this life is but a bridge

A night of tumultuous skies over the distant sea gave way to a foggy, cold winter's morning.

Through all the dreary grey left behind, dawn’s eventual first light managed to trickle in. Uninterrupted, the waves swelled along the rocky shoreline with the frigid new day. As the ebb current receded, it revealed something more–a bedraggled little wolf was deposited onto the pebbled edge, unceremoniously left behind by even the unforgiving sea. Motionless, utterly soaked through.

There, beneath some foreign mountain at the edge of this bay, consciousness drifted at large, swirling–mixing, past with present, future and beyond. Darkness giving way to light, night swallowing the daytime. Sunrises, sunsets alike. Great heights, and dizzying falls. Open skies, alpine ridges, dark tunnels into the earth, then beneath the shades of dense trees. Where one life ended, another began hazing together, love and loss in equal intensities, lines blurred, but drawn in startling blood all the same.

Here, somehow, presented a new intersection of all these histories.. warranted, or not. This was not to be an end. Anything but.

Lost, ultimately, it steadily began to pinprick back to these sodden, hallowed confines, here–alone.

Alone.

Any true awareness only came as a slow seep. Everything was groggy, heavy, and terribly cold. A small wet cough shook the wolf’s sides with too much effort. Gradually, there in the damp sands and stones where the earth began its climb, they began to wake up to the miserable aftermath.

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hi dropping this here. just kinda @Lucian for visibility

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Lucian had left his den during the night, his thoughts racing through his head at every chance they had. He needed time to figure out what had caused them to grow loud in his head. Something was bringing them up, and he couldn't quite pinpoint the cause. Was it Dunja's appearance? Or Vanille's disappearance?

With a heavy sigh, the man continued down to the beach he often frequented when his nightmares had kept him awake during the night. The soft crash of the waves against the shore soothed his thoughts and, at times, lulled him to sleep.

Lucian noticed a dark movement on the shore, and his eyes narrowed. His lip curled with a low growl of annoyance. His fur lifted along his nape as he prowled down the pass. He wouldn't be the first to attack, but this was his home. And he was not going to let them stay here without answering to him.

"Ušao si na posjed, stranče." — You are trespassing, stranger. He hummed, positioning himself at the entrance of the path. Even if they were not much of a threat, the prince did not take kindly to strangers.

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skill: outrider ; this was a little short, but i'll write more in the next posts !

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Survive something deep, dark and old from within still spoke. Despite the sorrows, the pains, and now the cold--survive anyway, just like always. Odds be damned, and for purpose yet unseen. It had not been enough.. not yet.

Acting on this idea, the bedraggled husk drew himself up, and into a proper grimace. Even as seconds ticked and the reality hardened, there was no real recollection to explain why, exactly, the sea seemed to spit them up here. Or, better yet, what had come before--why fate was up to the merciless waves in the first place. He vaguely recalled the last job he had agreed to, everything before, but it had nothing to do with.. this? But, while perhaps bruised up in the process, in entirety, Aśvinī now remained whole and unquestionably earthside once more.

Without this making sense, there was soon someone else, and it was perhaps the last thing the situation needed. Still processing whatever even led to here, head-spinning, the once-wartooth was in decidedly foul spirits but left with no choice but to cope. It seemed to be a sizable brute that had come, too--of course, as would only be the luck. Shining pale and silvered in a number of shades, all carved from the peaks themselves. So upheaved, confused, wet, and miserable, the jackdaw's first recourse was a coiled lip and show of teeth.

Exposed like this in unfamiliar turf, stripped down to every weakness, all there could be was an ugly snarl when he didn't understand a word the mountain of a wolf said. “What the fuck?” Mitra seethed, postured protectively over his neck and leering upward, icy eyes hard should he face retaliation. The disadvantage was well recognized, but his hackles rose anyway, paws gripping. How big were his problems here, exactly? As if he had needed it to get any worse, stinking like frozen seaweed and salt. “I don't know where the hell I am,” he grated, sounding freshly awoken and with breaths still shaky, looking right on the line between fight or flight as he sized up the native anyway--wondering if it would even be understood at all.

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