The Sentinels the carving of the way

The lonely wanderer found a fleeting, strange motion sliding from her jaws. It was a kind smile to match the cold glimmer in her eyes in equal parts of juxtaposition.

She licked her lips, uncertain.

Was it a mistake to come here? She thought, and then she dismissed the notion with a flick of one finely crafted ear.

It is perhaps best to take note of the stature of the wolf now, a slim, wiry figure of the deepest black. Eyes a peculiar shade, although mayhaps not uncommon among the wolves of this land. Hardened pits unmoved by desert storms and mountain floods - this is the bearing of the female. She was a funny sort of wolf to behold. 

At this, she smiled again, a pallid thing draped from ear to ear. She noticed easily that she stood out against the white, white snow, and she wondered how she would fare against a bloodstained river instead. In snow, she stalked, sound muffled by her tail and her light steps. She was the blizzard owl, the one that struck when least unexpected. But in a river... Oh, in a river, she was a shark amongst fish. 

These are the thoughts that differentiate a woman from a girl. The wolf was no girl, but then again she was no woman either. 

In her jaws, she held a fine stick. It was as long as her body and as thick as her paw was wide. Notice now that the stick was untouched and without blemish, save the flakes chipped off when it fell from its mother branch. It was this stick that she clenched, though withholding the force that would mar the clean surface. In the snow, she waited for someone to find her.

It could be anyone, but the she-wolf simply sat, and brushed her tail around herself. Her stick lay at her feet.

This post is bad. I am tipsy. Kept vague because I did not know whether this should take place before or after the rallying howl. ♥

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Szymon made one final sweep of the charred sequoia graveyard, and when his search came up empty for what felt like the umpteenth time — empty of Qilaq, empty of Deirdre, empty of Skellige and Smokestep and Redshank — he decided that this patrol would be his last. He found no purpose or joy in underscoring the futility that seemed to lurk at every turn, for surely if any of the wolves he sought lived, they had left behind the ash and charcoal of Donnelaith’s ruins. Somberly he turned northeast, intent on returning to his mate and surviving children — but his eyes were drawn at once to a melanistic female whose abyssal fur cast a sharp contrast against the snow that blanketed the ground. At her paws lay a stick — an impressive prize that he wanted immediately, for he was a selfish beast and possessive of the coast and everything in it — but he spared only a moment’s notice admiring it before his attention centered fully on the wolf who claimed it.

Using Doe’s word, “Hail,” he uttered finally, his guttural bass timbre thick with weariness and the remnants of smoke. Intensely curious, he wondered what — or who — she waited for.

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i'd reckon before the howl? i mean i was intending for her to mooch over to that thread XD

She watched the sun as it rose, her eyes lingering on the fading horizon. Soon it would lose its vibrant colour and fade away until it was nothing... nothing but a uniform wash of plainness. This thought did nothing to dissuade the wiry female from watching in part amusement and part feeling older than she actually was. Much of it was ceaseless movement, the transition from dawn to day and the bustle of creatures - a posturing that Wanderer felt was needless. Hers was stoic, and still, yet another contrast to the surroundings.

Ironic.

Hail, rumbled a baritone sound. It was almost choked, as if it had spent a time amongst fires without moving. She imagined the bearer of the voice to be an ashen coloured wolf, stained black and scarred by flames. But when she turned, Wanderer saw only a ghostly figure, a staunch gathering of muscles and taut strength. She saw hungry greed, pulled her single belonging towards her. 

She lifted a claw, dug a gouge into the soft wood. That was one.

"Hail," replied the wolf, and she turned fully to face the newcomer.

Sounds good to me!

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Szymon’s eyes marked the way the darkling female carved a gouge into the pliant wood with one heavy claw, but as she turned deliberately to face him he dismissed her prize as unimportant. “Is that me?” he asked, nodding toward the freshly-marked staff with a sharp quirk of his lean muzzle, his eyes settled firmly upon her face. Her pitch fur was tousled and wild, and he longed to see it limned by salt and sand, but the black-banded Cairn was no diplomat. Doe was the piper — she was the songstress whose lilting tune could persuade others to follow. Idly the Leviathan wondered whether the wayfarer before him was a witch doctor like his mate; she confused him, and what he could not understand, he respected to a certain degree.

“Are you waiting for something,” he wondered aloud, not precisely asking, his golden gaze winging away, out toward the Sea, before flitting automatically back to the girl. He wanted to be back with Doe and the children — he couldn’t trust the faraway look that seemed to linger in his mate’s flame-touched eyes — but something about the silent sentinel continued to draw his attention. She was an enigma to him.

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Is that me? the man asked as she swiveled herself to face him - yes, he was man - and although she did not smile, nor the heavy weight lift from her young eyes, her voice was strangely strong, wrapped in a curious, rich accent that spoke of lands not from here. It is. Wanderer returned, and she dipped her head. You are one.

She stared down at the heavy notch, noted the wood that had scraped off from her motions. It was clear that it was a marking-stick, a staff of sorts, meant not for herding sheep but for counting wolves. It was a habit that Wanderer had picked up - marking wolves - for from this she knew the faces that she had seen and those who had ever passed her by.

Wanderer tilted her head slowly, decisively. Was she waiting for something, she wondered also. She sat here and stared as tides lapped at the shore in barely-disguised hunger. Aimless, goalless, she was truly a shadowed ghost drifting without meaning. She tracked his eyes as she looked at him, finding the minute shifts towards the angry sea interesting. What did he have for him there?

