This is your mountain.

There are others like you, crawling through the mines, the sanitorium, the ruins of your home, but they're trespassers in your territory and you do not share it with them willingly.

When you cannot kill them, you drive them out. When you can kill them, you grow stronger.

This is your mountain, and you guard it with your life.

.

There are scents that belong to you. Scents that make you hungry for food, and for something more than food. You keep traces of them with you; two fingers, a hat, strands of burnt hair… there are six scents in all, and you know there should be a seventh.

There are other scents on the mountain, but they aren't your missing seventh. Something is always wrong - they might make you hungry, but only for flesh, not for…

You wish you knew what for. It would make this easier.

.

Time passes and it's hard to think of anything but hunger. Your skin is tight with it, and all you have left of the keepsake fingers is splintered bone; flesh wasn't enough, you needed the marrow.

And then you catch it. Distant on the wind, in the outskirts of your territory. You don't venture into the town often, not unless hunger starts to make you weak; you cannot farm the things you need to eat, and if you scare them away, they won't come back. You ration out what you take from the town with care.

But this time your missing scent is there, and if you weren't dried out you would cry with relief. You scream with it instead, and charge after its source as soon as the sun sets.

.

He startles when you break into his motel room, but he doesn't fight you. You pin him down, sniff him to make sure he's the source of the missing scent, and he calls you "Josh".

He's right, that was your name. You lick his neck and remember his.

Chris.

He's what was missing.

He doesn't fight back when you pick him up and carry him back to the woods. If anything, he seems relieved.

The stragglers in your territory want him, but they can't have him. You won't let them touch him.

He's your missing seventh, and now that you have him with you, he feels like more than that.

.

Chris is weaker than you. He's still prey, and can't find prey of his own. You bring him what you can when he needs to eat, and curl up around him when he needs to sleep.

You don't need sleep anymore, though you often choose to, when the sun is beating down and preventing you from going above ground. It doesn't hurt you directly, but your eyes are sensitive now in a way they never were before.

At first, he explores above ground during the day. He tries to find food for himself.

He gives up soon enough, returns to you and the scraps you provide, and his mouth starts to peel open, his teeth start to sharpen.

He's becoming like you, and you think you should hate that, that you should do something to change it.

You don't.

You start curling around him day and night, and he grows thin and tight, and you don't know when he finished becoming like you, but he did.

He smells the same, regardless. He's still the seventh you needed, and he loves the six scents you keep with you just as much as you do, and when he holds you, it's the only time you feel warm.

.

You take his hair when it falls out, put it amongst your trinkets, and then take him with you to hunt. The others like you leave him alone now, and with the two of you guarding your territory, it's easier to claim the mountain for yourselves.

You're still stronger than him. He hasn't killed like you have, so maybe that's how it always will be.

But it doesn't matter. The others are weak in a way you detest. He's only weak because of you, because he belongs with you.

You're not sure this is how you were meant to be together, but it's an ending you're happy with.

You would never have let him go. And now he'll never let go of you.

.

Years roll by, and you forget what it was like to be human. You forget your name, forget what it was like to hear it. You forget what it was like to be weak. What it was like to be afraid.

You forget so many things, and you forget why there are seven scents in one place in your territory, just that they are important.

You forget everything except hunger, and the creature that sleeps in your arms during the day.

You can't remember how he came to be there.

You can't remember why he stays with you.

But you'll keep him until you die, and the way he holds you tight when the sun rises tells you that he'll keep you in return.