fade into darkness

Directly after howl thread!

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The sound of her pack rallying behind her, their voices loud and their intent clear, Hydra felt a swell of pride within her that could not be quelled by anything. But a familiar voice, and a face that she had yet to see near, caused hope to bloom, too—she had been heard, just as she had hoped, by at least one of her family members. He did not sound far, and Hydra navigated The Dragonsteeth to find a sturdy stone to stand atop of and get a better look around her. Not, of course, before marking it for her families own.

Her voice raised with the pack once more, but this note beckoned to @Pippin: I am here, she called. Surely he would come to the beacon of their voices; the few sounded like the many with their varying pitches as they heralded the wilderness within earshot. She paused in her own song, ears rotating like radars to detect the sound of his voice once more.

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8D

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 The eagle had certainly not come for her. He came...
 Why had he been summoned? Why did he feel as though the howl of some wolf had been such a request? He didn't fully understand it. However, the requesting beast had been lucky, as the eagle had been nearby.
 Upon the mountain the eagle began to circle, trying to gauge if the call had actually been worth his time. And, for a moment, there was a moment that nudged him to believe that the before held much more for him than most. The call was not for him. It was for the others. He thought he could hear them, one by one.
 But this wasn't how the eagle operated. So he appeared above her without sound or fanfare from his familiar mountain. Hers felt inferior as yet. He sat in a tree branch.

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She waited, listening; a large shadow was cast then, not by any tree or neighboring mountain but by something above. There was something somehow familiar about that, and while it might feel ominous had it not been there was a strange comfort felt to spot it, watch it move. Instead of Pippin, it was something else she found—another she knew. Their own relationship was a complicated one, and she remembered... she remembered, finally, after years, the beginning of progress with it. It had, for the first time, listened to her. 

But she also remembered that it was a mighty thing with a will of its own. It was not as though she commanded it, nor would she pretend to; they had always had a working relationship, though largely at a distance. It listening to her years past had been a point of frustration for her, in that it never had. Hydra had assumed that it did not understand her—and perhaps then it had not. The Eagle had been an entirely different color then; dark brown, indicating its youth. And perhaps it had understood her; one who pretended to rule over such a beast... well, beings like she and The Eagle would be ruled by none. 

Much had changed, but again it was here with her. Her gaze watched the thing wing to a nearby tree, and a feeling of satisfaction presented itself in her heart. 

“Welcome back,” she drawled, humming, “this is where we dig our roots again.” Taking care to mention their claim, Hydra had already determined that The Eagle would be among them. And why not? It had always been so.

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 The eagle regarded her silently from his perch, peering below at an unfamiliar domain. She seemed to know him. From where their former lives, he supposed. Perhaps it was fate that entangled the two animals together, or perhaps merely a coincidence of no consequence. The dark wolf seemed expectant of him, and so the eagle shifted upon his silent perch for a moment.
 He clicked his beak once at her, blinking and surveying what he could see from his position. The mountain itself was grand. Upon it was a carpet of pine and cedar forests. He could see now that pathways had been etched into its slopes. Now he knew that those were from both wolf and their prey.
 The eagle did not speak, but did something very curious instead. He flew down to the wolf.
 He settled upon a rocky mound mere yards from her, eying her from the side for a moment. She seemed familiar indeed, though he could not place her name and had no memory of their connection. Rather, she smelled of the forest, the one which she deemed was ready to plant her roots down into. He fluttered his wings, stretching out the one that he had injured for a moment to sooth the aching muscles within. He then righted himself, and scratched with a massive talon delicately at his chin. What else could this stranger tell him?

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He moved to meet her, albeit not directly before her. She was surprised to see him draw nearer then; he had not, in some time. Not that she could remember. She took it as quiet acceptance. Hydra imagined he would have flown far, far away otherwise.

Hydra, though she had a warriors eye, had no clue in the matters of the anatomy—and wellness—of a bird. He had flown here alright, and so Hydra imagined he was in good health. His stretching was just that to her, and her looking to the outstretched wing was nothing more than polite regard and perhaps interest in the mechanics of the appendage that she herself did not have. She herself did not get comfortable; there was more work for her to do. 

