((Trigger warning))

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It was about four hours after you had went to sleep that you were awoken rather unpleasantly.
The loud crash from downstairs was quite impossible to not be heard, even in your dreams.
A look at the digital clock next to your bed drew a groan from you. You had planned to sleep through the afternoon and the night to catch up on some lost rest but that would prove to be rather difficult now.
Especially since you could hear your father's loud voice cursing with not-so-pleasant words.

You pulled the blanket up and over your head.
You didn't want to hear anything.

But since you were awake now, you might as well get up and try to do something productive.
With a heavy breath, you threw the blanket back again and slid out of the warm covers.
Bare feet met the soft surface of the floor quietly and moved to the desk on the other side.

The air in your room was cool on your skin, washing away the pleasant warmth that had gathered during your nap. Rubbing your arms, you made sure to take a small detour to the closet to grab a jacket and put it over your (f/c) hoodie.

Then you took a seat, yawning and turning on the small lamp on the side of the desk, and took out your phone from your bag to check for any news.
Your eyes shifted from the glowing screen towards the side of your desk, where a dufflebag, in which equipment for your teakwondo classes were stuffed, was. The training was only held two times a week during winter season much to your dismay. You were one of the better students due to your naturally athletic and flexible build and it was a lot of fun to test your limits with other teens or young adults that didn't go to your school. Plus it helped you get stronger. The trainer for your classes lived in the neighboring city so you always had to drive over there but that only made it more fun.
Shaking your head, you sighed.
The next training session would only be in a few days so you still had to wait until you could either beat some ass or get your ass beaten. Either way was cool with you.
The noises of your father moving around one floor below you were still quite loud but had calmed down compared to his usual volume.
Of course he had come back early from his business trip and of course he was as drunk as ever.

You didn't know what else you were expecting.
At least he hadn't brought someone else home to continue his 'work'. Frankly, you weren't sure what he actually did at work but you also couldn't care less as long as he stayed away from you.

Skimming through the internet for a while, you noticed that Thomas had sent you a message just a while ago.
You answered and just a second later, he was already typing a response.
With an amused roll of your eyes, you waited till the message came in. Sometimes you wondered if he even had any hobbies or was just constantly trying to talk to you.

~~~

< Did you get the notes I sent you? :)

Yeah I did thx >

< Np ;)
< Did you sleep?

A little >
My father came back and woke me up >

Wasn't he supposed to be gone
< for two more days?

Yeah he was >

< Oh, that's good tho, right?
< Now you're not alone at home :D

~~~

You took a moment to sigh. If only that were a good thing.
Listening into the silence from downstairs, you began to worry.
Silence was never a good sign when it came to your father in a drunken state.

~~~

Srry I gtg cya later >

< Alright, see you at school :)

~~~

You put your phone onto the desk and went to your door, trying to see if you could hear anything. But only the sound of your heart beating was audible. The air suddenly felt heavy now.

Then a light sound, like voices murmuring in the dark and fingers tapping on wood, sounded from below. It was barely there at all but gradually grew louder.

Out of nowhere you could hear glass shattering on the ground, or maybe the wall.

The sudden noise seemed like a gunshot in the previous silence. Your father's voice shouted your name, as though he was expecting you to answer.
Of course you didn't, you were already gathering your things hastily.

Luckily you always had a bag prepared for an occasion like this one.
Grabbing it and shoving your phone into it along with a sandwich, a water bottle you had stored in your shelf and a thin blanket, you zipped it close and turned off your desk's lamp. The darkness swallowed your form, leaving you barefooted in the silence.

...

Silence?

A sudden panic grabbed your heart and squeezed the poor thing till it hammered against your ribcage painfully.
The tension grew, making sweat appear on your forehead.
Then a light sound like footsteps was heard and the creaking of the first stair reached your keen ears.

You immediately got back into motion, leaping across the bed and grabbing your shoes with shaking hands. It was hard to put them on because you could barely control your fingers at this point.
The creaking grew more audible as you were fumbling with the shoes and once you had finally managed to slip them on, the noises from outside your room were getting louder. Closer.

Thoughts shot through your mind, making you curse lowly under your breath before you took one big step to the window, sliding it open. The cold evening air hit your face, cooling your heated skin and giving you a bit of a clear head but the sound of footsteps growing quicker led you to climb out the window and quickly -yet quietly- slide it shut again.

Crouching on the roof with your hands on the wooden windowsill, you peeked into the room just long enough to see the doorhandle twist.
With a pounding heart and a churning stomach you let yourself sink down further, moving from underneath the window to sit next to it by the wall, pressing your back against the beige façade to have at least some kind of feeling of protection.

The tiles of the roof were rough and you could feel the cold settle in through your pants and still you didn't mind it. It was better than being trapped in your room.

