— wants to reach out to them & whisper in their dreams

[narrow width=800]

for @Dirge ♡ && tagging this post as discovery for cloudrest even tho she's taking a break frm it, hope that's ight lmao

---

 sleep eludes her, this time;
 so she slips from the duskfelled vale  ( as loathe as she is to leave it )  and takes to wandering. retracing the paths she had taken upon entering, but not before lipping at purple lupine and nudging dozy foxglove on making her exit. it is routine already, nearly; working this weight, this weariness from her by answering, always, to that graceless hand that has married her to the heartbeat of this new earth.

 but emptiness  –  and @Evune, perhaps  –  follows her. fills her with its uncertain disquiet and she knows it is the ache of absence. desolate dreams pursue her out of hard-earned repose and often she wept herself awake; and upon waking wept and wept. for so long and for now she is as much as a territory unsettled as cloudrest is. that she would fill her haunted claim with beating hearts and blood-warm bodies, and lively laughter and all living yet to live was ... what she owed to them and to her own ghosts.

 all she might do, perhaps, until the time came when she would be able to resume her own search. but there were no borders yet marked  ( at least, what she couldn't cover on her own ),  and there was no telling that she might even gain a following, this time.

 she ought to try, though;
 ought to make herself familiar hereabouts, as well.

 on her own promise to return to the heavily-downed hollow and mean it, aėrith allowed the hours of earliest pre-dawn to guide her further and farther from it; wending her weary way through the mountains that hunched and rose, so large and looming all around. looks for everything and for nothing.

 restive; errant.[/narrow]

the staff team luvs u

He and Altair had set off early that day, intent on exploration. They had stayed high along the mountain range until it’s natural descent had guided them downward and from there, it had been a series of varied terrain rife with forests and deep valleys. It hadn’t been void of the flatlands either, but for the most part there had not been a clear division of region that Dirge would have anticipated.

It had mattered little when they had come across a well worn trail left by mule deer, and at that point Dirge had sent the boy back towards Empyrean to report the finding on the heels of a muted celebration. Such things deserved documentation and though his son had seemed a touch crestfallen not to continue tracking, he hadn’t disobeyed the direction from his father. He knew such a thing would appease @Hydra, and it would give them something more to scout together as a pack another time.

Onward he went, eventually sinking down low in a shrouded vale where the trees snaked towards what sunlight they could get against high mountain walls; a stream cut deep here and it was in the shallows he walked. The trail left by the deer came and went in the mud, skirting up along the low stream bed and grassy banks. It wouldn’t have been a scene too dissimilar to the one where he had reunited with Crux, only he had not a little inkling in stopping for a rest or drink in his silent pursuit.

It would have seemed, for the most part, that he was alone.

---

tags for reference

the staff team luvs u

[narrow width=800]even as evening plies this little hollow with deep shadow, she doesn't worry that she will lose her way, come the time when she ought to make her return to her own. these stars are still strangers to her, and though she will use them as the guides they are, so far they've offered nothing to her except homesickness. they've strung themselves up in her dark and boundaryless in-betweens; where her skies bled blue-black and over itself. comfort was seldom had, when she was left with her own thoughts ... so, she wanders. errant and restive, without something  –  someone  –  to tether her wits to the earth and all below.

it comes as no surprise to her, then, when her attention snags on the inkblot of another. settled near a tittering brook, cleft through with sediment and churned by hoof and claw alike.

"a fine evening for a fine valley, i should think,"  she wisps, absent words and perhaps unnecessary, here. all the same, she moves nearer; enough so to pause for a drink.[/narrow]
the staff team luvs u

Long minutes passed as he soaked up the solitude and rested; the valley was a seemingly idyllic place with long shadows cast by the mountains that cradled it so. Perhaps if he and Hydra had not chosen to stay close to where they had first awoke, he would have thought this place a somewhat decent locale to set up in. It was an entertaining thought to hold onto, though darkly he wondered if it was worth a consideration should winter prove to be ill-favored for them where they were now.

But it was a thought he did not entertain long.

Through the forests along the creekbed, he caught sight of a glimpse of white against the dark, almost silvery-green of the summer leaves. There and gone, only to return once again as a slender figure emerged from nearby. Distinctively feminine and easy on the eyes—he felt a flash of something strike him, though he could not put a single thing there to hold it as it came and went. It did not matter in the next breath either; she was speaking and blindly, he nodded in agreement.

“It’s quite beautiful,” he said, almost absently as the feeling passed him. “A wonder no one has sought to claim it for themselves, though it would be a pity for someone to steal it away for those of us who wander on a nice evening.” A demure smile turned upright at his lips to her, his gaze not quite ready to leave her to survey their surroundings once more. He tried to place her once again, but could not.

