it was orange, brilliant orange, the color of hearth and dawn

literally...anyone welcome. pls come play <3

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she awoke —

the foliage of the land a bed beneath her. wilted under her frame, claws dirtied from the exposed earth beneath as if she had thrashed in her sleep.

had she?

her sides seemed tender, as if bruised — as if plummeted from small heights — along the heavy sides of her ribcage. which currently contained a rabbit's foot for a heart. thumped so wildly against all of her soft spots. loud in her ears, pulsed in her limbs and throbbed in her skull.

when finally sunrise sights opened, she could not make the world for what it seemed to be. dark still from her spot, shrouded by low clouds. shrouded by mystery. just as she.

she had not been here the night before, she was as certain as the land. no trails tracked one to her earthbed, no perfume of hers laced the lands. it was as if she had just arrived. deposited upon the cold earth like a newborn babe. although no mother comforted and no father looked on. she had no scent of milk or birth.

no, she was youth, but not a newborn babe.

she was terhenetär — terhi! unleashed upon the land as an omen.

her legs found it in them to stand, raise her like the valley walls. it was then that her stomach whispered its contents to her. nothing! and a newfound ravenous sensation bloomed in her and replaced the rapid pound of her rabbit heart.

mysteries be damned and sorted in the later day, instinct prodded her to survive despite the unknown. so she staggered and swayed on the course the universe had set for her. whatever that may have been.

hunger in her belly, her bones and soul.

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Alduin ventured out of his haunted castle, risking his life over the frozen sea once more. The spirits are hungry they say. And the Saints must rise in numbers, become strong and unstoppable in order to complete his mission — in order to do as the spirits say.

Leave us — but return — find more. Find more. Find more. Bring them to the castle. Curse and bind them just as we have you.

He would listen. Walking for days once more and only then, does he find something interesting. Or rather someone interesting. He doesn’t hear the spirits this far from the castle and the silence in his mind makes him irritable — not like he isn’t always irritable anyhow.

What he sees is a woman, stumbling to her feet like a newborn fawn on unused, gangly legs. Expressionless blood red eyes hone in on her. Such interesting colors, so pleasing to the eye — yes, the castle would want her. He wants her. She could become a Saint. Stain her teeth with blood of the weak and fulfill the spirits demands just as he does.

So he moves towards her, all brawn and quiet confidence, tail bobbing on his hip, he halts a comfortable distance away.

“You find yourself in a strange and unknown place, do you not?” He offers in that deep, rumbling baritone. The assumption is hardly far fetched. He’s met many like this before — watched many take their fumbling few steps into this new land of chaos with confusion and questions written all over their face. Why would he be wrong to assume she is not the same.
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[narrow width=800]"as do you."

from the mists she makes a claim to, the sotaherra emerges on stiff, stalking legs; the thick ruff of moonshed fur rippling to life along the sharp ridge of her spine with absolute indignation; breath bellowing out ire-hot and she is cloudburst and gale as she strides towards these gathered two, the silver of her eye withering upon the brindled newcomer; sets herself stolidly in front of who her soul screams is her palantír, her godseye. the cathedral of her ribs tremoring with the fervor of such sudden, close-held fury.

"you are on mine claim," said she, the pressure in her throat dropping low enough to raise nearly every other fragment of her fur. "and you speak to one that you should not."

whether it was herself or her seer that she spoke of, she did not and would not say; her tail only arced over thin hips, trembling in the hush-morn winds like a warbanner of disturbed peace.[/narrow]

---

+1 Formation Points

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she trembled in the presence, overcome by fairylight and shadowvale —

a pale woman, a safe haven, birthed from the very same clouds that laid low in the vale.

a dark man, a shrouded mystery, carved from the stone they stood in shadows of.

tentative step back to hide further behind her but still she kept sunrise eyes fixed upon the man, the shadowvale. she felt flushed in the face from his presence — perhaps on behalf of the cloud's presence as well — tantalized by this-this air of mystery he carried.

a sheepish, bashful look towards the male. as if she was a damsel guarded by mountain knight yet still vied to know him.

tragic.

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---

Her dragons' breath summoned him. A solar flare of relentless fury; a velveteen dove dressed in dirtied peace, flapping wings in a cage too big for her body. These actions amused him—the little jingoist—consuming his entity with a version of the woman he hadn't yet met.

Perhaps this was the reason he approached, though truly he felt it was not.

There was a tether. To this place, to this woman.

It was no surprise when he showed up at her side, soul murmuring a hymn of possession.

“Aludin,” Mist caressed his chassis, shoulders sodden of dark humour etched every muscle that rippled upon his person. Because, after all, this was rather humourous, was it not? To find the supposed world-eater outstretching claws over claims he could not control. What a pity, a shame, really. “Let us not once more start off on the wrong foot.”

—

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The territory had the scent of pack, but not strong enough to warrant his attention. For all he knows, it could’ve been a pack that had relocated, what with the few amount of members it held. Yet, his curiosity — his undying desire for knowledge and blood — forced his mind and feet to carry on in. Where he finds a girl, woman, confused and alone. A damsel in distress, oh he could not resist such an easy case of potential entertainment. To spill blood. Even though that may have not been his initial intention when he walked up to her, the desire to kill and maim is always on his mind like a fog shrouding his thoughts.

