I Don't Deserve Friends Anymore

Grumble

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"A sentence grows in the nest of a memory
Reverence has sadly grown too disgustingly sick
It's your punishment... isn't it?"

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Grumble found herself trotting about a gorgeous pasture, rain patting the ground with little kisses. If she hadn't been focused, she would have been spending all her time exploring like a child in wonder in search of frogs. Yet her ears had heard a noise in the rain. Something tiny, fragile, and delicious. Her ears perked up as she heard the noise again, much closer. Her nose stuck to the ground in a comedic fashion, she continued to shuffle around until she found the source in some tall grass, a newborn red deer fawn. It was a late birth, the last of the birthing season having been the previous month, or so if this world obeyed the previous one she was in. Grumble knew the mothers would forage in sprint distance of their fawns, hiding them in tall grass, scentless. So she had never had a chance to snag one before as Grumble's lack of hunting experience was not befit to handle angry mothers.

Speaking of moms, the smell of a mother was nowhere, and if it's making noise than maybe it was hungry. If she brought this back to Father, surly he would be impressed! Or at least think she was starting to get the hang of hunting. Feeling no sympathy for the abandoned baby, Grumble lashed quickly, her huge jaws easily crushing it's skull. A swift death. The taste of iron entered her mouth, tempting her to eat the ungulate, but she must resist. Lifting her head up, her prize dangling in the air from her grip, she began to walk off towards what she thought was the direction to home. She had a clear pep in her step now, excited for all potential praise.

But Grumble stopped in her tracks as she spotted something bright and cold like snow. A wolf! Grumble's first thought was if the wolf had any food that she could steal. But she quickly chastised herself. This might be a member from her new pack, she still had many packmates to meet after all. Grumble walked over to the wolf and started to speak before realizing she had food in her mouth. Dropping the fawn, she put a large paw over it as she focused back on the stranger with a tilt of her giant head. A small female, her white fur and blue eyes was making Grumble's brain feel pins and needles. Memories being forced out of a friendly white molted wolf from long ago. Melancholy began to flood Grumble in suffocating waves. "Are you a Nightwalker friend or a bad guy?" she asked bluntly, her tone oddly irritable due to her sudden depressing nostalgia that this stranger brought on. @"Aeri"

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-Note: This takes place in the past around probably the 8th/9th

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[narrow width=800]although she's making her way through here to replenish her wares  ( fluted turtleheads, weepy fairy slippers, little dog violets, nodding purple lupine )  part of her knows she's by the wildwood that the stormcloak had given tell of. it, and his words,  reminds her of its presence; how very far away yet close it is. enough so that the pungent redolence that the forest is embowered in cannot smother her entirely ... but its presence was something that plied itself heavy on her figure and the bones therein. oppressive, cloying and rot, unending decay. clammy and ghoulish and damp-sweat; a fetid horror with eidolic lips at her ear and just as much the unwanted, uninvited, unwelcome nestfellow as he had made it out to be. it turns her innards over itself; tightens at her throat, even from here.

but in the hour she'd been foraging here, the nightingale had mastered her uneasiness.

and where she would usually answer such a question with a little simper and sly eye  —  if only to toy, to tease just a smidgen  —  it was the frankness in the other's voice that gave her pause. allowed her to think on a more solemn, considering approach: "i am a mere traveler, ystävä — friend,"  looking at the indecernable distress stitching itself along that thundercloud face.

was this one of the very members of that grave-hush wood?[/narrow]

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Grumble found herself blinking stupidly, not having expected the answer apparently. Things were usually far too black and white for the large wolf and in situations like this, it showed clearly. "I'm not sure how to think about that, honestly..." She admitted, her bitter expression lightened slightly as curiosity overran her. "My name is Grumble, not ysta-whatever. You talk kinda funny, ya' know?" She stated, not trying to be rude but being rude anyways. Still the stranger's appearance continued to unnerve her, making odd emotions wallow through the pits of her stomach. She found herself trying to get closer to the other to sniff, investigate. She seemed so wisp-like, would she vanish if she touched her?

