crow

vague but i wanted to get this up while it was in my mind, meant to be on the borders of elsewhen/cloudrest — aw to stormrift people! but also attn: @Aruna as promised!

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 The night seemed like the easiest time to move. Finally he sucked in enough courage and wit to try to free himself from these forests. Only to learn that the position he had found himself abandoned in was nestled softly against cold and mountains.

 It did not deter, but nor did it feel like the most welcomed sign.

 Soft steps carried him along a low borderline, the collected scents of things — of others — told him to mind his manners. Mind his steps too. Yet he could not help but hope! Oh, how he hoped!

 Anyone who made home here surely already knew more than him. So nervously he peered towards the slopes and peaks. Wondered if somebody watched, if they saw him skulking around like a bad omen. He feared what raising his voice might bring.

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uhhhh... hi! lol! @Månsken

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There, upon the borders, not at all far from the smoke-dark male, a ring of forget-me-nots sprouted as if by magic, pushing their way out of the ground in a speed entirely unnatural. Dozens of them created a rough ring, circling a space only a few few across and, aside from the grass and dirt, considerably empty.

Yet, it did not stay that way.

It happened as quickly as one could blink, with no fanfare or announecment. One minute, nothing was there, and the next, a silverslip creature lay in the center, curled up with her tail tucked neatly around her nose. Eyes closed, breath slow, the woman lay in seeming hibernation in the middle of the fairy ring of flowers, completely unaware that she was once again brought to this world.

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hello!! :0000

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 He did not know how he found it. The scene, the frantic blooms. He feared that this was the nightmares come to life. That monsters and ghouls had made this work in such a way. His heart flipped gently with the pale figured. Ghastly would be the first thing that came to mind, of course. Pale coated and petite. An apparition of something that once was. Maybe something that the mountain had taken — and now returned.

 His breath hitched sharply in the back of his throat.

 “Are you —” The word dead stayed buried in his throat. How fitting.

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Was she dead? No. She had been, once. She had been old, frail, mothered many children. She could see them, and in her dreams, she could even remember their names. All that slipped away, however, when she woke. It was like all of those figures turned to mist as the cold seeped into her bones, the smell of flowers slipstreamed into her nose. She wanted to cry out, to call to them. Don't go!

They were already gone.

With a groan, the silverslip came to, a paw moving to cover her eyes against the low light of the evening. She felt... horrid. Awful. A headache the size of a boulder pressed against her head. Surrounded by flowers, pulled once more to this world of dreams, Jesuite wanted nothing more than to return to her actual dreams, to her children and lost love, to the times that she could no longer remember. Not while she was awake.

Lilac eyes began to open then, tear tracks darkening her face as she lifted her head, oblivious still to the other that was there with her. Until she turned her head to see where she was, that is. Upon seeing the inky dark figure, the silverslip woman scrambled to her feet, heart suddenly pounding in her chest.

“Where am I?” She managed to get out, voice shaky but soft. “Who are you?”

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 He nearly felt his heart break free from beyond his breastbone. Startled by the sudden jerked life before him. If she had been dead, she was reanimated. His red eyes widened in that boyish shock that seemed more frequent upon his face here.

 “I-I don't know.” It was more about the first question, yet in that moment of panicked blanking it felt like it fit the second as well. What did it matter who he was if a ghoul had come to devour him? Yet somehow still he found his voice again. Just a boy, one who wished to hide behind another and yet must stand steadfast by himself.

 “Månsken.”

 Perhaps he could have told her he had found himself here suddenly too or ask if she still had a name. Did ghouls have names? Surely they did if they had lived a life before.

 Instead he only gawked at her in the same fashion he had done everything else so far — awkwardly.

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He didn't know. She didn't know either. Vaguely she remembered... this feeling. This lost feeling, this inability to recall where she was. @Chehalis had been with her.

The thought stopped her. Chehalis. Where was he? Was he okay? Was he alive? Last she remembered, they'd been traveling together. So what had happened that she was... here?

And where was here, exactly? A mountain. The faint scent of a pack. A forest not far away. A boy standing before her.

“Månsken,” She repeated, rolling the name over her tongue, giving her heart, her mind time to slow. “Jesuite,” She offered back. “I am Jesuite.”

And who was Jesuite, but a ghost? An apparition of a time that once was? Who was she, without her family? What kind of mother, what kind of lover was she, that she could not remember any of their names, their faces?

A frown pulled gently at her face before she looked to Månsken again, and then to the mountain. “You do not know this place?” She asked, looking up to the peaks.

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 Jesuite.

 It sounded, to the boy, like the name a spirit might have. He could not place why or how. Only that anything different and strange surely was befitting of a creature he did not know. Nervously he licked his lips. Pale front paws were a clear display of his nerves as they clenched at the cool earth beneath them.

 “No,” He responded. Somehow he found the nerves to say things, to explain to her his own situation. “I...woke up near here. Alone. Maybe everyone does.”

 Then the haunting thought of himself being a ghost.

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The silverspun fae did not miss the way his paws shuffled, or the way his tongue swept over his muzzle, but nor did she comment on any of it. In fact, for a moment, the women felt a motherly pang of sadness, reminded of her boys when they had gotten in trouble for something or other. She remembered golden fur, and mismatched eyes. She remembered laughing softly with their father when they were fast asleep. Their names still out of reach, Jesuite could only give a soft, yet slightly sad smile as she listened to him.

“I have woken like this before. Not in the same way, but...” How could she say that she had fallen from the sky? Into a lake that had no cliff hanging above it? She could not, she decided. “The good thing is that neither of us are alone any longer.” A slight wag of her tail as she attempted to encourage him, to comfort him. She had long since stopped looking so defensive, her tail hanging behind her hocks while her hackles were no longer raised but settled comfortably back against her spine.

“I can smell a few others. Maybe we should call to them and find out where we are and who we're dealing with?”

He declined her offer, an action that made the small and still slightly disoriented woman frown before moving on, venturing off in search of... something.

/fade

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