So when a pale woman with white blue eyes and pink nose rolls up, Alduin may color himself surprised, but easily adaptable. She raises her tail and speaks with dignity she has war on her tongue. Alduin doesn’t let it show, but he doesn’t take her seriously. He would crunch her bones into dusk and drink her blood from a silver chalice in minutes. So pretty she is, but aren’t all the pretty ones the most dangerous?

Alduin only peers at her with expressionless, dead eyes the color of bright rubies. He doesn’t move. His silent confidence has not waned at her words or body language, but he rasps a purple tongue over scarred, whiskered lips. Imagining what she’d look like with a pelt tainted with the crimson wine of blood. His dull expression betrays nothing of his casually dark thoughts as he hums low in his throat, allowing her to know that he’s heard her.

The first girl, the darker much more interesting one, hides behind the pale woman, but looks at him with what seems to be frightened curiosity. He shifts his gaze to her easily, when something black and white catches his gaze from afar.

Fucking saber tooth. What an interesting coincidence. The man steps and Alduin heeds his words as well, but with him Alduin’s eyes shift to one of familiarity and brighten a touch.

“We will do no such thing, saber tooth.” He offers as a truce in his deep draw. “I merely saw a damsel in distress and thought she could use a paw.” A pause as he looks to the other two women before stopping on the paler. “Is that so wrong of me?”

Alduin would turn then, hardly waiting for an answer. Looking over his shoulder at the oddly colored woman. “It seems she’s gotten her help. I’ll be off.” He says it with calm nonchalance, but he knows he wouldn’t win a fight against three to one, so he must play his cards right. If they want him gone, then gone he will be.

“Take care, saber tooth.”
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[narrow width=800]the belittling glint in the eyes of this ghoul  —  it mattered not to her. for all he might stare at her with unfeeling indifference and decide then and there to grind her bones to meal; but if he wished to test hit mettle against her own, then he could easily meet her fang for fang, rather than word for word, and see just how fair all of this would go. and if the felldark zagreus had not arrived when he had ... well, she was as glad as anything, grim though she was, for the shield of his self at her side and to the seer at their backs.

if this unknown wished to meet her on the field of battle, then she would welcome it.

between both males was some sense of familiarity; and where she once might have questioned after such a thing, her curiosities were dashed when this úcarindo — trespasser stepped nearer, gazing again on her with an inquiry on his lips that was just a soon left unanswered, for he turned from them all, parting with a mocking rumble to the stygian at her side.

"you would do well in remaining so,"  seethed the silverwood creature after his lumbering retreat, pursing only several steps herself; and it was only when she could no more scry the lurch of his shadow between the folds of late summer boughs, nor scent him anywhere near on the winds, that she finally turned her back from whence he'd came.

when he is well and truly gone, the sotaherra looked first to her cowled sentry, passing her shivery ribs along his heavy shoulder with a rippling, throaty noise of both approval and of gratitude; finds their seer, now, with argent eyes gentling only some and ears giving a rare perk forwards.

"palantír — farseer ... i did not think that this day would come, and that it would bring you here with it."[/narrow]

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shadowvale vanished.

whisked away by the fiery push of pale dragoness and the lash of a silver one's tongue. she could not help but wonder if the one he called saber teeth might have wielded them should shadowvale had pressed further. a messy thought and an outcome not foretold.

she had been uttered as a damsel in distress, not far from truth but how whimsical it sounded. her! a damsel to be saved! how heated in her belly she felt at it. she had not been unleashed to be saved. had she been unleashed to —

palantír.

further cowed beneath the cloud queen's words. had she been unleashed for...her? pale dragoness? had the earth scooped up their dear terhenetär to deposit her here in the heart of clouds? goodwill did not pick where they blessed, they merely...did.

hesitantly sunrise eyes looked between man and woman. she wondered of saber teeth, did he know the things pale dragoness spoke of?

"i..." she breathed a start, raspy and deceiving of slim sharp features. "have been sent for you, for here." there was no other option! she had awoke in a daze in the earth claimed by these...two. two. they seemed together, in whatever extent she could not yet decipher.

"i woke without a trace, placed here by forces beyond."

would they think her ill?

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[narrow width=800]though she had extended momentary favor to zagreus, the nightingale did not know whether or not he cared, as of late, to learn more of these tundrian ways and her valerian own. it was his decision to guard the rare vulnerability of her pale back, as she was turned away and her focus is ensnared entirely by the flame of the palantír's eye. whether she had fallen, or had passed through some cut in the veil, or had been sent here through stones  —  she was here now.

"for here,"  echoed she, sitting back on lean haunches,  "where my people will look to your signs for comfort and caution alike. where i will ask for your counsel, and–"  a pause, where she took in the ironcast male behind her  ( if he still lingered by, of course )  and considered once more the way she had first approached him, with a tone that was not unlike the one she spoke with now. although she certainly believed she had been in the right for the demands she'd made, in return for his being here ... shame stirred in her belly, squat and sour and skulking. visions unguided or no, she held no claim to any that wandered. she was her own conqueror; no one else's.

she must be better.

with a grimace, aėrith returns to the farseer, somewhat hunched in humility.  "... but such a choice is yours to make. to stay,"  nodding then the way that the dark raider had come and gone,  "or to reweave your own fate elsewhere. my beliefs for your being here are rooted into my mind. but you must choose the life you want to live; not the one that my blindness had hoped for."

she supposed she spoke to both of them, in the end.[/narrow]

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+2 Formation Points

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