Fairspell Meadow Auspicious Anomalancy

@Corvus

The cold, while the herculean gusts tenaciously pulled the coat of the numb woman, it did little to succeed in trying to pry her mind from the goal; to return home.
This place, these woods, they held so little interest to her. Very little of her interest straddled the happenings of mortals...as expressive as they were, they seemed to lack the refinement, the sophisticated omnipotence that she bore as a Celestial. However much she yearned to rise above them, she could not prove her greatness. The other Celestials had her cursed to remain in a ragged form of a dog, easily capable of defeat with a lithe and too-flattering body. It was supreme at seducing, yet morbid at defense. Hateful garnets overcast the slender rivets of ebony silk, the creases of the midnight river parted with glistens of blood-scorned timber. She loathed this mess she had gotten herself in - she couldn’t argue with the logic of her banishment, but it was simply outrageous! And for her to be reborn repeatedly until her punishment was finished? This was torment in its most cruel of forms!

The Witch faced the pummel of frigid winds, almost painfully craving the rapture of her existence simply so she could experiment with who she would come back as- but the act of dying was foreign to her. The aspect of pain was unknown to her. She was the Goddess of Paradox - she knew nothing of pain. And slightly mortified by even succumbing to it...fear sprouted in her heart.

“Oh stars above,” she breathed shakily into the stars who watched her dismay with glittering eyes in the nocturnal overhang. “I don’t want to die...”

He was chilled to the bone, and whipping winds battered at his frame as if the world wanted nothing more than to knock him down. And yet, Corvus was unfaltering in his pace. There was no place to hide, and given the choice between taking the wind lying down or moving forwards, he chose the latter. He needed to keep a move on, to find a new place to call home, if only temporarily. Winter was no time to be a lone wolf. For now, Corvus let the wind carry away the heavy thoughts that had been weighing down on his mind, as he was exhausted from holding onto them the whole way here.

An inky figure became apparent up ahead — a woman, it seemed. Her ruby gaze was fixed on the starry sky. Upon closer inspection, he could make out various woody colors mixed into her pelt like paint on a palette. Corvus didn't plan on speaking or otherwise interacting with her, but as the wind gave for a moment, she uttered something strange: "Oh stars above, I don't want to die..." He furrowed his brows, wondering what had prompted her to say this.

Why do you fear the inevitable? The nosferatu asked. He stood close enough to be heard but distant enough to exist as a mere shadow in the corner of her eye. Death was the most inevitable result of all living things; it was a threat to some, relief to others — but to Corvus, it was simply a fact that he accepted. He'd danced with death more than once, and while his instincts kept him yearning — fighting, even — for life, he would never be so foolish as to try escaping such a concrete fate forever. With an inquisitive tilt of his dark head, Corvus awaited an answer.

"You'll think me mad," she predicted with unnatural ease to the void whom had appeared in her proximity. Garnet jewels searched the upper circumfrence of their planet as she took in this wonderous night again, and again. All mortals who had listened to her tales cycles before laughed, called the Witch a lunatic, a Divine, insane! It was pathetic, and she would have no more of it. The prideful woman would keep her true identity in her mind, and in her mind, alone.

The moon scoured them over, flittering it's beams between a filter of filler clouds, all hiding the majesty of the pale bliss. It streaked delicately over them, and with a slight twist of a regal crown over slender shoulder, the Goddess turned to seek who had the gall to intrude upon her most personal muse. They crispened over the ebony soul, roaming slowly from the face and sliding down a chistled cheek to an ivory collared nape. It roved over the few scars that winked mysteriously in the lunar wisps to her before she snapped her fiendish gaze back to his matching own.

With a second passing between the pair evenly bleeding into two, the lock broke as she pulled it back to herself and drifted it across the seamless view before her. With the winds swifting around them, they both looked regal. Nature respected these two, as did seemingly the universe.

"You'll think me mad," The woman insisted without even having glanced at him yet. She must've been quite sure of this, which only made him more curious; many felt the way she did, and though the mercenary did not, all the reasons he'd heard were rather understandable. What reason could be so strange that he'd think her mad? She finally peered over a slender shoulder to give him a once-over, and his flesh burned from the trails her red-hot eyes left as they traveled down his form. They eventually snapped back to meet his own fiery gaze, and he held them for several heartbeats, eyes burning with nothing but raw curiosity. She then relinquished her eyes, and it was then he finally asked another question:

Is that a bad thing? Corvus had met many oddities, especially at this hour, but it was something he adored about night travel. He considered himself one of them; few denied their natural rhythm to traverse beneath a blanket of darkness. Even if he did think her mad, that didn't necessarily mean he wouldn't respect her. He stood firm against the wind like an obsidian mountain, magma eyes unwavering from the painted stranger before him.