Am I?

Pensively she straightened her head. Everything. Nothing. Who are you?

I am very sorry to make you wait so long for such a short post!

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“I am Szymon Cairn.”

The wayfarer’s richly accented timbre was curiously resonant, commanding the Leviathan’s attention and quieting the storm that churned within his breast. “I am one,” he repeated, and completely without a trace of his usual jealousy, he wondered, “but when you run out of room or cast your stick away, will I be nothing?” His tattered ears pressed forward upon his skull in unveiled interest. It didn’t matter at this stage whether or not the darkling shadow found him expendable — Szymon wasn’t one for forming quick attachments — but the significance of the staff and its notches, beyond his understanding as a generally simple-minded creature, fascinated him. His attention was drawn again to the crash of the Sea — he wanted very badly to ask for Her guidance in the wake of the fire — but he refocused on the wolf who did not seem to know whether or not she was waiting for something, and he asked her, “Who are you?”

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She gave him a wry smile, for she had expected nothing less of her request. Szymon Cairn, said the man, his voice a deep timbre - something she was not used to - weaved in with an accent she had never heard before. He is one; the voices stirred within her, manifestations of her personality. They spoke within her, pushing her to the thought that he was The One, for he was her first.

Wanderer widened her eyes but almost imperceptibly, an expression of small pleasure. She had not expected the male to peer so much into the purpose of her ledger. It was simply a ledger, but she carried it by her side always; it was the culmination of her experiences, almost sacred.

Could you allow yourself to be nothing? Wanderer hummed out, in a tune known to her from her birth-tribe. She thought nothing of the muscle memory, instead taking solace in the familiar noise ringing in her ears. I am none, she said then, for if he was one, then she was none, for she existed in her mind before he had and she encompassed everything in her thoughts - one could not come from nothing, and so none must have existed before one.

This quirk she tucked away, for should she release such thoughts she'd surely be seen as mad.

I choose to name myself the Wanderer; they call me Alttayih in their native tongue.

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Szymon considered her question with characteristic seriousness, his brow furrowing as one tattered ear swept out toward the churn of the ocean. “Could you allow yourself to be nothing?” she had asked, her richly accented timbre undulating and melodic with the undercurrent of a song he did not know and would not remember. “No,” he admitted, perhaps a bit more vehemently than was required. He had been nothing for most of his young life, and having tasted what it was to be something — to Doe, to their children, to his wolves — he could never go back. He didn’t understand her cryptic proclamation — “I am none,” — and made no comment, instead allowing his wayward ear to join its mate in listening actively, fully to her.

The Wanderer, she named herself, and though he wondered at her use of “they” he kept a lid on it and posed what he felt was a more important query: “What should I call you?” he asked bluntly. He liked things to be in straight, understandable lines, and though he could appreciate the Wanderer’s enigmatic nature, it was in his nature to request that certain things be clearly laid out for him.

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Then you are one, Alttayih said quite quietly, never once raising her voice to the man. She felt in this moment a sense of tension emanating from him - easily provoked? - but she made no move to tug at it. She felt no need to, for she had not been questioned further and this she did accept. For moments she wondered if he was a volatile flame fed by the salts and clear sea air but dismissed this thought, for the wolf felt him too frigid to be a fire; he greatly resembled a wind.

But, she was no longer the wolf, was she? She had named herself - Alttayih, the Wanderer - the wolf pondered this, knew that in the world she stood in she was but a girl-child. A yearling who spoke like an elder, perhaps, but she was fragile all the same.

What should I call you?

Wanderer/Alttayih smiled; privately she knew she had no way to skip around this one.

Alttayih, or whatever you desire. Why are you here, Szymon Cairn?

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“Alttayih,” Szymon murmured to himself, his tongue locking and tripping over the double consonant. It took a few tries before he was able to reproduce the exotic name with considerable fluency. Although the debilitating nature of his stutter had lessened with his growing confidence, his impediment was as grittily tenacious as the rest of him and he endured its continued presence as his spirit guide bade him.

The black-banded Cairn met the Wanderer’s smile with one of his own, but it was quick to falter as he answered her innocuous query. “My brother’s betrothed lived here,” he uttered succinctly, a brusque quirk of his scarred muzzle indicating the charred remains of the sequoias. “Now my brother, his children, and his betrothed are gone — and so is my daughter.” The desolation of Donnelaith’s ruins reflected like dying embers in his golden gaze as he looked upon the darkling girl with the pale green eyes. She was Deirdre and Qilaq both in that moment, and the tangled welter of emotion engendered by her nearness pained Szymon more than he could put into words. “I will not come back here,” he voiced his earlier resolve aloud with grief weighing heavy on his sonorous bass timbre. “I will raise a new banner.”

When Skellige had first turned up missing and Murgash, Tetsubō, and Prialux had left the Blackrock Depths ranks in search of him, Szymon had considered ceding ownership of the bay, packing up his wife and children, and going somewhere else to start a new life. Now, though, the youngest of Bronislav and Serafiem’s children recognized within himself a growing desire to pick up where Skellige had left off. “The Sea is my goddess,” he told Alttayih, “and the turtle is my guide. They call to me.”

Again his attention turned toward the coast, and this time he would not ignore the pull of longing it wrought. “If you have need of me, come to the bay,” he said simply, and with a quick snap of his paws, he moved purposefully toward home.

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