“Are you from around here? You remind me of someone,” he went on, gently.
the staff team luvs u

[narrow width=800]the tundra lie at her back – but there she was, iron-focused upon the male in her company as if he were true north. she couldn't help herself from nearing him, eyes awonder, as if he'd been the one that'd strung the stars tonight; a pert ear flickering mildly at his words, his voice. "i ... i cannot say," she intoned, falteringly; lashes aflutter while her pearlmade eyes perched on the mouth, the notch of fur, eyes and nose and lips again like a clockwork bird. pinches her own between her teeth for a heartbeat before musing, "my dreams have gone off to hunt yours, perhaps," for if her summons hadn't been the souls stirring beneath her very skin, then it had been so.

the pink of her nose works girlishly his way to scent him, leaning and yet not so much as to invade his personal space; her tail feathering in an absentminded, inquisitive arc. dark brows knitting together; pale lips pursing. "you ... are like an afterimage. you make my heart ache." enough that it made her quiver, if only subtly. he might see it, though; and the tailtip that twitched in a leonine way; kept stock-still, hushed. paused.

"you are as i am: strung to the moon with red threads of tangled blood."[/narrow]

the staff team luvs u

Perhaps somewhere in the long line of things they had crossed paths—who was he to think or suggest that they hadn’t? He had come across those both living and dead from what was apparently another world away, and with so many mysteries to unravel it was hard to determine which thread to pull in the tapestry. Impossible, even, to discern which one was even worth the attempt to weave into his own.

Her investigation of him was distant and brief, but long enough that he couldn’t help but do the same from where he was. It too was inconclusive, but he had been anticipating that; if truly she were someone he had known before, he did not know her now, even with her gentle lilt and flowery words. Perhaps they were nothing more than spirits now, souls claimed by something unknowable and far greater in strength and power than they and forever left to walk another realm.

Dirge wasn’t sure what he believed, any more.

He was still making peace with simply not knowing.

“A story we all share as of late, it seems,” he answered. Tangled blood was only the half of it though, wasn’t it? “For all we know, the only entanglement we share may be in how we’ve come to exist here. At least I haven’t met a single native of this place and I find that to be quite a mystery in all the years I’ve traveled.”
the staff team luvs u

[narrow width=800]indeed — for as far as she'd been able to tell on her travels, the few she'd met along the way hadn't seemed to be made of the same blood of the earth that the pair of them now stood upon. if anything, they appeared to be wanderers all, whether out of a vision or from the far reaches of whatever was beyond this world-away. she would not question it, though. ... but, perhaps for the first time since she'd spoken to the devouress, she would let tell of her own arrival.

for aside from the chorus of her children, it was all she knew.

"i was ... summoned. my soul stolen as i slept beside the star to my dawn. the shield to my court. my arórelën — Dawnstar," formless, faceless, and without now the name that she might never be able to call again. her throat worked with an ache, swelled; a reminder of where her wedmarks had been. should be. but she did not look from her company's eyes. could not, even as silver limned her own. "we two were meant to bear children, come my season. to try once more, at it all, and to do it well, and for it to be good. to be ... better than we were once before. and then his gods rent my heart from his. knit my flesh from what had torn at it. stricken it. remade me when i did not wish to ever be."

they had only just bound themselves beneath the eye of her valerian gods.

but hers would not find her. not in this ... where-ever.

her nostrils flare now, breathing deep and grounding, but it is not with sorrow. "if they would not return me to my body beneath the earth of the land that i had made my seat, my hearthside, then they would give me what children would never be. they did." but with the conviction of an afterthought and kunnhekku bristles to herself; moonshed mane straining to crawl up into the cowl of night and shy stars. "they scattered them to the winds of this world like leaves in autumn, and so i have been searching for them ... searching, and striving to rebuild what has been lost. to find them before they grow faster than i can bear. to make hearth once more – and bring them to it as they should have been before."

and if he thought her mad, well ... it wouldn't have been the first time she'd been believed to be so.

it was of no matter.

"before being ferried to that godsplain from my rest, i was not ... a faithful. now, his gods are mine. mine, though i do not favor them in the least. but i will pass on to our— my brood, should they be found. my people, should they follow me."

death had sundered them;
but she was still a wife, in this.

mate and mother.

"i would have never left them."[/narrow]

---

+1 Formation Points

the staff team luvs u

She launched into a tale, sorrow tainting every word as the moments passed unchecked. It was a story he would hear again in a much more abridged sense some time later, and perhaps over and over again from there—a tale of how they had all been plucked, one by one or in a group, and would awake in a place unfamiliar. What he would wonder was when the growing sense of dread would leave him rather than continue to warm and warn his thoughts with an urgency he could not quell or smother either way.

