Stone Circle rainstorm

tags for ref!

@Astara was sequestered inside the den with @Asperas and @Apophis. @Aventus patrolled, presumably. merrick took the afternoon to lope around the far edges of the valley, the high stone wall that had bordered easthollow.
the new children had been conceived here. he thought easily of the place as an extension of ursus, and began to glibly mark, wetting bushes with the reek of urine and rubbing his proud body against the trees as he wended slowly through the place.

A sharp cut inland. Time lost between the coast and trees.

This was the life she knew

This was the life she had been made for.

Perhaps she needed to accept that fact. She was not old, but neither was she young. It was time she found her true self. Discovered what it was she needed at this point in her life.

Apparently, at this moment, it was the jagged slopes of the land. The harshness of a lone life.

She could map the lands, learn where everything led. She could learn where packs laid. What to avoid. Like this place. Where a man drippled along shrubbery in a marking manner, his body against bark.

She shadowed him from some long yards out. Tried to make a mental map of the borders he placed and the land that he claimed.

maybe going to try to use this for a scout trade? not sure if it could work and let me know if that isn't okay :)

totally good! thanks for joining <3

easthollow was no more, but none of the dead scents had belonged to laurel. while merrick was content for now to drift and to dominate, the idea that his aunt might have evaded him did not sit well with the witch.
he prowled and purled, single eye roving to take in the drifting shadow. it was not his raven; they were another void, better suited to his own valley than this place.
eventually the bearwolf turned, plume switching as creamblood hackles climbed spikeward; he grinned in the glint, a hideous spread of yellowing teeth.

She watched, kept track of each step he placed. It was easy work for the former Morta. This was what she had grown used to in all her years.

Although when he spun on her, fur to the sky and yellow sabers on display, she also knew what to do then.

Belly sunk towards the earth, tail partially curled beneath her ankles. Pointed ears slicked back to morph with her skull. Eyes wide as a whale's watched his moves even more carefully now.

Everything in her angular body begged to show she was not a threat.

They could co-exist in these silent, venturing moments.

merrick took in all the ways that the woman scarcened herself, and was satisfied. he directed the both of them onward through what had once been easthollow.
the larders, left to vermin and time, were long empty by now. the bearwolf investigated the dens of easthollow, where their young had been born, where they had died. he was happy now to splash it all in thick reeking yellow, to laugh crowlike to himself as if he was alone and not with a corded shadow.
at length he turned to her, eyes moonsilver and watchful against the single flame of his own.

She trailed once he was satisfied.

Dared not to mark or step over where he marked. She would leave him to his task. Meanwhile she trifled through the empty dens, made note of the hollows.

This place had meant something once. Just like all places.

She noted the large stones. How they loomed like they had anything to stand for now. She wondered if they would fall as easily as trees, should a storm sweep through harsh or should the ground awaken.

Thoughts lost to a void as she met his gaze once more.

He had muscle where she did not. He was bathed in the tones of the earth where she circled him much like the dark-sided moon she was.

A sound bubbled up in her throat, but it was full of warmth. A reminder that she had no ill intentions here.

merrick had seen how she hesitated and did not step over the formidable promise of his marks. he found it to be an assuagement. validating. there was power in her, for she had molded to the bearwolf as easily as he had conformed to his own bruin-kings.
in her pelt he was reminded of the voiceless woman whom revui had brought home, who had found her end at the teeth of his own raven. ursus kept itself hopeful and fierce. 
perhaps she might add to it.
but would he bring her to a bloody demise as well?
merrick thought he saw the thrum of her throat as she strummed a note for him; he turned and passed off into easthollow again, gait open and affable in his victories here.

She did not read minds. Only body language, and she was greeted with what she could only hope for.

A lack of violence. A movement that seemed free and open.

Still she followed after him. He seemed familiar with the place. Moreso than her. She figured if she trailed him for long enough, she would know the place easily enough. It would be a welcomed thing. To have a place that she could weave through with confidence.

Granted, his markers taunted such a thought. Surely she could not stay in the place he marked.

She would have to map other places as well.

if you need more to work with let me know! i know she's lackluster in action/words <3

no, shes perfect as is! <3

merrick was comfortable with pregnant silences and the unspoken language of their kind. it was the medium in which his ravenqueen communicated, after all, and her presence was resplendent and wild even in quiet. 
this one was less a fierce flash of teeth and more the ripple of storm across flatland. merrick felt her following, and shredded a thin branch with his teeth, letting the torn leaves fall to the ground.
and then he was seeking her again with his eye, doubling back upon his scent-marks to turn his path toward ursus, into the empty no-wolf's-land beyond.
would she continue to seek here?

It was hard to stop her trail after him.

Even as he made to return back to an area that seemed to see more populated. However, even in a new range of territory, she still knew better than to step over where scent laid.

So she would only stare, at a distance.

At him. At his path to Ursus.

She would know of where he claimed. Both the bear claw of stone and the pillars.

She would not press any closer than the respectful bubble of space around pack lands. They had seemed to coexist so well so far. She had no interest in ruining their balance.

merrick found that the bob of her mooncoin eyes stopped, and so did he. she would not come, a creature of the night. not of the bears, not of the valley. the woman felt ageless, somehow, as the foliage and stones and earth that had given them both life.
the bearwolf returned to her, a tilted smirk and nothing else to explain himself. the haunting cry of a loon filled the air, and his tattered ears cupped toward it. there was more of this place to consume and to take.
merrick asked silently if they might dine together on the memories of fallen easthollow.

And she would not decline.

She had been opened to his kindness as he had taken her along the path of old Easthollow. She would devour such kindness whole when allowed.

A meal was that allowance.

can maybe wrap here or in a reply! :D