she stalks the mounds as dusk only just begins to fall, the sun teetering above the horizon and the sky dampened with an orange glow. it isn't quite the magnificiant sunset that sets the sky ablaze, but instead infuses the landscape below with the same glow as above. rain had let off perhaps a quarter of an hour before, and the thin layer of ice that coats everything only adds to the strangeness of the evening, reflecting dying sunlight and setting itself ablaze.
the pika swings between her jaws as she comes to rest, finding finally a suitable mound on which to devour the catch. drapping herself elegantly over the rocky earth, she does so immidiately, making quick work of the scrawny body, green gaze simmering as it rests somewhere on the horizon, unsure of where next the itch will take her.
@Wintersbane! Sorry for the shortness
for the second time within the week wintersbane makes his way to kildeer rest, though unlike the first time he was not necessarily tracking the movements of the small, now spooked from the hunt, herd. no doubt it would be some time before they circled back to the rest ( if they did at all ) and he wasn't too bothered. there were other, larger herds spread throughout the taiga. no, he does a routine sweep of the territories nearest to permafrost hollow before he would branch out in the territories more far away, taking stock ( again ) of resources, prey movements, and looking to see if any lone wolves had wandered this far east.
wintersbane knows that, once more, he will have to venture out in a more in-depth recruitment drive soon but he is glad to be home, to be giving the vartija's actual foundation the attention and time it deserves, to be among the wolves he has already amassed that he is reluctant to leave it so soon after his return. derg and faeryn have expressed interest in helping to recruit and he assumes that vonn is trying while he works to repay his life debt and though wintersbane is of the belief that as sotaherra the exhaustive job should be his own but he's not too proud to not allow those loyal to him to not assist if they want to.
a sweep of his glacial gaze catches what strikes him as out of the ordinary in the kildeer rest today. another is draped elegantly over it as if the rocky bed is built for a queen. he smells her, and then her kill, the pungent scent of blood unmistakable. with interest piqued and potential opportunity laid out before him he shifts his direction and lets out a low chuff to announce his presence upon his approach, footfalls slowing to a cease a few feet away not wanting to encroach upon her personal space.
the man who appoaches betwixt the rocks carries himself with all the pride his stature, his looks, allow, and the cracks a rib between her teeth as she watches him. he is a titan; like Vaati, but where he is primitive strength this man is honed elegance, carefully wielded power. she draws herself up as he announces his prescence. she does not bother to feign protectiveness over her kill, there is little left but scrapes that only crows would fight over. up close, it is easier to pick out the intricacies of the man. of them, one burns a clear marker on his shouder, one that shows his allegiances clear as day. her expression does not change but there exists now a stiffness to her. "you are a dark brother." her gaze is cool yet steady, she does not expecting him to deny this when the proof is there, clear as day, but there is no edge to her tone yet.
the snap of bone is loud, disrupting the almost silence that temporarily exists in kildeer rest. the birds are quiet for once, perhaps occupied elsewhere or nestled down, weary of the two canines in their territory. wintersbane masks his surprise that she knows what the crimson paw print upon his shoulder means; most do not. the woman's statement, however, tells him plenty about her. that she not only knew of blackfeather woods but that she was, at one point, one of them. she had to be. the dark brotherhood was a secret and knowledge about the sect came at the price of loyalty and devotion. yet, he does not recognize her and thus is left to assume that she had been one of them between his initial departure and his return.
he won't deny it and yet he isn't sure that you are applies to him any longer. beyond the fact that he'd parted ways with them, the pack no longer existed. surely there are sects outside of teekon wilds but he has no desire to seek them out. the wilds are his home and he has taken from the dark woods all that the daedra had to teach him. i was,
wintersbane corrects. as the pack declined i took my leave and sometime shortly after, it disbanded.
but perhaps once a dark brother, always a dark brother held true. nevertheless, he refreshed the mark when it began to fade. because the mark now worked to serve his own purpose besides being a memento of the dark priestess whom had left the corporeal world. it was a physical reminder of relmyna and thus he cherished it.
well, this is new. her brow quirks a fraction, the only visible sign of her disbelief she allows slip through her mask. blackfeather did not seem the type of pack to simply disband; like a plague, or a resistant strain of mold, it was always a dark blotch on the flatlands. she doubts for a second his words; but it is an odd thing to lie about seeing as she could simply cross the mountains and see their territory for herself, if she so wished. so she accepts his word a moment later, gaze drifting from his shoulder.
"blood and fear," she echoes, the words soft on her tongue, and for a second she wonders if she truly spoke them aloud. "the Wilds are better off than, for it." she doubted that they'd stay down, though. she isn't sure if she believes the I was, but wonders if this is merely paranoia. still, her doubts have kept her alive thus far. she knows not all the brothers were child-killing lunatics, but they were all certianly dangerous. "and now?" she asks, for the mark is fresh and the man's scent is not the only one on his pelt.
she mentions that the wilds is better off for it and part of wintersbane can't help but agree. he'd spent so much of his cubhood resenting them but the shadow he'd joined more recently was just that: a shadow, a weak echo of the pack it'd once been. it was an echo of what it'd once been, on the cusp of a war that it couldn't win. disbanding it was a mercy.
probably more to the wolves of the dark woods than it was the wolves of the wild. she must've not been around much if she didn't know that the dark woods hadn't been much of a threat to them anymore. retaliation had only been expected.
and now? she asks him. wintersbane looks at her contemplatively before he peers down at his own shoulder and then back to her. now,
he draws the word on a breath, wondering how much he wants to delve into his personal reason for still wearing it. it serves my own purpose, marking me as a sotaherra as i attempt to recruit for my pack and as a physical memento to the dark priestess that i loved who passed away.
it wasn't that he couldn't bring himself to say that she died but those words sounded so callous to him that he shies away from them.
she accepts his words, she ought to have expected such from a pack that ousted it's most powerful and thought to cull its young. perhaps she ought to have asked more of how they'd come to fall, of those she remembered, but found she did not care is the least. there is some closure in knowing it's dark stain to be gone - as much as it is possible to be - and she turns her attention more fully to the man.
her gaze is light; settled on him but not piercing in its focus. she sifts through his words with utmost care, however, repeating the foreign word in her thoughts, the way he says passed instead of died. perhaps they mean nothing, simply learned patterns of speech, but it has aided her in the past to think that these choices, intricacies, have some meaning. loved, he says, but she's never known it; only lust and infatuation and longing for the touch of another. "a better purpose, then." the man is interesting enough, but she sated and wishes to find some quiet place to clean the blood from her fur. "good luck." if the man's group is strong, perhaps she'll find it here again, if she's wanting. with that, she rises and heads east.