He did not know when the day would come, though he had come to terms with some aspects of it. He had come to terms with the fact that he would perhaps never quite be fully reunited with all in his family, that he would never quite discover or unravel the mystery that had woven itself into the tapestry of his life even if he tried to continue to pull at the new strings he found there. Longer yet, he had come to terms that whatever sense of home he had made for himself over the years was simply not just over another mountaintop or around the next bend in the path.

“It’s not an easy thing to look for one’s family in this place,” he said, empathizing with perhaps the only thing he could. “Even I search for my own, or at the very least what of my children I have not found. The only fortunate thing I know is that they are capable of surviving on their own,” or at least, it went unsaid that he hoped so. He shook his head as though to dismiss the concept of something worse, though it too had occurred to him.

He did, after all, remember bits and pieces of the fateful night that had rendered them loose of earthly bound to cast them there. How fire had singed across his spine and burned, if only for a moment. How nothingness in its bleak, deep well of darkness had been all-consuming and at the same time so very gentle and comforting; he had never shared these things, though perhaps he should have.

But there had been so many jarring things about this place he did not understand.

“Perhaps you will find them here,” he went on, “as from what I can tell this is a very vast place that not even we have found the edges of, assuming there are any. There is the ocean in the west, or so I believe that’s what it is. The mountains cut through here, lush forests south of the river. Grasslands to the east…” His voice trailed, but he did not recall any more than he had been told.

“What’s your name?”
the staff team luvs u

[narrow width=800]

its like 4am ripriprjrorh,
tagged as discovery since she mentioned the place name but if i have to i"ll tag it as formation instead lmao

---

the she-wolf listened to him in turn as she seated herself, somewhat half-spent from her meager tirade; all solemn nodding and a considering draw of her brow. no: it was not an easy thing, as they'd both said as much here and now. she did not  ( would and could not )  fault the shadow for his own last wish, if his own brood continued on in some other ... old plain. hoped that hers had found shelter and nurturing arms until she was able to find them again. wondered why had the väinämöinen sung them so early, barely budding. regardless, though  —  he does not have the doubting look that she's been faced with several times and more, and so, when goes on with words of some kind of faith for her, she only appreciates his company all the more.

( as much as they could be, given the tone and topic of their conversation. )

"aėrith,"  dipping her chin for a heartbeat before providing further,  "and if the earth beneath our feet is as sure as the blood that runs through our veins, we will find them. it is what we all deserve, even after they have come into their own. we are but ... oh, fragments of them, if you will."  rose then, drawing nearer to he with a cant of her lumine head, eyes awander to the unassuming creek still in their attendance.  "several or so hours north of here, i have staked claim to a vale of my own. i have no name for my following, yet; but the lands there are known as cloudrest."

brings her pearled, pensive gaze back to him; the faintest squint of consideration at the edges. thinking. then, with a wry, fleeting smile:

"often, you will only find it when it chooses to reveal itself to you."[/narrow]

---

+1 discovery

the staff team luvs u

Perhaps she had a point in it all—if they were met to find one another here, then they would. For the most part, he agreed with that though he knew deep down inside from a paternal node he would always search for them. A wisp, a glimmer, a trace of them on the wind would guide him without consideration; they were of his flesh and blood and even if he would never truly lay claim to his own lineage that he shared with his wife, they were a part of that, of him.

But for now, he had conceded to spending his waking hours in constant search of them. Osiris had taken up much of that with little to show for it and it had confirmed what he had long felt, and in time he hoped his elder son would also come to terms with what he had and let his own disappointment go. They would heal, albeit on their own terms, and at their own pace; he could not begrudge any of them for taking their time with it.

“Cloudrest,” he murmured. Another northern pack that edged onto a region that he wasn’t entirely familiar with. Another neighbor so distantly north, like Vanderfell. “My own pack lies in the mountains south of here, along the river. Empyrean,” he went on to explain, gesturing in the direction from whence he had come. Though he was curious of what, and who all she had amassed to follow her, his tongue stilled itself. Even a delicate sylph such as she had sharp teeth, and he wasn’t about to start sullying relations between anyone yet.
the staff team luvs u

[narrow width=800]as if the name he'd proffered to her wasn't enough, she rises to her paws once more and drifts the way that he'd gestured with his inkblot muzzle; her own lifting to ascertain his trail from here and him. it wasn't that she thought him a liar; moreso that it had been so long, too long since she had been shawled in the presences of her people and the living, trailing energy of abode left behind. and sure enough, he was verily cloaked in the trappings  ( or bindings, rather )  of the so-called  "empyrean,"  and of those however-many who called it hearth and home. "it suits you."

it must also have been the very spire that the star-studded tähtiherra had mentioned of to her, and so aėrith cannot help but regard the male before her in the same manner she had once with crux: wondering at what ambitions he might have, and where his people saw worth and what value was theirs by right.

