Then you don't have to see what you've done

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 She wandered west of the deer-loving pack, out of their land as advised.

 Not for any pittance of respect she might have for the racist fucks, but for her own goals. You see, while her stomach was nice and full of (wolf) meat, she didn't especially want to have the rest of the pack coming at her throat and eating her up. Not when she was weighed down and a bit sluggish, anyways. She'd gorged on her last meal and she was quite certain that it would last her a good few days before the pangs of hunger returned and she would have to go in search of another piece of meat.

 In the meantime, she was approaching some freaky looking mountains.

 Her bloodred eyes soaked in the toothy rocks, how they scooped up into the sky with the same rage she felt sitting in her gut. They were able to bite the sky, why couldn't she? She had tried, so many times, but jaws closing on nothing wasn't especially satisfying. Perhaps these stones were the remnants of some deceased beast, the skeleton of a great wolf long since passed and swallowed up by the monstrosity of a mountain behind it.

 “Lucky bastard,” she said with a huff.

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---

+1 Discovery Points

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[narrow width=800]the crag's teeth ring her like a crux; reaching to tear open the gut of the sky and let spill its lashing-bright innards as proud pines act silent sentinel.

aėrith had removed herself from that sweltering, reclaimed ruin; had been drawn here by her searching but unwilling to bring herself to root about what may   ( or may not be )   tucked away based on mere rumor.

and then, reverential and affronted: 'lucky bastard,' —

she shifts, stilling mid-step, letting argent claws hang in the buttery air with hesitation ... but then, there was no place within her to fear. she had forgone the trappings of her own flesh and the binding of her bones; had rested for-and-ever in the cradle of soft and soundless nothing. waiting and expectant and never truly at that final peace, where silver fails to reach and where starshine fails to gleam.

she cannot fear when there is so much to be found.

so the valerian stifles her assumptions against her breast; assumes nothing as she makes for this titaness that she must look up and up and up to,  "allow me to lament for the one who is an object of such envy,"  lips unresisting that old, thoughtless, little elfin way one corner curls.

it is good to see another.[/narrow]
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 The sound of movement brought her bloodied gaze away from the mountains and to a woman much smaller than she and much in better shape. She was of an esquisite silvery white and Andraste couldn't help but laugh gently at the irony of it. Had the woman been mere miles east, she could have very easily been a target. At least, that's what the brute figured, her mind always shifting to the more dangerous, aggressive situations.

 Still, the woman was pretty. Silver eyes that nearly faded into her fur. As if she were made of stone from deep in the mountainside, those stones white against the sea.

 Pretty and small. She spoke pretty too.

 As the lady's own lips twisted into a sort of smile, Andraste couldn't help but let out a chuckle. “Go for it.” Did the woman understand what the witch was admiring the stone for? What her own lamentations were due to? She looked back up at the mountain and gave a shake of her coat. “Least it's resting, unlike the lot of us.” A sigh ended that sentence and she blinked back down at the other.

 “You arrive recently?” She would share her name later and perhaps they would laugh over the irony. Andraste, meet Andraste.

[/narrow]
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the dark arch of brows twitch up at the words; and for all that she had been so removed, for all that she had been sent down from on high, it was near effortless how she seemed to settle back into herself; the gleam in argent eyes and the way merriment perches in her belly, ever-present, readied to take wing along that lumine face at a heartbeat's notice. it is almost too easy.

kunnhekku — "moonglow" —
a phantom purl at the edge of a fluted ear, beckoning, just there; murmuring to the deep, shrouded web of roots that is memory. wonders when it had made a home in her; nestling, for a moment, into the borean fragments of her and she cannot help but turn her cheek aside.

but there is no thing there for her to scry. dreamlike nothing, in her mind's eye, as if it had never been at all. only dusk.

the gilt titaness continues, though, and 'arrival' falls from her lips like so many senseless and sure things, and it is her turn to breathe something low in lost laughter; half-mirth and a spot frayed.    "of a manner,"  and it wasn't entirely an untruth; lain, pearlmade, on those black sands by that god of gales with only tears and seaspray to wet newborn cheeks.  ... but claims of half-madness were not something she wished to return to  –  not so soon, anyways  –  and tucks away that leaden, forlorn foreverness into some place between her ribs and breastbone. the same place where the shadowed, formless, never-named everythings of her live to take her offerings, her pleas for peace, and recede.

it all leaves her heavy, and emptied;
yet still so unlike this restful crag.

but she carves a trail closer to this riddled, war-worn jättiläinen — giant, parting grass and their leaning wildflowers in her slow, pensive wake.  "what of your own, if i may ask?"  unable for now to do anything but; plainly unquivering at the nearness of such a leviathan.

