dew-drinker, lotus-eater: i have seen your mouth transfigured

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for @Florine ♡ disco. spree #1, the night of this

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"have you ever heard of tulikettu — firefox?"

her words, whisper-thin as they were, resounded in the world that seemed to hold its breath this night.

from where she's seated at the edges of a granite ridge, aėrith watched the way cloudrest's mountains watched. not so abeyant, as they often were, but reverential. mere children compared to whatever god had brushed their all-encompassing hand through the evendim. so much so that even the mists halted their crawling paths over the skin of the world. for all she knew ( which was little, of course ) it might have been jumala — all-father (finnish), come to peer from behind his hallowed curtain in the very vault of heaven.

or it might have been tulikettu, indeed, if the way that the glittering against the black of forever had anything to show for it. with how they converged together in a great, sweeping arc, it was easier for her to believe that the latter had come out to dally with the mere mortals that they were.[/narrow]

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The fear that this place brought had not left her. Where were her parents, where was their loving touch, if not lost forever? Besides the fear that plagued her, brimmed in her chest, she felt nothing -- hollow. Even amidst the comfort that the pale-pelted woman brought to her, alabaster fur woven with silver, she still shivered as if cold -- perhaps she was cold in the mountains. It would be her excuse, should @"Aeri" notice her shivering. How could she be cold with such thick arctic fur, though? Perhaps it was not a good excuse after all.

"No," the fairy-child answered, her voice quiet and almost trembling as it slipped past pale maw and into the frigid mountain air. The bluffs rose behind them, towering watchers, gazing upon the pale pair. The trees -- pointed, leaves like needles -- stretched beneath them as far as Florine can see in the darkness illuminated by pale moonlight and stars that do not shimmer. In the mountains, the moon shone brighter than she remembered, unobscured by the canopy of trees that usually stretched before her. Of willows. Florine shivers, skin twitching under thick fur. "But... will you tell me about them?" she asked, wary.

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[narrow width=800]no. it comes as no surprise to the nightingale, but she does not voice it; instead, she brings her gaze down from up on high and looks at the whitecream girl, quivering in the cold of deep twilight. a smile rests inconcpiciously at the edges of her lips, and she rises, quietly bidding the changeling to do the same – and to follow her, away from those brushstroke stars.

"in the common language, it is known as 'foxfire,'" undómiel wisps while their promenade returns them, eventually, back down the gentle incline from whence they'd scaled hours before. "the tale of my people says that, once upon a time, a fox roamed across the tundra, throwing up snow and frost into the sky. others claim its tail births sparks when brushing the peaks of tall mountains." it wouldn't come to a surprise to her, then, if that would happen here.

here — where their crux of mountains rests beneath the creeping velvet black of sky, rooted in the half-unthaw, stonewalling the crueler winds of the tundra to the north and barring the escape of the warmer winds of the south. here, where she high-steps over tangles of root and bramble, snags on an errant knot of sedge from time to time.

"it must have been the one that visited us tonight. or ... perhaps ... something other."[/narrow]

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+1 Discovery Points

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Dove-like girl rises to her paws to follow the wolf, carefully following the gentle incline, keeping her paws steady beneath her. The cold leaves her as they draw nearer to the base of the mountain, and her shivering -- rather, anxious quivering -- leaves her.

Foxfire. It sounds like something magical, fae-born, a tale that her mother would have told her. She chokes on her words as she remembers the pale wolf whose breast she nuzzled against in a previous life. "But how can that be true?" she asked, turning to Aerith as they descended.

Time passed, and they came to the base of the mountain, the sky spreading dark blue above them. The moon lingered, illuminating milk-colored fur. Florine weaved through the underbrush, careful not to let the branches of pine or berried bushes catch on her fur.

Florine thought back to the emerging constellation, the starry smile that touched her. Fox-like, true, but wolf-like too. She was not convinced by the woman's story. "It looked like a wolf more than anything," Florine told her, mouse-like, hoping that her contradiction would not upset her. Events like those were often left to interpretation. She looked to the sky again, half expecting starry wolfess to emerge again and smile at them once more.
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[narrow width=800]the changeling's timid nature was endearing; but aėrith still lent over, and nudged the pink of her nose gentle-wise beneath that pallid chin, only a smidgen firm. "never fear the telling of your thoughts, terälehti — petal," encouraging, drawn away now to look into those tentative features.  "it is not as much an evil as others would have you believe. you will come into your own, and many more will add to these lands, in time  —  for ours is the glory, and the voices of our hovi — court will not be shrouded by these mists. not if we have anything to say of it. we will wont for nothing but the next adventure, mm?"

perhaps it had been the face of a wolf, then, even as formless gods usually were. so, she did not argue that point further; did not touch upon the oddities of that joint, looking for a loose stitch to pull and unhalve.

florine only needed a bit more faith in herself.

that, too, would come in time, the evenstar supposes.

for now, aėrith allows herself to lapse into silence with the feathery ward at her side; the two working their way through the quiet of the night, through the notches of the foothill thickets, passing through its floral skirts and forest copses. in a way, it seemed that this vale was as deep as much as its spires reached high ... but she never minded that before, and would not mind it here, ever.

eventually, she bid the fate-flown girl to follow her further and farther into their hallowed mists, and all that awaited, hedged with secrets and discovery.[/narrow]

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