Sure, you could've locked the door. But doing so would've made it suspicious and only caused more trouble later on.
This way you could say you had been at Thomas' house and had never been in your room to begin with. At least that was a solid argument for the talk with your father that was probably going to follow the next day.
In case he had sobered up till then.

Sitting on the roof like a lost cat that had just escaped from being shredded into bits by a horde of stray dogs, you took a moment to breathe and let the fresh air calm you. The stars were already showing and the pale moon shone from somewhere behind the other side of the house. With it being winter, the dark came sooner and frankly you were happy it did since it made it easier to go unnoticed.
You were save for now.

Though you still had to go quite a way to reach your actual goal for this night.

With a tired heart you pushed off the wall gently and began to move to where the roof met the garage, carefully but quickly hopping down onto the lower roof and using the trashcan next to the garage as a makeshift ladder to reach the grassy ground.
Your movements were skilled but you couldn't help the anxious gnawing inside your stomach.

The soft earth swallowed up the noises of your footsteps, allowing you to move faster and less careful now.

You slipped away, over the low fence and into the woods that grew directly behind your small yard. Each breath formed a fleeting cloud of smoke that floated away and dissipated as you jogged away from the lights and into the dark.

You were glad that you had put on that jacket now because you could already feel the cold creep through to your skin.
Dark shapes passed your running form, trees blurring into black splotches and making it hard to concentrate on the way.
Cold air burned in your lungs and your legs began to feel the strain of the sudden exercise.

You didn't know how long you had been running when the sound of an owl calling out met your ears and caused you to slow down, turning back to check how far you've come.
The light posts of the streets were but little spots of bright between the dark trees, flickering warmly and far away from you.

Geez, you hated it when you had to spend the night outside.
Though it was better than staying back there and hoping for morning to come.

Now that you were sure you were good, you turned your back toward the lights and wandered further into the woods, shoving your hands into the pockets of your jacket to keep them at least a little bit warm.

The light of the moon illuminated your path a bit, making it a little easier to see where you stepped. Noises of nature surrounded you now, branches breaking, animals moving through the grass, owls calling out occasionally.
It was quite nice actually and helped you calm down again.

You found your spot underneath the large tree in the depth of the woods and sat between the roots. They were old and big enough to cover your huddled up form from unwanted eyes, leaving you with a sense of security.
The backpack you had packed was now opened and emptied of the blanket.
Snuggling up in the thin -yet still better than nothing- fabric, you tried to get as comfortable as possible with the rough bark pushing into your back.
A cloudy sigh left your lips and you watched your surroundings a little longer until you felt your eyelids grow heavy.

Though it probably wasn't a good idea to sleep outside in such a cold night, you really didn't care enough to try and stay awake so you just let it happen and drifted off into an uneasy and dreamless sleep.

---

Muffled noises of heavy footsteps woke you up once more. At first your only instinct was to cower away, fear resurfacing, but then you halted.
You were still between the roots of your tree, huddled up against the hard and comforting wood. Around you it was also still dark, though the moonlight had shifted its angle, indicating that some time had passed since you drifted off.
Your feet were ice cold and you couldn't even feel your toes anymore. Wiggling them to try to get some blood pumping, you kept observing your surroundings.
Greyish colors of different shades formed a mysterious and cold picture, the glowing light of blue being the only color in it.

Hold up.

Since when did the forest glow?

Suspiciously narrowing your (e/c) eyes at the blue light that shone from somewhere behind the trees, out of sight of your current position, you noticed that its source must be moving, for the light illuminated different trees from one second to the other, going left to right and right to left.
The footsteps that had awoken you were heavy and slow, matching the way the light behaved.
Whoever was stomping their way through the woods in the middle of the night must be carrying a whole load of glowsticks.
A low "What the fuck?" left your chapped lips as you continued to follow the glowing with your eyes for a while.
Then you had enough of sitting around and freezing in the dark.
So you got up and stuffed your blanket into your backpack quickly, making sure to be silent as to not alert whoever was lighting up the woods a few feet away from you.

Leaving the open backpack by your tree, you carefully snuck toward the source of light, ducking behind bushes to keep out of sight.
Who knew what kind of people you could find?
Might as well be cautious and not get into more trouble.

Once you had rounded a rather thick tree, what you saw left your mind gaping for thoughts.

There was a large, quite hunky and tall man? creature? monster? being. with blue skin and a pair of horns that stretched out from the sides of its head, resembling a bull's. It was wearing a shiny silver armour with beautiful markings, the source of the blue light most apparently, and staring down at a board sword with yellow eyes of deep thought. Short but sturdy looking legs paced up and down the small clearing, producing the heavy footsteps that had awoken you.

For a while you just watched the being walk around, speechless and stunned.
The longer you looked, the more details you spotted.
The blue skin of the being was rough and had symmetric lines carved into it, making it look like it was made of stone or some kind of ore, and there was a ring pierced through its nose, further fuelling your mind with the image of a bull.
Due to the buff and muscular build, you assumed it was a male being. So not 'it', but rather 'he'.
And the sword in 'his' gloved hands looked like it was also glowing, made out of the same metal that 'his' full body armour was made out of.