not yet, though  —  for while she had prodded the first with such inquiries, now that her own claim must make do with, well, herself to make itself known ... she was more guarded than usual, now.

and perhaps it was a bit much, for the moment.

instead, the nightingale lets her graysown eyes follow the deer tracks pressed into the mud of the bank, leading through the creek and into the crowding oblivion of ever-deepening night. then:  "might we hunt together, ser? nothing so great that it cannot be carried to our homes, of course,"  considering that perhaps a brace of somethings smaller would be easier for them both to part ways with, equally; neverminding that he might decline her, especially if he needed to return to his lands and those who dwelt with him.

as she always had, she would run the grief out of her regardless.[/narrow]

the staff team luvs u

It suits you, she said and he wondered if it did, though perhaps not as much as he had with the reins of Moonspear so tightly clutched in his maw. Empyrean felt more like his own than the former towering spire they had lived upon—they had put the time and work into claiming it, building the very foundation that would allow them to survive and thrive in lands that were still very foreign to them. He couldn’t say when the point in time would come when they no longer felt foreign, but he knew it would be an eventually.

If nothing else, he felt certain that as long as he and Hydra had their own, then all would be as well as it could be. They would make do with what they had rather than lament endlessly over what they had not or had lost and with the season growing long and old, he knew that soon they would busy themselves with comfortably making their way back through the winter months. Which brought them both to the next line of conversation, and an offer that intrigued him. A hunter by trade and perhaps by heart, he decided it wise not to turn down the offer.

“The night is ripe for hunting,” he rejoined smoothly, appraising, “and you can call me Dirge, by the way. What sort of quarry did you have in mind?” A half-score of prey came to mind that he thought would fit the bill she had decided upon; hares and stoats, various types of fowl—all of which wouldn’t have been too terribly difficult to snare or snag working in a team.
the staff team luvs u

[narrow width=800]she waits for his response as she waits for adventure, watching him  –  cloaked and gilt  –  intently. too intently. waiting, like him, for her sons and daughters to show. waiting for the wind to take to her, tug her somewhere. waiting for the memory, like a held-close and sorely-coveted ember, of the star of her dawn to wash from her. keep her. haunt her and unmake her and she shivers, shudders when the voice of her company returns her to herself, grounds her, if only for now. it is then that she remembers that all things will settle in time; all things return to the places they belong; all things eventually wash upon the shores of whence they came. or, it is as she hopes.

oh, she hopes.

she might have been spring out of conflagration, the way she smiles at him then: "pheasant, if it please you, malanture — golden lord," but the dear price had been so forcibly exacted from her. them. him and her. her eyes gleam with it, burning so terrible and brightly then that they might have seared the pair of them two to the bone. rebirth; they will regain some semblance of themselves together.

so, with little more to do, aėrith settles back into her ageless bones and surges away with a chime and a trill; fleet-footed over the stream and its many prints, letting freedom freedom freedom limn every fiber of her figure as it is ever want to do and push her onward, always and unendingly onward to make well, for now, her insatiable, base needs.

and as she runs she laughs  —  truly, for the first time in a very long time  —  all savage-wild and wardrum heart, too full of teeth for her to ever be thought of as some delicate and petaled thing, not really. her claws become briar-barbed, and the skin beneath her moonglow fur silvers as if with the very aspen of the mountains; searching the wilds, the very world for the feeling she yearns for herself. she is the moth and the chrysalis; cradled in the wake of her metamorphosis and thrashing against it all the same, wanting out, tossing the silver of her mane out, reaching out out out.

for if she runs, and runs, and runs, perhaps she could tear through the skin of oblivion, rip through the veils of all worlds and return herself where she was meant to be and as who.

his kunnhekku.

... but she was only hunting, wasn't she?[/narrow]

the staff team luvs u

He nods and the affirmation is no more borne into the world before she takes to flight through the dewdrop streaked grasses; her laugh accompanies it all and in her wake, he follows after her like an earthy shade beneath the glade’s canopy. The course before them bends and weaves through the forest and in his extension of trust he presumes that she knows the best place to hunt the aforementioned pheasants.

Dirge hopes there are many, if for nothing else than to up their chances of bagging one or two each. He knows it would please Hydra to come back with something a bit unusual for standard fare among the steeper slopes of Empyrean; the information alone of where to find such things was just as invaluable to them, and the distance alone wasn’t so great that it would make filling their stores ill-advised.

He kept pace with her easily, though she is not a hard thing to spot against the late summer greens. Even in the deep wood where they cross and the shadows grow against rising terrain at their side, she stands out, though far lighter on his feet than he. He suspects that their goal can’t be much further in distance—they wouldn’t exhaust themselves to get to one place just to lose the stamina for the hunt.
the staff team luvs u