say you'll love me

It had been some time since Elke had left the towering spires of home. The summer had been an overbearing one. One which Elke was happy to see to its end. She had stayed within the heights of home- of Borealis Peak, in order to stick to the cooler temperatures high up. There was a certain place she found herself missing though. One not far from the foothills of home.

Finally breaking away from the security of Empyrean's borders, the little healer followed the river out and then cut north-east where the water's path split. After a time, she could once again see the two great oaks, their limbs tangled around one another in eternal embrace.

Elke padded into the shallow waters of the creek, smelling around the mud and roots. Her family had been here to visit some time ago, it seemed. The thought made her smile with a hope that they had thought it an interesting find too.

Following the creek through the short cavern passage, she hoped down carefully below. The path opened up to reveal a little woodland having grown under the earth. The creek weaving through the middle of the woodland, feeding the flora within. The lighting here is minimal, streams of it coming down from the cavern roofing. No matter- for the foliage here glowed with magic, mostly via the various mushrooms, flowers mosses and ferns.

It was just as beautiful and magical as she remembered it and Elke took no time at all to meander along the creek bed, sniffing out anything and everything of interest.
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The journey had been far across lands that the white wolf felt he knew, yet were so unfamiliar to him he was lost all the time. Flashes of knowing came to him. Flashes of scents in time and space, like dreams that flitted about at the tip of consciousness. The moment he tried to grasp them, they slipped through like ghosts on a cruel wind. Taikon went on through this pathway, a zombie among the living, scraggled and crimped as though he had long ago died and was only here for show. He was a theatre of the dead, a terrible excuse of continuance.

Through desert and ash he had wandered. He had come through places that tomorrow would no longer be. Finally, he had climbed hills to find this wood. It had been as though someone had led him to it.

Darkness. Destiny. A glow unlike any other, lights like wisps led the old wolf on through the strange cavern. Trees had no right to be present, and yet they were there.

A sense of overwhelming beauty overcame him, and for a while he simply sat in one spot. He listened to the sounds echoing from rock formations nearby. He became fascinated with the fungal fruiting bodies that coated underfoot. If not for their glow, then he appreciated them for their ability to survive in this desolate place, this bleakness. The brutality of it was cruel, and yet so much stayed true. He felt shrivelled, for though he was privileged enough to remain under the sun, for how much longer? And what had he done with such a gift?

And then she was there. Takiyok, in all of her brilliance, finding her way along a creek.
Taikon moved toward the ghost, knowing he must have died, knowing it could not be.

Like so many times before, as Taikon drew closer, the wolf was not her. It was a stranger. He inhaled slowly, exhaling a staccato of disappointed sighs through his nose. For so long he had wished not to be here. He wished to be dead, because then at least he might know her again, should she also be dead. Cella, too. Vedetta, too.

So it was with grief that Taikon greeted the stranger with a warm and gentle chuff. His fur was falling out and he had nothing left to give other than kindness. “You know this place?”
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The blonde and cream girl heard the sigh. It slipped along the cavern walls, breathing more life into this little underground magical world. The place nearly hummed and in such a manner Elke had begun to feel compelled so hum along with it as she moved. Yet the sigh had caused her pause and to the voice, she lifted her head and turned lavender eyes into the other wolf's direction.

He was cream and blonde like herself, yet time, travel and age had taken away the shine and fullness of a healthy coat. Fur missing in places and it looked brittle, dirty and oily. His body too was like skin and fur clinging to bones. He needed a bath, food and rest, yet this could not reverse time for the old wolf.

“I do.” She answered as she turned fully around to face the other. “It is not far from home. I live in the mountains just near, where the river flows through.” Although there were snow capped mountains further east, following the waters out of here and to her mountains was an easy path to memorize.

Coming a bit closer, Elke settles down on the soft green mosses, clusters of mushrooms around her glowing. “It is a magical place, these woods.” Her eyes slip past him and around the earth all around with a smile. Maybe he would find the healing here he needed.
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There were many small creeks that ran through these parts, but unless things had changed again, only a single larger river that wove this direction. Taikon had yet to develop a full mental map of this vast place, but he had been many places and seen many things. He didn't know where that river led. There were many mountains near them; he was disoriented in this wild and glowing place under the earth.

He nodded anyway like he knew where they were. He no longer cared to tell what time or place he might die in.

“Magic,” he repeated, looking with a side glance toward her paws, too afraid of what he might find to look her in the eye. There was a clarity and confidence to her voice that felt foreign to his state of mind. She very well could be an angel of death for him, here to take him once more beyond the realm of purgatory and at last find his place in the hellfire waiting.

“I used to not believe in anything you'd call "magic." This place, these lands, I now know that nothing can be fully explained without it,” Taikon answered matter-of-factly. He sat slowly nearby, lowering himself as his knees ached and his hips crackled with an audible distress. A moment of silence passed before he asked a simple question; he was avoiding asking the one he had really wanted to. “These fungi.. the mushrooms. Do they glow with magic, or is it just the nature of things?”

Was there any difference to their kind?
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He was hesitant with much insecurities, yet Elke did not move from her spot, hoping that by remaining relaxed and seated, she would appear less of a threat, if this was indeed how the old wolf felt. There was no telling how his long years had treated him and how his travels had worn him down more and more with each step.

Elke had done quite a bit of travel at a far too young of age with her sister and parents. It was pleasant to see all kinds of other landscapes, but Elke all and all had grown to be a home body and very much a pack-wolf. Living a life of travel was simply not her thing.

He spoke of not believing in magic before coming here. Elke had learned since being here that for many, the unexplained had become quite the eye-opener in this world, including by her own aunt and leader, Hydra. Elke was different. She grew up on her father's tales of magic and had belief in it ever since even if she hadn't seen proof of it until being brought here.

“Hmmm...” She pondered allowed as the other wolf finally came to a seating. “Well, I think that mother nature's doing is quite magical in itself, honestly. Yet some of these mushrooms, ”she said as she looked over the nearest cluster to her, “I have seen before coming here and know their properties but they never glowed before. So maybe, yes, the magic of this place.” She decided as she looked back to him, but shrugged all in all. She was only mortal, after all and the knowing of magic was something she may never fully understand.
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