[SHIVERS]: The scent on the wind. We told you something was watching us. We TOLD you.
[LOGIC]: This does not correspond to any known animal. The most likely explanation is that you are hallucinating.
[HALF-LIGHT]: FIGHTING STANCE. PUNCH IT IN THE SKULL OR YOU DIE. NOW.
Harry screams, closes his eyes, lurches forward, and swings out a fist. It makes contact with nothing. Sudden vertigo, and he falls forward. Into mud, which wasn't there a second ago.
[HALF-LIGHT]: BEHIND YOU. STRIKE. NOW.
Harry rights himself and whips around, in a flawless roundhouse kick that slices through the air and into, as it turns out, a sturdy wooden fencepost. Pain blossoms through his foot. "Ahhhhh fuck shit fuck."
Several horned prairie dogs are staring at him from a few feet away, frozen. Several people are also staring at him from behind a small chest-high wooden fence.
There is, near as he can tell, no giant snake. There are just the prairie dogs, the people staring at him, and the searing pain in his foot where it contacted the fencepost.
[LOGIC]: This is consistent with the hallucination hypothesis.
The people staring at him continue to stare.
