will you remember that i existed, & that i stood next to you like this?

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mostly for @Crux but any welcome ♡

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she wavers at the peaceable shores;
this evening is heavy, and she is spent and ragged and drawn. wonders often at her will for this wild pilgrimage.

her children remain night-lost; tear-caught and dream-cleft. even worlds away, torn from all thought and time, still she remembers the print of him against her. woven within her, despite that spiritual peril. writ into what was left of her godsravaged soul. the voice of her dream still echoed in her ears, her halved heart; those phantom, featherlight touches come to haunt her, remind her.

she ebbs and flows. tethers and untethers.

tired, gauzy-eyed; kept in that half-vision that always took from her more than it gave. hovers and perches within her mind, unwanted yet coveted.

aėrith frowns. takes a deep, hitching breath. presses her eyes shut against the dark lashline to stifle the threatening gleam there. chooses not to look into this mirror of moonwater by these thrumming, unending falls.

instead, she lets the montane air shiver the spring of her lungs, to make room if but for a moment; lets all things unmentionable and unspeakable and unknowable leave her until she must breathe out and make room for it all  ( of them, of him )  again within her.

she is savaged and agonal.[/narrow]

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 When the starlit prince decided to go southwards, he was not intending to go so far. He had wandered away from his group for a bit to do some thinking after recent revelations, though despite it all he wasn't all that upset. After all, it had been expected, had been intentionally open. It was still a surprise that made him think.

 He found himself at the shore of a lake in the mountains and for a moment he wondered if he had managed to head back to Fate's Respite - but no, this was a different lake altogether. It was icy looking, instead of the warmth of the Respite. There were herbs everywhere that he thought that Glacier might like, but in the end it was unfamiliar. He wondered if the Stone Mountain had any such lakes, so close to home - they'd be nice to visit if they existed.

 Crux gazed out over it when he noticed a shivering white shape.

 He walked towards her, concern growing within him. “Excuse me,” he called gently, “Are you alright?” One day his compassion would damn him.

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[narrow width=800]perhaps he can feel her unrest as if it is his own;
but presently, this doesn't occur to her as the voice of another creeps tentative toward her. it isn't often that she finds herself skittish; yet in some senseless way, she startles a bit, even though there is no fear, nor hesitation. looking at him, shadowed and star-gilt, something blooms in her breastbone, tight and knowing. on the contrary, other than elusive sleep and the softened, drowsied edges of brow and lash, she is  —

"as fine as frog's hair." and as the pair linger beneath the bruised skyhold of evendim, she finds her voice once more:  "i ... make way for the mountains." knows them, somehow; holds those spires in reverent nearness to her breast. the frontiers of all she had ever been made for, in the end.

now, again.

... and if she is by wherever some claim rests, she does not want to seem an ignorant trespasser. even to a stranger.[/narrow]

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 She spoke strangely, but at least she spoke.

 That was better than the alternative, if he had found her unconscious, dead even. He could tell she was unhappy but he couldn't see or smell blood or injury. He tilted his head, looking upon her in concern, for he could see the droplets resisting gravity as they clung to her lashes. “Are you sure?” he asked softly, making his way cautiously towards her though he kept his form gentle, non-aggressive.

 She spoke of the mountains and he gave a soft laugh. “Well, these are the mountains for sure.”

 His eyes returned to her poor silvery gaze, wondering why she came here. She did not smell of the packs he had encountered, so he didn't think she was a member of any of them. “Are you looking for anywhere in particular? I'm Crux, by the way.” He gave his name freely as he had no reason not to, no distrust nor any enemies to hide away from. He did not believe this woman required an abundance of cautious, as solitary as she seemed.

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[narrow width=800]despite the tired things that make wan her face and gentle her figure, the nightingale watches his mindful approach with lashes drawn low; something not unlike amusement prancing along the seam of pale lips. it's curling at the edges now, and through the old sorrowing, aėrith trills,  "i will not bite too hard, tähtiherra," — starlord  twinkling at him and those brightburn eyes,  "since you seem rather intent on finding out."

the starcatcher rises from her place, then, and moves about him, giving some berth between the two of them. each slow step imprinted into the utter devotional quiet that billows down all around like a great sea of hush from vaulted heaven to loamy, wet-rock earth and sparse, needly left-behinds made to muffle some of the paw-falls. he speaks of these mountains. he laughs  —  and she wonders, absently, low-liddedly, how the rumble of it would feel against her shoulders. it's at his second inquiry, however, that makes her still where she is.

crux. hm.

