Sorry this took so long to get to!
He trailed out. The storm had died, it having left overnight in complete contrast to how it swept in.
He wandered to the lake, wondering if it was frozen.
It wasn't, not fully anyway. It looked liquid towards the centre, but the edges might be frozen enough to walk on. But he wasn't going to risk it.
His plan was to pass halfway around and cross back across it, but that wasn't going to happen now.
Most of his way around, he spotted...a shuffling fluff. A sandy cloud in the sparkling expanse of Kintla.
He clocked his head, pausing for a moment.
Then, Rowan decided it was probably just a funny-looking wolf, and chuffed, trotting closer with a waving tail and head dipped in greeting.
He grinned when he neared.
"Hey," he chirped.
She lifted her gaze, seemingly not expecting him.
No expected him to appear.
Was he invisible to all until he made sound?
Did Mephala shroud him?
She shrunk in on herself. Withdrawing from him.
He blinked, pausing. She paused too, and spoke.
Foreign words he didn't understand. He'd never heard someone talk...jibberish. He'd never heard another language, so really Rowan thought this woman had something wrong with her.
"Um...hello?" He repeated. Unsure of himself. Of her.
"Are you ok?" Maybe she was sick.
The waterwitch felt her brow furrow at the sudden shift in the rusted silver's demeanor, pulling back half a step uncertainly as her bicolored optics flickered over his features in search of clues. The blonde shifted her weight between tiny white paws, agitated at the thought of provoking him.
"Um..hello?" He reiterated in tight tones of concern as his gilded gaze pinched with alarm, much like her own had at the inexplicable change in ambiance. "- you okay?"
These words Imaq knew, and it was quite clear he could not speak her family's language, so the aureate wildling bobbed her creamy crown in affirmation and allowed a reassuring smile to spread across her lips warmly like a spill of slow honey.
"Eh..'ello," she tried again in the common tongue with a nervous dip of her head, like a little golden bird -- her words warbling with clumsiness and thickly accented, as if the raspy sounds came from deep in her throat. "All vell," was how the shaman answered his question, lacking grace or poise in this dialect.
"Imaq not..." what was the word? "..talk vell."
"I come from far to the north, from over the ice seas. I lived on a huge island there called Kalaallit Nunaat. We speak Kalaallit tongue there," the flaxen fae switched back to her own language as she tried to explain, unable to relay her thoughts in his and hoping to make him understand that she could not speak it by weaving together a few more lyrical sentences for the male to dissect.
Seelie's 'cracked', tropical gaze darted over his dovedown countenance before falling to rest neatly upon the creek gravel shores stretching between them, half afraid he wouldn't understand at all.
She repeated back to him a greeting.
One he could actually understand.
He tilted his head, thinking.
So she wasn't insane. Just different.
Imaq not talk well.
He blinked as she warbled on in her own tongue. probably trying to get him to understand her. Or to explain herself.
Some words sounded like they might resemble some of his, but he wasn't sure. North. That was one that caught his attention.
"So you're from the north?"
Maybe she'd understand. Maybe she would teach him her language.
He sat down with a slight smile. She seemed tentative and perhaps shy.
He wanted to help her, being in this land where many wouldn't understand her wouldn't be too easy.
An excited confirmation had Rowan grinning and tail thumping.
They were making headway at least. They could understand bits of each other. More words meant more to learn.
To potentially understand.
This dainty floof was called Imaq and came from the north.
She crept closer, daring to ignite friendship fully. She was tiny. Smaller than any of the wolves he'd seen. Real wolves.
She was mixed with some things that made her pelt patchy and ears flop.
He found it sort of fetching, though.
She sniffed his scent, and he did too, inhaling the scent that marked her as alone. A female, older than him. He almost touched her, wanting to see how thick her plushness really was when her tongue swiped across his maw.
Rowan touched his nose to hers, his own tongue lapping her.
Friends.
She pulled back to talk. To share more; no, to ask about him.
"Rowan," he replied, then tilted his head back to the woods, catching the dark splotch of a shadow in the distance. "Home. Woods." He stood, turning to the side to show her, to invite her along with him with a tilt and bow of his head and soft wag of his tail.
Even if his words didn't work, his body would.
"Rowan." It wasn't quite like anything the cur had heard before; her auds perking to attention attentively as if to commit the sound to memory.
"Home. -." The youth, Rowan, turned side face -- gesturing with a sweep of his bronzed crown towards the distant tangle of dark woods on the southern horizon. Perhaps this was the word for a forest. Imaq's fractured gaze flitted restlessly between him and the shadewood, wondering if it was wise to follow him into unknown territory.
There was a tangle of scents perfuming Rowan's copper pelt, alerting her to the fact that he belonged to a
Kalaallit of sorts. The outcast knew that such family bands were rarely so warm with strangers near their homes, never mind inviting them over their threshold. She was wary but it was tempting -- what if he meant for her to stay?
The waterwitch, cursed by death, had been turned away for more than one change of the seasons. Too different, too blemished, too small. The road had been incredibly lonely and the shepherd wasn't sure when another opportunity like this might present itself.
"Jah," she answered after a calculative deliberation. Her eyes flickered back to him, her hesitance not entirely hidden beneath a facade of composure. It had been some time since the exile had interacted with such a large group and she was vastly uneducated in the ways of this land. Imaq dreaded the thought of blundering, shaming herself, but hoped at the very least to learn more about Rowan and his people.
Selkie mimicked his posture vaguely, dipping in a wriggling, playful bow to smack her paws lightly on the ground. An excited grin unfurled upon her merle lips, a pale paw reaching out to bat at his own silver-ticked appendage.
Let's go! Her mirthful seaglass gaze seemed to say silently.
I believe this is the last from me! We can have a thread with Rowan showing her BFW if you're up for it? :)
I'm down! I'll start one for us!
She paused, thinking.
He didn't blame her. Following a stranger to their deep, dark home who can't even speak the same language.
He didn't push. Just waited for her. Tail still softly waving. He was patient.
Then. A soft confirmation. Jah.
He grinned wide, dropping to a half play bow. Inviting her to run across the flatlands for a little bit.
Mirroring her playful posture. Her excitement from being asked or something. He wasn't certain why, but it was better than begrudging or wary.
He took off towards the woods, sure the woman - Imaq - was in tow. Slowing just enough to not lose her in the swarths of brilliant white marring the landscape.