For once, the Goddess of Paradox was given a taste of her own medicine. The question had completely shut her down as she was caught in the blossoming revelation; it truly didn’t matter what others had thought of her. But as a Divine, that was what the Gods preyed upon, belief, faith in their craft, evidence of their works. To be absent and unknown was to be left behind, cast aside as one of the lesser deities... her pride would allow no such thing.

But in fact, this was the point Corvus had seemingly made...
Thus the helix of unknown began its unravel.

Having been bested at her own craft, the voluptuous vixen turned around this time to fully give her attention to this male - he had earned it. The winds which swam around them glazed the cologne of this soul against her mind as it rose against her fur and did the same for the company. She was unaware of it, but as she christened him with her inquisitional gaze, she had a slight of problem of trying to figure whether this man too had been a Celestial cursed to walk the mortal world too for errored deeds, or whether he was simply another passerby who hadn’t evoked her indignation, yet.

So a test would come to be. Should he have something besides Wolfspeak under his guise, she would try her damndest to figure who he might be.

“Kodel dartovi zhol dalykas kia j'us?”

The words left her lips as a hex might, a silken ribbon of mystery that dared the beholder to simply reach out and caress it, to allow it a purchase of glamours against the heart, against the mind. It was no such thing, as it was a mere question. But the language itself spoke of history, of rich and thick meaning. It was an old language, and should he have anything to do with the Divines, he would know of it.

His question was enough to earn her attention once more. The strange woman studied him now, and Corvus let her, equally curious about what was going on in the stranger's mind; he wished to pick her apart just as she did him. Surprising and intriguing him further, she spoke, this time in a language he did not recognize nor comprehend. The lilt in her tone implied it was a question, but that was the most he could make out. An amused smirk found its way onto his features as his sharp mind was thoroughly stimulated.

What prompts you to ask me a question in another language, mad woman? The shadow asked in turn, adding his own foreign taunt just to see how she reacted. He forewent asking what it was she said, for if she wanted him to understand, she would say it in the common tongue. Knowing the "why" behind others' actions was what interested him most, anyway, for it allowed him to peer into one's mind and see what made them tick.

At first her heart fell as she began to list this lupine as yet another mortal
who’d come to bring her nothing but pointless words, useless explanations, wasted time. Time was eternal for her, but who was to say this form held enough for her to feel satisfied? She knew wolves did not live long...the catalyst she had been bore into was already 3 cycles past. She had nothing to be proud for in this body. And this man was making it no better, his basic wolfspeak blaring plainly in her ear despite his rather smooth gravel of voice.

However, as the Witch began writing this fool off as a heathen, the peon spoke something she did in fact know-
and was fully capable of reciprocating.

Romanian, it was called, and she had known well of this language, and many more from her innumerable happenings within her expand of time.

“To truly see whether it is madness or a fault in the Ancients that you seem familiar to me..” She replied with her transitioning betwixt the Tsis to the Romanian as though both had been native languages to her. A minor glint of ivory sleeked out from beneath a delicious lip as she mirrored his smirk. Perhaps he was something much more than the dirt she was surrounded by. He may have forgotten Tsis and been a Divine for all she could theorize. He must have been here longer than she, then. Either that, or Ordana cursed him forgetfulness of his Celestial existence.
There was much she had to find out from him. And should he be a forlorn Celestial, she might be able to help him mentally recover his Divine past.

“Your name?“ she asked with a slight pause behind her words as she reverted back to the primal wolfspeak laying bitterly and choppingly on her tongue.

His brows shot up in genuine surprise at hearing this stranger reply in Romanian. She was the first trilingual wolf he'd met — impressive. What were the chances of her knowing Romanian, of all languages? If he believed in fate, then he, too, would've thought this interaction a key moment of his life. But Corvus did not believe in such a thing, so amusement returned on his features. She spoke of "the Ancients" and familiarity, which surely held no bearing in reality. Still, he did not comment on it for now, as she asked to know his name.

Corvus, He offered simply. And yours?

She relished the surprise, glad her blush could be hidden by fur and dark flesh. Her banner however began a whimsical swish, bellowing a gentle curvature of frosty wind behind her.

“[font]Zafina[/font],” she returned the part of names. He deserved her true calling, as he had given her something to genuinely smile about. With others, she had dubbed her more common alias, ‘Enchantress’.

“Does you name have a meaning?” She asked, curiousity twisting her demeanor to be more vocally inviting.

'Zafina', He repeated to lock it in his memory. That's a beautiful name. It had an exotic flare that sounded all the more pleasing when it rolled off of her tongue. Zafina asked what his name meant, and he answered, It means 'Raven' in Latin. Little did she or anyone else in these wilds know, 'Corvus' was simply a nickname. To give his true name — a relic of who he was years ago — would feel too intimate.

