First off, keep in mind that you were not expecting this.  (No one ever does.)  So you think on your toes, you improvise, you dance; but keep these things in mind.

The thing is not an animal or we would call it an animal (or: it is an animal in the way that we are animals, though we forget it so willfully). Shaggy with fur and moss, it nonetheless has a mind like ours, and eyes like ours, and its hands are hands, for all their claw and rattle. (And yes: that green tint is plant growth, and in the spring the small things on its back flower. What we have here is ancient.) Do not underestimate the creature you’ve encountered, do not deny it its many strengths and wisdoms. It may still eat you alive.

You are without weapon save your body and wits and a single small knife you have carried since age sixteen “just in case.”  You are young and you are febrile with terror when you find this thing, which is the reasonable response, since your backyard had never before been a forest. It clutches at trunks and branches and watches you with gold-flecked eyes, eyes that look like treasures, eyes you’d see enshrined in museums surrounded by glass and discreet security sensors. It is cold out, and your breath makes a pale distraction in front of you, but when the beast breathes it sends a blanket of steam out to rise up and die.

You begin to back up. You begin to quiver. Your heart rate rises, you breathe faster, your ears ring. Your throat contracts, you can feel it, your chest muscles tense and stiffen. The beast keeps pace with you, stepping soft, the leaves fluttering on its back, its enormous cloven hooves digging gently into the lush grass underneath it.

Where is the snow? So recently there was snow here. You check your boots, where some had crusted, but find them only damp and muddy. Through the trees above you the sky is black and recklessly full of stars.

The beast presses closer, looming and tattered, and you stumble over your feet and fall back, catching yourself uncomfortably on your wrists. It bends its great head down and levels those treasure eyes at you. Its jaw is the length of your body and you can see the delicate texture of the skin on its wet nose. You breathe in with a shiver that disrupts and stutters the sound of your inhalation.

You put your hand out feebly, shaking, the muscle along your forearm jumping. Your palm lands against the beast’s chin, which is soft and intensely warm, under which you can feel bone, under which you can feel the movement of blood. The animal tilts its head and your hand meets its muzzle; under the flesh of its lips, you can feel the curve of its teeth, heavy with implicit harm.

You withdraw your hand and scuttle back, undignified. You imagine you can smell the beast’s breath on you, a tangible thing, laying over you irremovable. You gasp in the smells of spring growth and the damp rot of fallen leaves, overturned earth and wet red clay, rust, living wood, termite, falling snow, dry bone, moss, predation, clover, rising bread, stone, crow calls, cloud cover, full moon, birth, the fear that comes with a deep love, the sound of an owl on a night without wind, beeswax, birch bark, animal musk.

It lowers its head to you until you are met again by that still, glimmering stare. The word is “fascinate.”

Years later you will come back to this place. It will still be there, greener now and greyer, too. Leaner with age, thicker with knowledge. Its tongue will not be forked. You will remember how you fled, before, how you broke its contact and ran shrieking back to the snow, the backyard, your family gathered in the warmly lit living room around the fire and the tree and the as-yet-unfilled stockings and how your sister was the only one who saw you were unsettled, but you wouldn’t tell her what happened, she only pried it out of you when she found the violet, still fresh, stuck to your damp boot. So you walk up to the beast, not slow, your regular pace. It still seems huge, but though you have been the same height since your late teens and certainly haven’t grown since your last encounter, it does not overwhelm you.

You put your hand on its heavy flank. Underneath your palm there are ribs, long-broken and long-mended, and the seam is a nearly intangible bump under your gentle hand. The beast crouches, so that it is level with you, and it tucks one hand under your chin and lifts your head. You close your eyes and inhale.

The animal sighs, and you reach up, eyes still closed, and stroke its neck. You feel its hand withdraw. You open your eyes to find the thing bowing its head, looking at the ground, which is still green and studded with wildflowers.

You kiss its brow, which feels like nothing so much as the kisses you used to give your dog, before he was struck by a car and returned to you dying. The beast is dying too, or will die before long. The snow is only feet behind you now.