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 This lady was strange, unique. She moved with an elegance that reminded the witch of her past self, of the resolve and delicacy she'd moved with when she was a year, two years, old. Before the horrors had truly taken her in and made her one of their own.

 Still, it wasn't an oddness that would cause the witch to wish to flee or devour her.

 In fact, she liked how odd she seemed. She looked locked in a dream.

 “I climbed up from the bowels of the earth,” she said - not a breath of falsehood. “Death couldn't hold me, spat me out, and told me to do its bidding.” This was hell, this afterlife. Nothing made sense and so she had to make sense of it. And if one looked upon the white witch, wouldn't they believe it? A woman so torn, so mauled and ruined. There was no love here for her, no soft or gentle caresses. Men looked at her in disgust, women also. She could not use her charms to entrance them as she had in years past, before time and time again the hell that was her previous life gnawed on her carcass.

The tiny thing moved closer yet and the monster remained, watching her with unreadable red eyes.

[/narrow]
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the confession is short, succinct; but the pause in-between is long enough for her own skin to ache in rippling shivers from that primeval center of her. she knows her every word; watches her with gentled astral eyes that bear no glimmer of doubt. she believes her, for all that her guard remains lowered and lax, for all that her gaze is probing, patient. how could she not?

she had fallen as this worldeater had risen.

it was enough for her.

"it would be quite remiss of me to think that any other would befit such a role," she says distantly, delicately. for a moment  – or for an ever  ( she is never sure )  –  death had held her. and then she had known what it was to walk the godsplane of her sotaherra — warlord as surely as the crownking of them all had strung her final wish into life; as surely as vellamo had known the lovely weakness of her and returned her from a false burial at sea.

so there is no reason for her to doubt this aureate össe — terror, she who looms large and everything all around her. and she is plain, as she has always been, with the truths that she doesn't mind sharing in:  "there lies your loveliness, then,"  as if it were now decided upon; coming to seat herself near this other returned,  "for what is beauty, if it does not become you?"

[/narrow]
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 Man, this lady spoke oddly. It amused Andraste more than anything so she would let it be, listening to the woman's queer speech and giving a slight nod.

 Then the woman spoke of loveliness, of beauty. Of those things being compared to the beast. Andraste found herself surprised, for this pretty lady was calling her pretty... as covered in the signs of her torment as she was. She was unsure if the woman was hitting on her or simply commenting on it, but she found herself thinking positively of the woman.. though she could not yet bring herself to trust her. There were many things that could cause a stranger to compliment another and it had been so long since Andraste had heard a compliment aimed at herself.

 “Death is beauty,” she admitted, or agreed, or stated. Truthfully the witch wasn't quite sure, but she supposed in her unrefined mind it was the best she could do.

 She looked at the woman now seated beside her, considering her. “What of you?” Her head tilted slightly. “Did you wake gently or did you have to claw your way from where Death left you?” For surely it was Death who left them all here. Some were here to serve their sentence, others to be the wardens of Death itself.

 She thought nothing of any possibility that her waking here was unique. If this woman thought her mad, then let her. She knew the truth.

[/narrow]
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[narrow width=800]death was beauty, she supposes; even before it all, she had often considered its soothing, portentous pull. considered it now, and she finds herself always numb and burning and perched on that edge, that in-between, even before before before.

and then, of course: what of you?