Corvus was reminded of the oppressive conditions they were standing in when a particularly brutish wind slammed into him like a tidal wave, causing his body to brace against it. When the wind calmed, he said, This isn't the best place for conversation. I'm headed eastward; you may join me, if you wish.

The compliment stunned her partially, and while she wasn’t vain extremely on her exterior, the Witch knew well the excellence of her name. It was a coveted thing, as all particular names should be. Why it was such a startle to her coming from a potentially forgetful Celestial was beyond whatever she could have imagined. Had she known that he had only given her a nickname however, the Goddess would have possibly been hurt, a bit. All mortals seemed to be was forever on the hunt to hurt one another.
But alas, she had no clue.

The vivacity of the wind had been lost to her, as all elements of this plane were. But she watched as it tore and shrieked at him, pulling the ravenesque before her like some tantruming fool. Immediately, pity began to delicately settle across her heart as Zafina found this Celestial waning of his brilliance.

With a nod, the Awakened followed the ebonian as he turned across the cliffs edge, the horrendous waves of air attempting now to decide between pushing the man to his demise, or yanking him back to apologize for it’s abrasive behavior. Banner blowing on the trail of the wind, it danced as did her fur, as miniature plumes of a soot’s final smokes would. As he led the way however, her gems felt over the scars upon him over and over as she tried to piece together what might have gotten so close to the bird.

“Corvione was an Italian pack i’d seen in the eastern half of this world. Operated as a mafia would, and their sigil was the Raven,” she shared her traveler knowledge with the man, the bud of her interest in him slightly feeding upon the topic of his name. “While ‘Hrafn‘ is Nordic for raven.” Was she talking to much?

She had only said a few sentences, but she felt she had maybe shared too much. The beauty then silenced herself, thinking perhaps this mortal valued silence more than a Divine’s literature lesson. Blood moon jewels stuck to the trail ahead.

He was pleased to have a partner to travel with. While not a gregarious creature, Corvus was still a wolf, and the long stretch of solitude was wearing away at his mind. The nosferatu felt her gaze rove him again, hot gems dragging over his scars. He didn't mind much, though he wondered what she was thinking. Everyone formed their own judgement of him based on them alone.

Conversation was a welcome distraction. Zafina mentioned a pack she'd encountered in the past, a memory sparked by his name. Where is this 'Eastern half of the world'? That sounds far from here, Was his puzzled reply. Maybe she was talking nonsense again. If that were the case, he was interested to know how she believed she got there.

They neared the edge of the meadow, and trees began to trickle into view. Corvus steered himself towards a girthy one, desperate to have some reprieve from the vicious wind. He sat down next to the massive trunk, and it was then he realized how weary his body was not only from constant travel but fighting the elements. The mercenary wouldn't complain, though.

She truly had no idea whether it would be best to tell this wolf all of her travels- she couldn’t trust him to view her as a truthful thing as opposed to a lunatic, raving on places no mortal wolf had even laid ears upon.
But was it not he who asked that conflicting question that had chained her inquisition to him? He had subtly and invertedly told her to shed her worries over the morals and subliminals of organics - she was a Celestial. There should be no crease within her heart or mind by mortal doings.

“T’was upon a peninsula, one bordered on nigh all sides by warm waters and glittering sands. There, dogs roam freely through the streets, some owned by bipeds, while others are randomed spawns. If they wandered too far from their master’s gardens however, they became meals or even statements for wolves just beyond their fence. Those wolves belonged to a pack named the Corvione Family.”

Truthfully she couldn’t remember her journey to there or even back. It could have been another lifetime she lived, a different form, a different era. But some memories she kept were the only ones as closely connected to her as she could recall. “It is very far,” she confirmed with a wistful cant of her head to the questioning male.

Soon the pair had come to a straggle of trees, smaller coniferous trees and lowly bushes that braved these winds with their stout resilience. Zafina kept in tandem with his steps, fur resuming its regular stance as the hurdle of winds were minimized. She chose her own tree trunk, though it was slightly closer to his as her tail slightly overlapped his own.

“Where did you originate from?” She asked, wondering what he called ‘home’. If that place was that.

Corvus listened intently to her explanation, nonchalant as he appeared. She explained that this pack lived near where humans resided — wherever that was. It must've been further than his wolf-brain could imagine, as he'd traveled far and wide across this land and never even witnessed a human firsthand, much less civilization. Zafina didn't explain how she found such a place, but it wasn't impossible for her to have truly done so, he supposed. He remembered the wolfdog with the strange name that escaped him; she had lived around humans for a time.