"mitä, — what, anywhere that is not with your company, ser?"  lets her name keep its strange absence; a peal of mirth wings its way from the fine throat before she continues her listless meandering.  "truly, i am ... how do you say? i am looking for a hollow. a vale, what-'av-you, to rebuild what was lost. what was stolen." at this, her unwavering gaze perches mirrorbright upon him once more. she takes in the snow-capped expanse of shoulders, mantled in star-strewn dark.

pearlmade claws curl into the earth and she lets him see it.

why shouldn't he?

"would you know of any such territories ... crux?"[/narrow]

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 His lips tweaked at that, though he didn't know what her words meant, he could not help but find interest in her usage of words unfamiliar. He watched as she moved around him, her motions like water circling a drain. It was curious, almost snakelike but in a less than savage way. Unlike the bleeder of similar hues, this woman seemed more ethereal. Was she some fey from the ether, sent to tease him?

 Her next words appeared a dismissal - he took them that she did not wish to be near him, but then why was she so close?

 At her next words, words of fancy and of rebuilding, he nodded. “An honorable goal,” he said, flame-gold eyes upon her icy silver.

 He considered her final question, observing her claws digging into the earth. There was something enchanting about her in a way far different from the way his wife enchanted him. He was again glad for their agreement - for despite a move not being made, he was certain even this would make him feel guilt had Harper been keen on exclusivity. Still, he did not pursue - yet. “These mountains are teeming, from the western shore where I make my home to the eastern where two packs - and directly west of here in that mountain. The middle north of it, though, and beyond - I know of no claims made.”

 He turned to face her, curious eyes upon hers. “If you seek empty lands to...” His eyes traced the slope of her snout, her jaw, “Make flourish, there might be your safest bet.”

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[narrow width=800]"'flourish?'"  often it was a word she's used from past to present; smiles a little absently at it now. it has wilted for her. made her promises frilly, girlish. "i mean to make prosperous my people. if the finer lands are in the midway as you say, then my people will again be the living artery that runs through these mountains. peace is a thing sorely wanted  —  but we will go after what dismantles it, and we will take what has long been owed through risk and peril. i have been restless, and no longer wish to make my actions idle by word. i do not wish to idle. neither will those at my hearthside."

she traced her way near once again, claws scraping over the cobbled shore as she moved away from the loamier places.   "say that my court comes again, and that i would wonder at a treaty between our two territories and wonder at their king. what would he tell me that is something his people— that he himself stood for?"  for she knew him to be he  ( or, as much as he'd let on )  and lifts her chin to hold his burnished eye in the mirrorsmoke of her own; felt distantly the known, phantom stirrings within her loins.

puts it aside for now, where it lingered in the back of her mind, tentative and hushed.

"what would he have his people dare? or have them believe? how would he carry with him their words, and what they need?"[/narrow]

---

+1 Formation Points

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 He listened as she spoke, nodding thoughtfully. She was a queen, of sorts, though it sounded like she had no kingdom behind her. Would she roam forever? Would she manage to find her kingdom and build it? He hoped so, she seemed rather peaceful and it was preferred to have peaceful wolves sharing the Mountains with him versus those who would war for war's sake - like the brindled woman who had seemed to vanish into the mist.

 She moved and he followed as if entranced, paws carrying him after her. “We stand for knowledge and peace,” he said, his mind already whirring. He had yet to speak of any of his thoughts, of his plans moving forward - but the ideas still dwelt within him. “My people are of the stars, we protect our own and do not deem to raise our teeth against any unless required. We learn, we spread that knowledge, and we take in as well.”

 What else might they take in?

 His eyes drifted slightly, taking in the silver of her eyes but also the curls, the wisps of white that framed her face. She was like a fay - would she demand his name, his people from him? Take it, to keep forever and leave him empty? “What will you call your court, when you raise it again?”