Disregarding personal boundaries as usual, she reached out a giant paw to touch the stranger's shoulder with, but then stopped as the sudden imagine of her sister's hanging eyeball came into her mind, her nerves going haywire. White fur and blue eyes, normal ears...wait. On closer inspection, the stranger's eyes were more of a silver. Grumble found herself exhaling a breath she didn't realizing she was holding. Why did that little fact make her feel so much better now? Grumble put her paw back onto the ground, looking anywhere but towards the other as she mumbled a question. "Are..you alive by chance? Not a ghost?" It was an irrational series of questions, but she still couldn't help it. She just needed to know, needed it to be verbally confirmed that she wasn't being haunted by a vengeful past.
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[narrow width=800]if she took any offense to this so-named grumble's frankness, the argent didn't show it;
rather, she found herself irrevocably delighted, dimpling and at once a smile was charmed from her; one that she hurriedly snuck behind a snowshoe paw, and stifling whatever soft sort of laughter had begun to lace it all. if not to preserve her own modesty, then at least let this other to retain some self-dignity ... even if she didn't seem to pay any mind for a notion of it, sniffing towards her, tentative. a strangeling indeed aėrith was; none had ever doubted it, in either life lived.

but she was also patient; is patient, as grumble reaches for her shoulder. until the question stops her.

with how she felt right now, or always  –  unraveled, unfurled, of everything as it is not anymore  –  often aėrith wonders if her self has truly come again. if her broken, tarnished, glass-faceted heart within beats and is not stilled; if her veins are warm with blood and not some lingering vision conjured by the cruelness of gods; if all that she feels is only figment. so, she supposes that the inquiry isn't entirely silly.

it was sensible, even. at least for this moment.

"sometimes, even i am not quite sure." listless, wandering eyes; a face gentled with small inward sorrows. then, with a shrug and an imploring little curl of her lips, the greenseer freely offers the shoulder that'd been reached for previously:  "i would like to know what you think."[/narrow]
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Grumble hadn't caught the laugh, if anything, she was having a harder time than usual trying to get a read on the stranger. She was not the brightest wolf, even she was aware of that, yet this wolf seemed so unique and foreign, Grumble almost felt like a fish out of water. Upon her confession of not knowing the truth around her identity, the soot female could feel her eyes widening in awe and slight terror. So she might be a ghost! That was a spooky thought. She never believed in such things, because that would mean her sister...She would not finish that thought.

Her attention snapped back as she offered her shoulder to Grumble, to confirm. The rain sounded louder than normal as Grumble took a shaky paw and pressed it onto her shoulder, accidentally pushing the smaller wolf a little bit due to the strength she possessed and had a hard time managing. Her paw did not go through the other wolf, she felt like, well another wolf.

Grumble stared into the stranger's silver eyes with an unusual seriousness before breaking into a big goofy smile. "You feel pretty alive to me!" She announced before closing the distance to rub her flank into her own. "In fact, you're pretty warm and smell nice Miss Lady!" Grumble added happily as she started to try to nuzzle and cuddle against the stranger. Her strength and size making the attempt a bit awkward however. Earlier suspicion and weariness was gone now apparently as if the fact that she wasn't a ghost meant she was a friend. "So smile a bit more, like this see?" She said and stopped trying to cuddle to show a huge derpy smile, tongue sticking out the side.

While she said it without thinking, Grumble herself was not aware of the fact that she was trying to cheer the other wolf up. The melancholy had been felt but not understood by Grumble. Still she tried her best to please, praise being the ultimate goal of her existence. Suddenly the rain started pouring harder and Grumble found herself growling at the rain. She was going to need to take shelter soon at this rate.
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[narrow width=800]it was with a wry quirk of lips that aėrith bit back the hiss that wanted to part the seam of them, for though she had indeed offered herself up to be inspected, still there were remnants within her body that seized and ached with a sweetness of only hours ago. she wouldn't be surprised if grumble's probing was enough to bruise, at this point; but she took the little jostling in stride, rolling her shoulder to work the tender muscles there.

she might've replied in turn, too  —  if the nuzzling hadn't sufficiently clamped her jaw shut when the ghoul sought to mold herself against the nightingale every which way. and so, momentarily helpless, wincing internally, she patiently suffered held herself in place as the great dark billowed down around her.

there were far worse things to tolerate, she supposed.

it wasn't often that she let herself laugh, either; but the way that the other contorted her face into an overzealous echo of a smile was enough to charm a sudden trill of bellish amusement from her, before she's stifling it and her own wavering grin behind the polite modesty of a snowshoe paw.

then a drop of rain falls right between the dark arch of her brows;
and no sooner had she felt it was she springing to her paws with a girlish squeak to escape the showers that chased the both of them to wherever shelter was nearest.[/narrow]
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