,
twisting, twirling, always curling to the
maps still in your head.

Don't look down now, don't look down.
You've already lost your way.
Must keep stumbling, must keep running,
before the edges fade.

He's haunted by those eyes at night. From a dream he can't quite remember, or a memory he can't quite forget.

They're... paralyzing. Entrancing, where he doesn't know if he wants to blindly follow, or run away screaming. Sometimes they almost seem to glow, markings surrounding them, like engravings, that light up as though burning, but the lines don't make any sense of that he's ever seen.

If they're accompanied by a face, he can never remember it.

Just the eyes, the lines that glow when the humming returns.

The forest floor is lost to darkness, stumbled footsteps, creaking twigs on the ground, too much noise, he thinks. He can hear his heart pounding in his head. Too much noise. He can't see his feet, can't see what to avoid, what he's sneaking and snapping and cracking on. The base of the trees are dark, all clumped together, like the woods were made of midnight, scraggly branches interlocking in a way that didn't seem, couldn't be natural. Like a trap, a cage. He couldn't see the sky. It was night. He knew, the darkness all around. He didn't know where he was. Didn't know where he was going, but some deep primal sense of urgency told him he had to keep moving. Before it- there was something coming. He couldn't remember what. All he knew was he had to keep moving through this forest of darkness, couldn't stop.

Close now. So close. Almost there.

It's such an inviting ledge, with a beautiful view. The cliff is so high that the waves crashing at the rocky shore below sound distant and soothing.

It's like a lullaby, she thinks. Of course, the ones she lures have no need for sound save her voice, but Gamora likes it. She likes waiting in the air, hovering up above the edge a leap or two, the ocean wind whipping chills on her skin as she holds out her hand in offering for all those who come to her, inviting them to join her. All they need is her voice. But she likes the salty ocean air, the light of the moon at her back as she calls to the travelers, the ones who have strayed too far, the ones who have come to her, and she stays and waits, inviting them to step off the edge too.

All the weary ones that she has drawn forth, called to them, they never mind the chill that she prefers, or the 100 foot drop that she sings to them from, just out of reach. Forever out of reach.

They never look down.

She knew he was coming. She always knows. This one comes stumbling out of the thicket, out of the path she had lead him down, pulled him upon, but that's not unexpected.

The unexpected part is that he stops several feet shorter than he should have. He stops well before the edge of the cliff she was luring him off of. She's still holding out her hand, humming the haunting tune that he could hear with both his ears and his mind, the one she had been calling out to him with, that dulled his awareness and pulled him to her. The one that made it so he couldn't question, wouldn't want to question the ethereal figure waiting for him well past where the cliff dropped off, humming the tune that gave him no choice but to follow.

"It's you," Peter whispers, his heart still pounding, lungs still aching, sore.

The glowing marks around her eyes immediately fade into dull lines that he can't quite make out, and anything entrancing or captivating about her gaze is replaced by a genuinely surprised look, eyes going wide, looking maybe even alarmed.

He wasn't supposed to be able to stop. He wasn't supposed to still have that type of self command. Definitely not able to speak, or recognize that she had been the one calling him forth in his dreams for nights on end.

She's uncertain what to do at first, but her curiosity gets the best of her.

From his perspective, all he could see was a woman seemingly floating in the air about 15 feet off the cliffside, the waves crashing in the sharp fall beneath her.

Gamora blinks, quells her magic that had been hiding her wings, and suddenly Peter sees these large bird like feathered wings that are easily twice her body span, if not three times, the ones he hadn't been able to see had been keeping her from plummeting down to the rocks that dabbled the icy shores.

Gamora moves closer, her bare foot touching down on the cliffside, and she stows her wings as she steps onto solid ground.

The man doesn't back away, even as she approaches him, and undoubtedly invades his space. She studies his face closely for a second, curious. He blinks. He's not really sure what's happening, but he wanted to get some answers, and her gaze wasn't filling him with dread when she was peering at him with big brown eyes that weren't glowing in an almost menacing manner. And the markings around her eyes, those were definitely silver lines embedded in her cheeks and her forehead.

They had always looked so menacing before, threatening, chilled him to the bone, but now, as she was studying him like a curiosity that she had never seen before, she was actually kinda cute.

Suddenly the woman reached out, grabbed his chin, titled it up and to the side, like she was posing a manikin or manipulating a skeleton in science class.

She leaned in real close too, her face just an inch away and Peter didn't know what the hell to do, so he just- went with it? Not much he could do, really. As she adjusted him like he was a prop in science class.

She releases his chin after what seems to have been a satisfactory inspection.

"You're not human, are you?" The woman says, as if that was the answer to her unasked question.

And okay, there was no way she could tell that just by looking at him, right? Just by examining him?

But, she clearly did have some sort of freaky powers. The kind of powers that mom used to tell him about, the stuff that dad could do.

"Who says I'm not?" He challenges, for really no good reason, just- he had a thing about people assuming they knew stuff about him, whether they were right or not. To be contrarian. Call it a vice, or a personality quirk.

She looks surprised by his answer, but then she smiles, like she was amused by his response.

"You're not supposed to be able to resist. You shouldn't be able to. If you were human. But you're not, are you?"

"What are you?" He asks, instead.

Again, she doesn't look like she's expecting his answer.

She tilts her head to the side, trying to discern something about him- if he really did not know.

It is strange, to get a non-human in these parts. But a non-human who doesn't know of the mystical world and all its creatures is unheard of. He doesn't seem to be deliberately misleading her, though.

"You really don't know, do you?"

Suddenly, Peter looks behind her, narrows his eyes at the scene. The cliff dive that was waiting just behind her right now. "You were trying to lure me into walking off the edge, weren't you?"

She smiles again, and it's a surprisingly nice and lighthearted smile.

"What's your name?" She asks.

Peter scoffs. "Yeah, so not gonna tell you that."

Mom told him about this kind of stuff. What the fae could do if they had your name. Better safe than sorry. What this woman was, exactly, he wasn't sure.

Her eyes crinkle around the corners.

"Hmm, smarter than you look," she teases, chuckling. Then, she takes a step back. "If you can find your way here again tomorrow night, I might have some answers for you."

She keeps moving back until she drops off the cliffside, but Peter doesn't move an inch, doesn't run to the edge and look down and watch her fall.

It's only a matter of seconds before she swoops back up into his sight, her giant wings unfurled in flight, and she gives him a wave before taking off for good.

And oh yeah he was coming back tomorrow night.

But first: to the library.

AN: Don't mind me. Just a little overwhelmed with school right now, so of course I'm popping in with another mythical creature starmora one shot.
This is probably the most horror-esque thing I've ever written.
Thanks for any favorites or reviews- they make my heart glow inside

Have a nice day!