"when they called my soul from my skin, i knew that my time was not then. had never been meant for then. i ... tore at that taking." had thrashed against it. mother-might-have-been and mate, mate, mate; feywife to a male she never now had the time to ask how she would call him husband in his northern way. taken by him and from him, from their court in a nest not yet made, would never be made. carrying those tales now in the old scars of herself gone unseen. where the too-early desecration of her should be, and the way she had thieved it back. where her stormcloak should be, and how she had worn it as some godless offering.

where her wedmarks should be; and how she still feels, always, his phantom kiss of lip-warmth and tundrian fang at her fluttering, aching throat.

but they were not.
and neither was he.

vellamo might have lain her on the stygian shore with gentle intention, and väinämöinen might have sung gentle the star-knitting of her children, and gently she might have rested for how many moments or evers. and yet  ...  they had left black bruises bent along her anguish. their haltija they've left with her are a resented piece of her, now; feeling as they proffer themselves to her, half-haunting. she wavers within the here and the there; and in the place of her children she holds them like such unwanted things.

the spring of her ribs is soft, shivery. "the wish that i whispered, when it all began ... that last wish is what made my children."  those that had been chorused not as blessing, but as an afterthought but still hers. his, with face unknowable. theirs, and not; not ever, now. hers, and only ever hers.

but how good it would have, should have been  —
"but ... i knew that i was meant to find them, even as i fell."  after and then and before. "so i must."

and, aėrith thinks, if his gods were halfwise decent, they would not strand them in the midst of ... where-ever they had been ferried to. she wonders, then, eyes silvering and searching: "what have you on the packs of this region, if anything?"[/narrow]

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 They?

 The witch wondered if this woman meant that the spirit of Death was amorphous, having no sex - or if she meant that some greater group had thrown her back to this land, discarded among the rabble and the damned. She did not seem damned, as polite and gentle as she seemed, and there were others who also seemed to believe themselves to be in some sort of heaven. This was not to say that Andraste was rethinking her resolve - just that there was more of a mystery to it all than it had seemed.

 Perhaps, like she in her formative years, this woman had done some unintentional crime that had caused her soul to be trapped here forever.

 Yet... the woman spoke of fighting against Death, taking what she demanded. Refusing to go. The scarred witch could respect that, envy it even.

 “You believe them to be here also?” There was no scorn in her voice, simply a question. If this woman's children were here... were hers? She felt a pang, deep within her. She had... she had so many that had been lost far too young. Somehow it escaped her that almost every single one of those lost children of her own were lost directly due to her negligence or her own action. In her mind, she was not at fault. It was... a twist of fate. Cruel, cruel fate. The few who had made it to adulthood had done so only due to being separated by her and put in better hands. “What were their names?”

 Thoughts turned to this new land and away from her own children. Questions of packs... she laughed. “In the mountains to the north, there is a pack of wolves who believe this heaven. They eat mushrooms to trip their days away. West of that is some cousin of mine, I believe. Near here...” Her eyes flashed with scorn and she turned towards the land she had left, the land of deer. Her eyes instead went northward to the man of the mist. “An aggressive man who claims land beyond his pack's own borders,” She indicated towards the land.

 Then she looked back to the land of the deer. A grim look took her face, her eyes alight. “Directly west of here is a pack who worships elk - their god is called High Elk and he believes those of us with white coats to be the damned, the irredeemable. Simply for the colour of our fur.” She spat it, tail nub twitching as if desiring to lash as the great cats. “I have encountered no others, though it seems these forests bear only arrogance and greed.”

 Prime places for sinners to gather and for her to feast... but not if she were alone. While she knew her skill, the limitations of the flesh were very real.

[/narrow]
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 She had awoken recently... or had she always been here? It was hard to tell. The past was a blur of sounds, images, and familiar faces. Here she knew not where she had come from, only that she would need to look forward. 

 Through the mountainous terrain of the Temperate region, she flew. Clutched in one talon was a dead mouse, one that had unfortunately run out of hiding at the wrong moment. The white owl had nearly missed the being as she'd flown overhead but the flash of a disturbed twig and leaf had been enough to catch her attention. Then, through the cloudiness of her vision she'd been able to spot the brown-pelted rodent. A bit of adjustments and calculations and she'd managed to catch the creature. 

