Swiftcurrent Creek Indigo

@Akavir <3

How strange this earth is, where vast canopies of green hides the evening sky and the air of late spring tangles with a thousand voices. The trees shake themselves thickly in the wind as woodfowl dart through their overlapping branches. Without clear vistas and the sun to scorch her back, she no longer felt the gods watching from above. It causes the hebsut to tread cautiously. Perhaps that is a secret of this place.

There were three days between herself and Akashingo. It was only after the miles fell away beneath her feet that Eset contemplated the wisdom of her choice. No matter how she endeavored to ease her mind, thoughts inevitably returned to searing guilt. It pained her to leave, to abandon her post, to withdraw in shame from the thing other women waited the epoch of their youth for.

Normal women; wolf women. Her heart was a knife’s twist.

She moves implacably ahead, pursuing the eastern trails once told to her by @Moss. When the air smells of petrichor and the land tightens with trees, her pace eases. The presence of a claim nearby reminds her she is not alone in this wood and must conduct herself carefully. She slinks along the perimeter of the river, wide ears scanning for sounds of wolf-kind. In the morning she would greet them, but tonight all Eset wanted to contemplate was a bath.

Swiftly she stoops at the banks for a drink. The brook is ice against her teeth but she welcomes the shock of its waters and watches as the current pulls sand from her tired ankles.

The past few weeks had been wrought with trespassers and defense. Wrung out in so many ways—particularly the realization of just where the silver wolf who kept the key to his soul had run to. Leaden limbs trailed the length of his creek—an ebony ear swiveling to the faintest sound of the fresh spring peepers as the sun begun to nestle away for the night.

His sixth year listening to them—each year had always been in a different place, or varying presences in his life… the majority of them having come and gone.

But the ambience was one he looked forward to—the soothing symphony of chirps signifying the new life that could be—a cadence that was calming. It was these little moments in life he lived for.

The splash of cold water from the bank edges dampen his fur along his dark limbs. His pale eyes gleaming as they cast ahead—and while the silhouette of night falls, distinctly, there’s another figure there, and he feels the weight of the world press down upon him once more—

—was this yet another wolf to defend his home or family from?

Stoical—he utters a low croon to demand the lissome creature’s attention—as he glides closer, noting the embers of the she-wolf’s gaze as she laps at the water. Distinctly, something about her stills him—unease, perhaps.

The faintest recalling of the hot sun and burning sands of the lands that had terrified the woman who had crushed him.

Amid the birdsong, his voice drops from the sky, striking the tops of her ears with its firm command. She wrenches her chin from the creek, hackles bristling in the subsequent reactions of shock and alarm. Her wide gaze catches first on a sable-black silhouette before drawing north towards his eyes, reflective and startlingly lambent in the settling dusk. He approaches slowly, in a manner which exudes dominance over this place.

He is intimidating. She stiffens.

Unable to intuit his movements, Eset stands wary of him. Would he sense the years of servitude upon her, in the way she casts her eyes low? She would not pass for an aristocrat to avoid the brunt of a cruel regime, but perhaps a lady, if her mannerisms were dignified.

The hebsut brings in a slow breath and bridles taller, dressing in an imitation of elegance. She replies with a low croon of her own, in his own language, but sharper. Edged where it should have been smooth. Not the pretty song of a wolf, but the dithering voice of a coyote.