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[narrow width=800]as the pearl of her eyes steadied on the wanderway of his jacklantern, knowing that they roamed her lumine features, her bearing, there were many things that the nightingale had yet to cast her decision upon  —  one of which he inquired after as he did.

the weald-thing's lips curled vixen through the mysterious exhaustion she felt so deeply-down within her,  "only when its winds whisper to me will i know,"  canting her chin, now letting her own gaze trail away for a moment,  "when it has revealed what it has been longing for someone to find. but it must wish itself to be mine ... and not before. i will not tend to a land that does not wish to be known,"  she muses, passing alongside him then with an absent brush of moonshed ribs against his own ink-dark.

lost to thoughts of echoes and emptiness and shadow once more, she returns to the waters; does not bend to drink, but looks into them and sees the strangled ghost of herself staring back.

what if none sought the same come-again that she did?

everything in her was in revolt, and aėrith presses her lashes closed against the sudden desolation that films their edges until she turns back to him; eyes of evening gray burning with stormful sacred darkness and something drearily lost. knows the ardent heart of him and once, she would have longed to fill herself to brimming with the myriad of it. for three moons, before her cruelgod summons, she had known such heartbreakingly gorgeous love in a world away. but her people had buried her  ( or, so she hoped )  for there she was dead and gone, and surely the star of her dawn had come to forgive himself for what had not ever been his fault on his waking of her ending. to find what she had not been able to give him.

to marry again, as he so deserved, and to know peace in his soul.

and now she fears such love  —  shies from it as she has never done before.

her throat again aches; teeth working into her tongue, gnawing at what she could not reverse. feeling such an overfulness of cursed fragility within her, like a sigh, like a shard of glass on stone; breath hot and flaring and her silver brow drawing low and terrible above watery eyes.

"it is all i have left."
of him and of their people.

never again would she admit to such a thing; and so the fairylight eludes the nebulous male's eye once more, turning her face instead to the hateful black in between everything in the sky.

she should not be this weak; should not stew in these sorrows, and dishonor those she had led and loved.[/narrow]
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 When the winds whisper, indeed. He'd felt a similar way, claiming Ichorwood. Even though the name had been different, his waking had been there so he had decided it was his. He wondered of this woman, whether she would find those who could support her claim with her. Whether she would have the soul, the heart, to form a court in full. From what he had seen so far, she seemed odd but capable.

 Perhaps she would flourish.

 He hoped it so.

 “A noble cause,” he agreed, turning to follow but not pursue. “A court can be doomed if the land rejects it from the start,” and then she was looking at him, a sadness in her silver gaze. He wondered at that, then wondered on his words' weight. Did they bring about this desolation in her face? No, surely not. There was something deeper in this mourning. He moved towards her slowly, lowering his head to press the flat of it against her shoulder for one second, two, until he pulled back to look at her again.

 The woman needed comfort, to know that she could do what could be done. Yet, what comfort could he provide? A foreign king, one with no knowledge or understanding of her past, of what she wished to do. “Do you yet have any followers, any remnants of your court perhaps to build anew?” He could not promise himself to that, but if she had anyone but herself, it would be a comfort in itself.

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[narrow width=800]"no  —  at least, none that live in the way we do,"  that i have been cursed to; with hearts that beat and with blood-rush unendingly athrum; consciousnesses that do not sleep, nor dream. she feels the weight of his consolation at her narrow shoulder and stiffens, for though it is not ... unwelcome, she supposes, it is ... as wanted as it is resented  ( though it is not any fault of his own. )  but she cannot magick further meaning from her private plight the same way that she cannot allow herself to feel. to treat him as earth and let herself moor against the sturdy sill of him. not in a manner that she feels herself deserving of; and especially not as the girlish, wide-eyed creature she'd been in the nights before this.

so she lets herself linger against this great male, as they all seemed to be, holding a moment that is not there for as long as she dares. and then, when she feel she has toed the line of invader and intruder to such goodwill, the fairylight steps away. stoneheart; parting, in the end, with a murmur that she was due ever north.

perhaps everything she anguished for, searched for, would be amidst those distant horizons.

there was no more time to waste.

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last post! ( archived w/ permission )

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