Bramblepoint in the deep of the night, near the edge of the know

@Hydra

After singing in the meadow with the maiden of the sky, Wirt ventured South, and followed best he could the path of greatest shelter. With the shortening of the days he found his paws and mind more active, drawn as they were to the hours of the night. He knew soon the snows would come, and days as cold as the dark was now, but not yet. For now, some semblance of life still drank of the earth, and the loamy soil he tread upon still bore the colours of fall.

For the past five minutes Wirt had taken pause in the deep shadows of a vacant woodland he guessed would be teeming in summer months. Thickets scored the soil, naked though they were of the fruits that gave them worth. But his eyes were not for them, and rather for the small white petals of the anemones which kissed the air between the thorns. Brave little flowers, and he brushed his paw against a delicate blossom. “Ah, they tell me that you’re gone,” the petal curved beneath his touch, but did not break. He lingered his touch. “But what do they know?”

Rian, her mind rang. His name repeated within her mind, and Hydra knew that she must seek him again in the wilds closest to home. She wished he had not went to search for Cypress, but it had all been time sensitive—but had she known that the wolves of the Woods took captives... what if he was among them! She fret, and the way to solve this was to seek. She moved to the outer edges of Bramblepoint and intended to forge her way past them to continue her hunt when she swore that she saw him. 

Had she of heard him, she would have known. But he had the same cut, the same hue—he was so familiar to her that she moved toward him, breathless. She wanted to see him in the light, what little the bramblepoint offered. Her heart ached in a way that she did not know it could. You have been gone for too long, she chided playfully, though her heart meant it. Never leave me again! She drew closer still, eager to see his eyes, the whole of his face—to feel his regard, to be in his presence. The last she had seen him, they had expressed their shared feelings and he had been gone, since! I was beginning to think you might not come back, she said, looking briefly to her paws, or that maybe you had been captured by those Blackfeather Woodfolk, a worser fate for him, but truth be told had he been gone any longer than this he might have wished for it!

His steady breath caught, for the flower spoke. Not the one drawn beneath his paw, delicate as the petals were, still pressed against him, for flowers did not speak. Yet neither did the dead. That was why he gave them voice. But this voice he did not give - and yet, in many ways, it spoke so much like her.

She sounded different than he remembered, but he had lived without her song for - how many seasons? This winter marked the eighth, and it made sense for him to have forgotten the once familiar pitch, her laughing levity and play? His heart ached - she had told him this would happen, even as he had sworn he would always remember.

But despite the sudden shock of hearing the croon of a woman where he had expected silence, he knew this could not be her. The better half of her words made little sense to him. He knew nothing of these Blackfeathers, but the tease in the woman's voice slipped so much like her own - and the irony so tested a smile on his lips - he couldn't help the vanity to wonder. “If I’d known you here, I would have danced far quicker through the mountain crags, and sung more fevered to the stars.” But he did not turn to face her, for though he caught himself hoping, and found himself trying, he imagined his hope would snuff the moment he looked upon the stranger who sought, perhaps, her lover - a lover whose paws rested somewhere other than this peaty ground.

He did not turn to face her even as she spoke, but she knew he had heard her. She prepared to speak again, but looked beyond him—was something amiss?—when she heard him speak. Her heart throbbed a painful beat as she realized she was wrong. There was no subtle brogue, and he was far more eloquent than Rian had ever been with her. He stated, too, he had not known her, and Hydra felt the heat of embarrassment crawl toward her cheeks in a way that typically only could come with Rian—she was proud, and none could truly effect her in a way that would pain her or make her feel anything but for him. In a way, Rian inadvertently had, still.

She was quiet for a moment, processing what had just occurred. She could pretend—pretend it was him—but they both knew he was not who she sought, and he did not pretend it himself. You would not, she decided then, her tone light and teasing, it has taken you so long to meet me here to know me—I cannot believe you would hasten your steps to see me again once you do, she laughed. She could believe it, though—Hydra thought herself worth it. Though I would like to, she moved behind the wood, wondering, keeping herself out of sight without intent as she thought. Believe you. And that was the truth! But Rian had not returned, and this man was not Rian, and if Rian would not rush to be by her side again, why would this man? Rian, who she really did care for, who she would kill for—maybe he had been captured. He must be, if he were not here. Her mind was a maze of a minefield as she explored herself, her beliefs and her hopes. What she thought to be true versus what she knew to not be so.