Perhaps he might help, perhaps not. She wondered if he could even understand her, fully, or if she was simply talking to herself. “Did you recognize any others, in this place?” She inquired of it, thinking a good start to figuring such out was seeing if it could answer this elementary (to her) question... if it felt so inclined to answer, anyhow.

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 Her gaze was the thing that was most familiar, though his quick motions would have made no indication of his recognition. They were not alike in any way. She held strange things upon her expression that he did not understand. Thoughts and feelings were unreadable to him, though her scent sometimes told a partial story. The words though, the words he understood.
 He tilted his head as he listened to this simple question, and waited for a moment after hearing it. The eagle looked about him, hunting for something, anything, that might be familiar. He wished that he might tell her something useful, as they seemed to somehow share a connection, but he did not know. She was confirmed to not be a stranger, and that was all.
 “Have you?” he questioned back, not realizing it was the first time he had ever spoken in her presence.

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He spoke. 

This was new. It meant every time she had ever talked, he understood; it was something to keep in mind. She wondered if all birds could (understand), or if perhaps it was his exposure around she and her family for the years he had been among them. A learned thing. She could not very well understand every bird, but the eagles and the crows, and the variety that nested in the trees of Moonspear... well, she had been around them long enough to understand their own cues, at the very least. 

“Yes,” she answered, “many. But many strangers beyond, too,” she drawled, stating the obvious. But it was more than that. Hydra had always been aware of those beyond her doorstep. The wolves of Neverwinter; the Nightwalkers. Those beyond her doorstep, too. There was much to learn here, of the places and its people. But at the very least, those new had all come the same way as she. Hydra was not the only one to begin anew. 

Licking her chops, she looked beyond them for a moment, again keenly aware that this was not the place the both of them knew. He had not seen any familiar faces beyond, which meant he had come across none of her family... nor any enemy, which she imagined had long since been taken care of. But they would both need to make the best of it; as they always had, they would survive this. And there was a comfort in knowing her winged companion was here, too. 

Had they ever hunted together? It was as good a time as any, to find out. Shifting her weight, Hydra determined to make it into something of a game for them both that would serve as a training effort for her, at least. To dwell on the confounding elements of this all seemed to be a waste of time, and Hydra never was one to idle. “If you hunger, perhaps we might hunt together,” she invited, “I know that you are capable enough on your own, there, though I wonder if you might humor me this hour; you can select our quarry,” she hummed, tilting her head. Hydra could not deny her own desire to see how, in a hunt or in a fight, they might work together. Even if it might be messy the first time—should this be their first—it would be a lesson, nonetheless.

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 He listened, acutely, as one did whenever indulged with novel information. The eagle did not attempt to draw inspiration from memory, for he had none. He knew only the feeling that he and this black she-wolf were acquainted, somehow, in spirit. Since falling from the sky, things had been different. He could not remember the original form of the universe, but he knew that it was different. Whoever had thrown him from the sky must have had good reason to do so, and so the eagle began to seek some meaning in anything that proved familiar or even comforting.
 The eagle followed the she-wolf's gaze for no real reason, but saw nothing of interest, and so began his ritualistic preening of the wing shaft.
 She requested then that he might hunt with her. And though he did not hunger, the opportunity of a wolf at his whim seemed very much an advantage. Suddenly, the eagle pushed up with his powerful feet, rising on the current of the wind, flapping his great and valiant wings while the wolf grew smaller. He descended then to hover above and away from her at least two metres, finding this a most energy-inefficient way to communicate. “Humour me,” he parroted, and rose up without another word.
 When he was high, he looked below to find her as a funny black splot on the ground. He called out to her in a brief chirping noise, and did not wait for a response before forcing the wind forward with his wings. He soared over her mountain forest, slowing up only when he could not see her, rising higher to search for a target.

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Her eyes were upon him as she awaited his answer, and he was quick to respond through action and words alike; she shifted her weight and own positioning when he determined to indulge her, watching for but a moment as the wind carried him upward. Watching the way the wind carried him, Hydra headed in that direction; she heard him, and Hydra called back to him in a brief, low note.

While his senses worked from above, hers did below. Hydra's nose quivered as she caught wind of something her eyes could not yet see. The trees thinned up ahead, and Hydra loosed another note that she had detected something that seemed northwest of her then. The matriarch wondered if he could see it, and lengthened her own stride to arrive all the more swiftly.

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