Blackfeather Woods champagne, cocaine, gasoline

@Ghoul or @Maegi or AW!

The boy tumbled about the forest, and he thought he was heading back to the place he'd last seen Relmyna and her children, but in actuality he was closing in on a segment of woodland that should've been familiar for other reasons. It seemed as if he was being closed off by the very trees that grew here, twisting his path in to knots and shrouding him in thick darkness. Mou couldn't remember being afraid of the dark — he had been afraid of the creature in the pit, but comforted by the blackness of the caves — yet as his path wound haphazardly through a patch of briar and the shadows spat him out the other side, he felt only dread as he looked upon the rising spires of trees that surrounded him.

There was a flash of something. It wasn't physical, he wasn't even sure he really saw anything in the vastness of the forest — his wide eye had a narrow band of gold within it, the pupil dilated beyond what should've been normal even for his usual dose of medicine — and he thought he saw —

There is no telling how long he's been out but when Titmouse wakes, it is in the dark. There is a stale smell in the air that makes his stomach roll, and the sound of dripping water bouncing off of the earthen interior of the space, and it all further disorients him.

It felt like the dark of the wood had somehow gotten inside. His lungs were heavy. They were full to bursting and he couldn't take another breath, while his heart continued to pound, his head fogging. It was like the shadows were moving all around him with an eagerness, a liveliness, that was almost primal.
from here

A black shape next to a gray shape, blurry like they're made of water. He's reminded of a tide pool with a gusting wind breathing deeply overtop it; and the image vanishes as soon as he sees it. The ghosts of some long dead life, maybe. He didn't see their faces — and the feelings he experiences make no sense. He feels afraid, but in bursts. There was a cavern around him but now he's alone in the woods.

He blinks, staggering a few more steps, and then his legs buckle. Mou stares at the trees and his eye trails up, up, up, until he is staring at the far away tree tops. He thinks he can see the stars through them when they dance, but he is imagining this too.

The new wolf was fascinating because the lines etched along his body told so many stories that she longed to find out about, though the pale child had interacted with him only little so far. She was often distracted with, well, who knew what? Often she found herself wandering through the woods following all the little voices, the dark faeries, the altars, the connections, the spirits. She was a spirit, after all, so she was connected in many ways with the other spirits that lingered the dark woods. But today the spirits did not lead her onto adventures of her own, onto trees or altars or artefacts...

... Today, they lead her to him. Large ears cupped forward as she looked at the scarred male's back. She instantly recognised him, and duck low so that he would not see her in case he had heard her. Yet he seemed mesmerised by something or other, just staring, staring... Did he see the spirits too? Did they reach out to him? Were they reaching out to him this very moment?

Do it, just do it! they encouraged in their jester-like behaviour and a toothy grin appeared on the ghost's face as she snuck a little closer. Just a tiny bit, before she started to run towards him and pounced at his back to hone her sneaky and fighty skills with a loud "Raaaawr!"

Mou watched as the trees danced. He thought the shadows looked so very solid across their reaching trunks, and they seemed to dance in opposition to the physical world. The trees would tremble and the shadows would sit across them as if to constrict them, but the more he watched the more he felt the darkess was separate of them—settling across the trees in order to constrain them, maybe reaching in their own right for the stars.

The boy was intently (or as intently as he could given his mental state and drug abuse) staring up at the sky when the ghost arrived. He wouldn't have noticed her even if he had been sober; she was a child of this forest, she knew how to move through it without being discovered. There were secrets here that the dark held for its beloved children, and thus far Mou was not one of them. But when the girl launched herself at his hindquarters, Mou was taken by surprise.

He may have survived being tossed off a cliff, and nearly drowned by the sea, and nearly eaten by a bear over the course of multiple weeks, but everything had taken their tole—Fate had struck him down and earned a pound of flesh each time. His mind had been incapacited, his body, now his voice. Mou was still recovering. He would likely always be this frail boy who leaned too strongly upon the aid of the poppies—and this wiry little ghost was yet another twist of fate. As she came in to contact with his lower back he let out a boof of surprise and collapsed beneath her.

It didn't take much, but there was a pop.
He didn't notice as the feeling in his lower back began to fade.

Well, this wasn't very fun. The spirit cared nothing for the fleeting feeling of success and fleeting it was indeed when her prey collapsed beneath her in an instant. The ghost had never witnessed this before and she was so taken aback, in fact, that she nearly turned with forward somersault over his back. She managed only to stop this from happening by grabbing onto her prey with her teeth and steadying herself. A valuable lesson, though it was unlikely free -- as nothing was.

But then came the dissatisfaction of winning and the game being over. "Migh," she spat in disappointment after spitting out what hairs she had gathered in her mouth and she hopped off her collapsed prey. The spirit trotted in a half-circle from his hind to face to look what state he was in. Maybe he was just playing, thought she was a child still who needed this win..?

The ghost was much more solid than he realized, and she went kareening off of his back and over him. The pinch of her teeth was a dull sensation but he felt it, at least until she let go and was tumbling. The aftermath wasn't very clear to Mou. He knew in the deepness of his mind that this wasn't a spirit of the forest but his mind was playing tricks, laced so strongly by the poppies he had been desperately using for support. He knew she wasn't a ghost—but he also didn't know what was happening.

She got up. He saw her silhouette in his good eye, creeping closer.
He didn't. Not immediately.

When Mou tried, he could feel the tensing of his hip muscles and a fleeting sensation of strain in his legs, but that faded almost as soon. It was a dreamy feeling. He thought, I have taken too much, and kept on trying to stand. He couldn't, and that should've frightened him.

It was weird that he just kept laying there. The behaviour was very unlike anything the ghost had ever seen, a thing that made the pale child feel both suspicious and interested in what he was doing. She tilted her head, having expected him to do something by now, but all she could see was him wiggling around a little bit while very clearly not doing anything.