Her silence decided his prior doubts - she was not her - and Wirt prepared for the awkward rush of apologies that often followed happenings as these. A sliver of his heart found relief in knowing he would soon be alone, if only to remember the voice of his flower, yet her stirring memory would not make easy the infant hours of the night.

But the stranger stayed, and her words surprised him enough for a smile to slip across his lips. “You are right, in this way and that.” He found himself saying, playful in his own accented voice. “My steps often tarry, for what does one know if the brilliant glow of the drowning sun is the last their eyes will see?” He tipped his muzzle then, to try and glimpse her through the corner of his eye. Thick shadows met him, richly cast by the forest. She kept herself a mystery, and this, he decided, he liked.

“Yet if I had hastened,” he continued, gaze relaxed on the spot he’d last heard the laugh of her voice, “and forewent my song and dance, and if I had rushed to meet you here three nights before - riddle me, would I have found you waiting for me then? Or would we have both found an empty wood where our paths should have crossed if I hadn’t run with haste, and a wandering still filled with the vanity of looking, not knowing whom we sought, and missing the days that might have been beautiful if had we rested content our meeting tonight would have come, at its proper time. For who knows if three days ago you were ready to know me, and I, you.”

He toyed at the flower. “But if I found a soul more brilliant than the sun - then even though my steps might linger, it would only be to memorize the world so as to share it with her, in moments far sweeter than the heavens can give.”

His talk was nearly dizzying to Hydra, who could be eloquent when she desired but rarely did she. It was better to be succinct, to get to the point—but this was different, somehow. It felt that every word he spoke built a road, and she found herself trailing it, taking to its curves and its sudden turns with eager anticipation of what lingered at the end.

He spoke in request of a riddle, and Hydra grinned as he went on. As his gaze fell upon where she had been, her gaze looked toward the direction he was, though she could not see him with the tree between them. Then does not matter, she decreed, and even though you are not the one I sought, here you are—found, Hydra grinned. I could not tell you of my own soul, but I would not liken it to the sun—the sun, well, you think it is warm and kind and brilliant, but then it blinds you. Cruel, Hydra sighed. Truth be told, Hydra coud be compared to the sun for those same reasons, but she did not see that in herself.

Your steps have lingered, Hydra huffed, playful, is that what you have been doing? Searching, and memorizing the places you have been? Romantic! the teenager thought—how sweet! All for the one he may some day love!

The shadow countered well - a clever mind. Found indeed. Though he hoped her the best in finding her friend, there sprung a sense of gratitude to the one she looked for, for not seeking her sooner, nor for being here tonight, if only for the selfish reason of having this moment for himself. He knew the shadow only in the words she gave, but even if she spoke with bias, her words revealed who she believed herself to be - or not to be - and these revelations he treasured. Every wolf was a riddle, with lines that misled, yet at the same time guided toward a truer picture of the wolf often buried too deep for simple eyes to see.

He grinned, and so would have found himself mirroring the woman's face if he had the scope to see her. "Cruel, perhaps, but only to the unlearned, to the eyes of those who have not learned to revere the warmth and kindness and brilliance she gives." And he wondered at her sigh, and if she had been burned before - but for the moment, he held his question.

Her words to follow edged a shadow to his grin. "Every step she cannot take, I take twice for her," and he kept his voice in steady tandem with the shadow's - light, and playful, yet vague - for his words pressed upon him a weight he willed to carry alone. "But until then, I look and listen, and speak for the living and the dead, and search the shadows for those who are lingering, those who are seeking, and those who are lost." As he did now, unexpectedly, and with breath spent enough on himself, he redirected his curiosity to her. "Your feet have led you here, looking, but for whom?"