 Now, with her silent flight, she looked for a place to land and found it in a hollow of a tree. There she began work on eating the prey, as the sounds of conversation drifted towards her. Curiosity had always been a thing that the owl had been cursed with. After her mouse had been finished she began to tilt her head this way and that, the uneven holes on the side of her head that helped her hear allowing her to listen in on the conversation... but she was curious as to who was having it. 

 She knew they weren't that far away but she couldn't see who they were, they were just beyond her vision. Her wings opened and she flapped once, silently as she found a new perch in a tree nearby. Now she could see the shapes, both looked like faded white blurs. The details were immediately apparent but she could see that one was smaller and the other appeared to have some scarring. Wolves. Yes, she knew the beings. Their business wasn't her own but she was curious... the smaller wolf... there was something delicate and alluring about her. The way the words fell from her. The owl stared in at her, shifting quietly as she watched and made silent judgements. 

 Searching for children, was it? A task most likely hampered by her lack of ability to fly. Empathy stirred within her breast but she said nothing and let the wolves speak. A silent shadow, taking in information about packs and their plights. Yes... Most interesting indeed.

---

Evune is just here observing. Feel free to ignore/skip her in the post order.

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ok! she won't notice her yet ♡

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'were'  —  as if they had not ever been.
lost, sad, and loved most savagely. but hers.

hers.

"as sure the heartbeat of this earth lies beneath our claws and is true, they are here. my ærlysï, asriel. aisling, and aulis,"  taken from her love and the last of it. "my asamir. my ásný."   taken from them. from her  — "they once had bodies that weren't such, at first. but then they were voices in a god's mouth. all of their mouths. a star-strewn song. an afterthought, rather."  ash in her mouth, on her tongue, to her bones.  "then, He sent them scattered to the winds. severed them from me."  and then vellamo had drawn her to him   ( so embittered to brine now as she had never been before ),  lain her on those rebirthing shores, and sent her on her way. for her, this world was just as alive and aching to be found as the one she had been ripped from.

... still. to say  'this is how they made of me, left of me'  would not be in either of their best interests. neither would it further the titaness' impression of her in an agreeable way.

and aėrith did not wish to seem as powerless as she felt:  there had been a reason why fate had brought the warlord to her, time and time again. time and time again. there had been a reason why he, now shadow-limned and nameless forever, had taken her as his wife and why the nightingale had taken him as hers.

and there had been a reason why, once upon a time, she had held court.

so she steadies herself, soothes the sorrowing from her spine, and listens to what her namesake tells her. this time, it's with some modicum of true interest: northern nonconformists. westerly kin, of some manner. much nearer, an absolutist. all drawn to her mind, folded over and considered, quieting.

but it was to the last that she  —  laughed;
and it was an awakening, emerging at first like some shy star-jewel within her own throat from behind the veils of night she had once known as kith and kin. it parted the seam of now-unblemished lips, and pealed luminous, gemlike, unbidden. pursuing the sudden, merry-dark thought that flit its way from her mind and through the rest of her:

"perish the thought, then, that a pack of ... oh, kyllä — yes,, of us heathens might make a home here," twinkling over it all the same and biting at her lips to stay her mirth. "i wonder at whether or not they'd suffer easily to such a thing. or if they would ever welcome it."

surely not! but what fun it would be, she supposes, were she not what she had always been meant to be and made for. to do.[/narrow]

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Adding formation for future Sanatorium since she's thinkin bout making it - and verbalizing the idea, though it's not 100% concrete yet

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 The woman had conviction, that was certain. Andraste watched her impassively, listening as she spoke her frilly words and impossible optimisms. Red eyes watches pale as she listened, wondering what half of what the woman was saying, for truly the beast was used to more plain words instead of the verbose poetry the angelic woman spoke. She hummed thoughtfully, the sound more of a rasping growl with no aggression behind it.

 “Suppose your children roam freely,” she said thoughtfully, “Suppose a woman such as myself were to come across word of such... airy named darlings. What then?” She gave a tilt of her head.

 Did the lady, by sharing the names so freely - despite Andraste's questioning -, mean to plant seeds of purpose? Did she wish for the worldeater to find her children for her, these offspring whose names all sounded similarly angelic as the face of the fluff-ball before her? “What name would they recognize to tell them of your presence?”

