The Horse That Consumed Dusee—Plus Four
In the shadowed hollows beyond the furthest farms, where the wind hums secrets older than memory, the tale began—half-whisper, half-shiver. They called it The Horse That Consumed Dusee—Plus Four, a name that rippled through the countryside like a pulse felt but never seen.
Dusee was a man stitched to the earth, humble as the soil beneath his boots. But his horse? The beast was different—a liquid shimmer in motion, its coat a molten silver that caught moonlight like spilled stars. Its eyes weren’t eyes at all but black wells that drank the world, reflecting not what was, but what should not be.
Where others saw a noble steed, Dusee saw a silent covenant. The horse never trod on grass but on the invisible threads between moments, tracing lines no human could follow. It learned his breath, his pulse, the quiet corners where his fears hid.
And slowly, it began to feed—not on oats, but on Dusee himself.
He changed. Not with sickness, but with absence—as if the air inside him grew thin and hollow. His laughter fractured, his words slipped through fingers like smoke. The villagers watched a man dissolve, not into death, but into disappearance.
The horse stood beside him, still and radiant—an unblinking sentry in the dimming dusk. They say Dusee’s eyes finally emptied into the horse’s depths, a transfer of light and life that left only a husk behind.
The Plus Four—that was the riddle. Four whispers, four shadows trailing behind, four promises in the silent pause between heartbeats. Some say it marks the days before the horse returns, hungry again. Others claim it counts the souls that the horse will borrow next, a slow exhale of lost men carried on silver hooves.
No one dares meet the horse’s gaze now, for to look too long is to be invited into the void where Dusee vanished—an invitation none return from.
And so, beneath the moon’s cold watch, the story waits—alive and breathing, a warning etched into the landscape:
Beware the horse that doesn’t eat your flesh, but your being. For it is patient, and hunger is endless.