"What you doing?" she asked plainly and stared at him with a neutral look on her face, trying to figure out what was going on and why this one was put on her trail.

What are you doing? The ghost asked. He had no idea what was happening or why, so he just sank to the earth as if it was his intention to lay down. It wasn't, but Mou couldn't think of anything else he could do in that moment. Really, he couldn't think at all.

She was looking at him, and he stared back at her. Pale eyes—empty things, the same color as the rest of her. He stared at her with his one good eye, and in his intoxicated state he saw through her. Yes, to him she was a real ghost. Perhaps she was the guardian of these woods.

He opened his mouth to say something but immediately forgot what that was, so he gawked for a bit instead. Then, as he found himself plastered against the crunching leaves and pine needles, he felt much better. Grounded. More attuned to parts of himself—and gradually, a pins-and-needles feeling in his lower back. Not quite reaching his limbs yet, but a hint that this was not permanent.

Maybe this was a wolf who did not speak, like the caretaker did. Though he did not mouth anything either. She tilted her head as he simply slumped down. Only then did she wonder: "Are you hurt?" He acted a lot like she had seen some wounded critters act that she had pounced on and played with. Clearly, if he was hurt, then it must have been something that had happened before she had come upon him, though.

"Bird, are you hurt?" she repeated shortly after, and tilted her head while she waited for him to start moving. The spirit sat down and just stared at him then waiting patiently for him to come to his senses and answer.

It was easier to lay there, so he did. He sank in to the dirt and the drugs, finding comfort in the emptiness as it swarmed over him. When the ghost spoke again he heard her voice and it sounded like a dream; the sigh of the wind. She called him bird and Mou's mind saw an image of a red hawk with one eye. Where the second eye was meant to be, he saw a black pit, and the blackness seeped out from the orbital bone and seemed to taint the hawk's feathers; slicking it like oil, until the bird was some kind of black void — and that was when Mou realized he was staring straight ahead at Blue, Maegi's little friend, who peeped at him and pecked his nose. When he lifted his face from the dirt the bird fluttered for the safety of the black wood, and Mou was left to stare dumbly at Averna as she loitered nearby.

For some time nothing happened, and the spirit thought that this would be it. Maybe he was dead, or dying, or he would just stay here forever. She didn't know, and her interest was fading quick as her attention span was still that of a child's. "Elloooo," she huffed, but it changed nothing in what he was doing. The pale child decided he was not interesting anymore and when her eye caught a cream mushroom on the floor she trotted towards it, all interest in Bird lost.

Just as the spirit was studying and sniffing the mushroom on the ground, she heard a sound behind her. Quickly she turned round again and saw that Bird had lifted his head. "You back now, Bird?" she asked, deciding that name would do - for now.

The poppies were beginning to ease out of his system, and when he looked at Averna now, he had forgotten all about her. She asked him again if he was alright, calling him Bird, and he nodded slowly. His mouth opened and he mimed the word, Bird?—maybe he was asking after the nickname, or the little songbird he had just seen, but likely it was the image of the hawk transforming that had him so unnerved. It seemed so real, so familiar.

Bird? The spirit tilted her head impishly as he asked after this and she looked at him while his focus, in turn, seemed to be all over the place. "What's wrong with you, Bird?" she asked him. There was no blame to her voice but neither was there concern written on her features. It was just a question, and no more than that. The spirit waited as she stared at Bird while she sat in front of him, to find out if he would answer this time.

He didn't think, and blurted, Ghos, I see.. They ghos, effeywhea.. Combining the odd phrase with his slurring sounds meant she probably wouldn't pick up on what he was saying, but on the off-chance, he realized he was saying nonsense and shut up pretty quick. Mou didn't want to frighten the girl - but a part of him knew, somehow, that the ghostly child knew he spoke of the spirits and that she wouldn't be afraid. Ghosts were as at-home here as the wolves that lived in the wood, after all.

She heard very little of what he was slurring, but she caught one thing -- ghosts. Of course there were ghosts. She was practically part of the ghostly world, after all, with one paw in this world and one paw in the other. But rather than saying that, she said: "I know. I'm a ghost." She just stared at him with her white eyes and waited for his reaction. He was pretty out of it, anyway, so she wasn't sure whether he'd remember any of this. He didn't look like he would. Maybe he'd had too much poison. It wasn't a too uncommon sight around these parts.

I am a ghost, she admitted. It wasn't as startling as one might think. Mou half-expected it already, and to have it confirmed brought more peace to his mind than it should have. His brow furrowed all the same though.

Ghos-- buh you, you be dead if ghos, he commented, studying her face and the way the shadows pooled under her, or the veiled light crossed over her pale coat. If she were a real ghost, wouldn't that mean the light would pass through her? The shadows wouldn't be there? But he didn't doubt it. Her eyes were vacant — these pale, empty things.

Mou was fixated with her face, and murmured softly, ah you dead?

He went on to say some more ghost stuff, and the pale child merely nodded, not sure what he was saying. He seemed to study her for a moment before he asked, seemingly out of the blue: Are you dead? He looked at her face and she stared right back. With a grin put on her face the ghost replied: "Does it matter?" She knew that wolves had a very set image of what a 'ghost' was like, but had any of them ever met any, and who was to say that ghosts didn't appear in various shapes and forms anyway.

The pale child giggled and then suddenly turned around as a flash of movement captured her attention. It was just tiny splotches of light breaking through the trees further up ahead, she soon noted, but paired with the incomprehensible whispers in her ears the spirit decided to follow them anyway. "See ya, Bird!" she called out and she dashed off without waiting to see if Bird followed along.