Lost in your overwhelmed mind, you didn't even notice that 'he' had indeed noticed you.

---

Though fairly late in his opinion.

He had his thoughts focused too tightly on Daylight, the trusty sword, to hear her light footsteps approach and the almost inaudible gasp from her mouth slipped his mind too quickly to connect the dots.
Now there she was, staring wide eyed at him and how he stared right back at her with a look of uncertainty.
It had been years since he openly stood before a human, in full armour no less, so he wasn't sure how the young female would react.
Most likely like most of her previous kind did.
Scream, run and tell everyone they saw a monster.
But so far she was lacking all of these actions.

Perhaps the human whelp broke?

Lifting his free hand to his mouth, out of which a few teeth poked, he noticed with a pang of awkwardness how intently the female's gaze followed his movements.
To break the strange silence, he coughed lightly into his fist, making sure not to be too loud to avoid scaring the human whelp, if that hadn't happend already.

Finally it seemed her mind got back into motion with the noise, eyes blinking in a mixture of a lot of emotions similar to shock, fear and wonder.

Mentally preparing himself for a loudly screaming human, the large troll waited.

---

Were you still dreaming? What the actual hell did your brain come up with then? A humanoid bull with a glowy armour and sword having a midlife crisis in the forest?

The sound of just that bull coughing into his fist shook you awake.
Only now did you notice that he was looking directly at you, an expectant expression on his face.
Your eyes met and you paled visibly, the stir of emotions in your chest got you feeling nauseous.
You were fairly sure that whatever he was, he wasn't hostile. If he were, you probably would be dead already. Cleaved in half by that gigantic sword of his.
That thought didn't help you calm down at all.

You gulped and opened your mouth, deciding you couldn't stand there in the tense silence all night.
"Am I ... interrupting something?"

---

Though the human sounded quite terrified, she didn't scream. It kind of surprised him actually.

His yellow gaze flickered from side to side, the sword still in his hand. Her question reminded him why he was here, in the woods and with Daylight ready to attack.
Like so often these nights, he was on the hunt.

But he couldn't take the risk of getting a human involved in it for he was certain that she would end up either crushed in the mess of the fight or torn to pieces by his enemy.
Somehow, he had to get the human whelp away from here.

"Yes, you are, human." His intentionally harsh words made the young female flinch visibly and for a second she reminded him of his son. He had to keep him away from these fights too.

"This is not your business."
He made a motion to himself and the sword he was holding, trying to tell the human whelp that she should leave while she still could.

Much to his dismay, the small female didn't turn and run but instead walked closer to him, leaving the bushes and stepping onto the clearing.
He noticed that -for human standards- this whelp was actually quite grown already, now that she had stepped into the light and he could get a better look at her form.
Still young but old enough to understand the situation.

Or perhaps not.

---

You didn't know what kind of foolish thought made you walk closer to the bull creature when he clearly didn't want you near him.
Perhaps it was the thought that told you you had just discovered a whole other reality in this world. The thought that told you there was more than just high school, homework, teakwondo and motorcycles in your life.

It was that thought that suddenly got you full of wonder, fear and shock washed away by the possibilities that opened in your mind.
Gazing up at the tall being, you tried not to let your voice break as you spoke to him once more, boldly ignoring his previous words.

"What are you?"

You saw how he slumped his shoulders slightly, seemingly disappointed that you hadn't heeded his warning.
Apparently in response, he lifted the long and broad sword in his hand, holding it out into the air.
For a moment you could see how proud he was of it.
The metal of both his armour and the sword, glinting in the cool moonlight, illuminated your surroundings.

He held the sword so it hovered right above your head with the edge pointing to the side, allowing you to see the tiniest detail of the markings on the flat side, skillfully done and nicely kept in shape.

His deep voice saying, "You do not need to know any of this." was the last thing you heard before the sword's flat side suddenly came down upon your head and everything went dark.

---

"..."

He had forgotten that humans weren't so resistant against blows as his kind was and had perhaps used a tad too much strength with the knock than he had intended to.
Staring down at the limp human with a dumbstruck expression, he mumbled a trollish curse under his breath and prayed to Deya that he hadn't accidentally murdered the poor thing.

He had only wanted to give a light knock on her head to scare her, not blow her lights out.

She certainly didn't look very alive with how she was sprawled out in the grass before him.
Lucky enough, he could still see cloudy breaths leaving her lips.
There didn't seem to be any blood either.
The large troll heaved a relieved sigh and let his sword dissipate into blue mist so he could get the human whelp someplace safer.
Picking her up carefully, he walked off into the night.

This must've been one of the weirdest encounters Kanjigar the Courageous, the current Trollhunter, had with a human so far.