 The woman had gone on to ask of creating a pack here, so close to the sinners who claimed them hellions.

 Andraste laughed.

 “They would despise it! Likely to the ends of our lives,” she laughed again, shaking her head. “Despite the temptation of formation so close to the home of this High Elk, I believe it unwise... but, to think,” She grinned thoughtfully at the sky. “A pack of so-called heathens... perhaps. Perhaps I should go, seek out those like me, fellow world-eaters or those who could serve my purpose. And you, perhaps you too can find your children, perhaps a man or woman to raise them with -” She did not mean herself. “Two such "impurities" forming packs of like colours, it would cause their deer-loving pelts to squirm atop their white bones.” Her eyes were alight with purpose, with decision.

 Yes.

 She would find those like her. This woman before her... no, she was too idyllic. Despite the pleasant conversation, Andraste could not imagine having the consistent conversations required by the close proximity of a packmate, nor did she have any desire to dominate the woman or be dominated by her. Perhaps distant neighbors, to avoid accidental preying on her kin, but not pack.

 The enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all.

[/narrow]

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+1 Formation Points

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dhgdjdg guess i'll do the same lmaoo

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what then, indeed?

she'd given their names freely, perhaps a bit foolishly, without the mind to consider that a fellow loner might chance upon them. this realization was somewhat late to dawn on her thoughts  —  but in asking for her own name, she knew it, finally, and returned her focus to the titaness: "once upon a time, i was andraste," something like old, ash-tongued sorrow flitting along the seam of her lips, "and once, they might have known me so. but here, i am ... their 'aėrith,' i suppose."

if she ever got used to it, anyway;
with as frilly and fragile as it sounded.

but then the pallid giant spoke again, squandering any uncertainty she felt then. it was not of the hinterlands of antlered gods, but this time of a sect of her own, hewn out of likewise worldeaters and earthshakers. nevermind that next line, the one that perched upon the remnants of a broken, tarnished heart  — "once i have rebuilt my own court, it will be their father. it will be as it was, and yet ... not. it will be ... fearless. unyielding. wanting for nothing but risk, and all its perils." where the godless and godsled could converge and where those who wandered would not be lost again. where there was everything to find and nothing left unknown.

perhaps there was a chance, if both of their endeavors succeeded, that between them some manner of trade could be established ... but that was if anyone would truly follow her once more. and if not, then perhaps she would be better suited to threading together a loose cadre, of sorts. or ... or ...

oh, stars forsake her! aėrith shakes her head, faint and yet to rid such sullen cobwebs that ever wind their way through her then-doubtful mind. "nevertheless, i am eager to head for the mountains. they are ... not mine, as they once might have been, but i long to be returned to them all the same."

and when  –  if  –  she had gathered a few followers, she would set out to find her children.

if they still wanted to be with her at all when  –  if, if  –  she found them.[/narrow]

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+1 Formation Points

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 She laughed, a bellow from deep within her. How... ironic. That she and this woman had shared a name, though one had parted from the name long ago apparently. “Ha! Andraste is my current name.” She grinned, shaking her head. It was not a name she was tied to, per se, but it was the one she had for several years now. Since the boar-hound had given it to her upon release from the hell of slavery. “Good to meet you, Aėrith.” The statement was without judgement. Names were but passing thoughts, simple words to refer to others.

 She spoke of their father and Andraste watched her, red eyes glistening.

 “Do not fear to find a new father for them, if he does not reveal himself.” Despite her insistence that her children were here, Andraste felt it was far more unlikely that the entire family would be reunited here. Perhaps some, but she doubted they all would make their way into this hell of both beauty and pain.

 Why would children be sent to hell?

 She gave a nod. “I visited the mountains. Met a woman of the name Valeska within a rocky oasis - you may like her, you may not. She would have a safe place to rest if you need it, I figure.” The woman had offered her safety and comfort, despite being the opposite of those ideals.

 “When your court is rebuilt, seek me out. Mine, too, should be formed and we may dine together,” Though, she thought as she looked upon the woman, I doubt we have the same tastes.

[/narrow]

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+1 Formation Points

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