What a strange place. You must really get around, He commented, deciding to assume what she explained was truthful. Humans were bizarre creatures, from what he'd heard.

Zafina took a seat nearby, shielded from the weather by her own tree. Corvus registered that her dark tail laid atop his own, but he kept his where it was. He wasn't at all bothered by touch, so long as one wasn't being overly clingy. Corvus was biased even moreso by the fact that she was a woman, and he'd be lying if he said Zafina were anything short of enchantingly beautiful. But he wasn't of the overly flirtatious sort, nor could he be easily flustered, so Corvus remained composed in her presence. Still, this stranger held his interest in many ways, and he desired to learn more about her.

But now, it was her inquiring about him. His past was something he kept closely guarded, for speaking about it was the equivalent of re-opening his scars just to watch them bleed again. A general explanation didn't cut too deeply, though. I lived in wilds a ways from these as part of a mercenary band, Corvus answered curtly to minimize what further questions she would ask about it. And you? He asked her, desiring to shift the focus from himself.

As much as he desired to pull her mind from him, the raven only dragged her curiousity further from the cliffhanger on such an abrupt chain. It was pulling her, and so destined her tongue, her urge to know more pulled her to a slight lean closer to him. Fate forced her to be so questioning, her desire as a Celestial to know as much as possible about something that was worth her interest. “You travelled with hired thugs? Did they too speak Romanian, or was this the speak of your home?” The Goddess clearly could see this man as a rogue, but she knew nothing about his personality as a whole. She could feel the aspect of loner life echoing in his words, and they originated from the mind. His energy was partially that of an introvert...it hadn’t garnered a detour from the arcanist, as she was unfazed by such an abrasive conspiracy. Or rather, he hadn’t snapped at her yet to where she was forced back from inquiring more of him.

“I-“ she began, pulling herself away. She was conflicted on once again telling the truth to him and risk the bash of her sanity, or lying to him as she did the rest of the mortal plane. But should he be a Divine himself, wouldn’t he see she was truthful? He was forgetting his own origin, and she couldn’t pinpoint whether his own birth was in fact mortal-
or whether he was a deity himself.

“I come from a place where no rules lie. Where the universe is your’s to command, where you can damn or replicate whatever you excel in, where your craft truly matters to existence as a whole. The only laws are the ones you and your pupils create, together. It too, is far away,“ she turned a narrow crown to the heavens above them, glistening garnets cresting the dark blue sea, glittering with the sparkles that dotted across the navy curtain. “I wish to return, someday.“ That was all she could give him - but it was as close to the truth as she could dabble in.

Unfortunately, his vagueness only drew her in, and Zafina eagerly shot several more inquiries about his past at him. They grazed his skin like silver bullets. Still, he answered, if only because he'd taken a liking to her. Though, the raven shifted in slight discomfort, flicking his ember eyes away for a moment before he spoke. I wouldn't call them thugs... we were soldiers through and through. Some shared my mother tongue, but they hailed from backgrounds as varied as you could imagine. "Some" included his brother, which he loathed to think about. After a moment, he added, I lost all of them in one way or another. I don't think about my past often. It was the closest Corvus got to admitting to someone that thinking about his history hurt.

When he turned the question on her, she herself felt conflicted on what to say, and he had an inkling as to why. But she decided to answer what he presumed was truthful in her eyes. Corvus listened, though he did not understand. It sounded like a religion of sorts, and so he would treat it as such — though he didn't share her worldview, he would respect it. It was fruitless to try and sway a mind so deeply rooted in a belief. While I don't follow, I hope you may achieve the peace you desire, Said the raven straight from his bruised, dark heart.

The Witch hadn’t ever been denied, but she felt almost regretful of asking such things, seeing his handsome face withdraw in a pull from the comfort they once moderately shared. As true to her craft, the topsy turvy Goddess had been graced with parallel goals and aligned enjoyment with her and her company before her personal disaster shattered it all to a spray of glass across the tiled floor. And now, they were both doomed to walk on the shards with bare feet and naked hearts.

”I apologize-“, it flew out from sleek lips before her mind had even authorized such words to be scandalously tossed from her ruinous tongue. But did she apologize for her fault? Or for his loss? The Divine couldn’t pinpoint her dismay...she only felt the painful suffocation erode her rationale should she not empathize with him. Or sympathize, rather, ash this was for the mysterious mortal.
Because he had clearly stated that he was no Divine. Perhaps he just needed a refresher?

No. She couldn’t risk pushing him away, anymore..

“There will be no peace upon my return. There will only be ruin, and vengeance. Execution of the masses, and rectification of my wrongful punishment.“ she beamed a dreamy smile at him, for once her true wishes being emotionally coherence from her own damaged heart. “Only then will peace come to be.“. Truthfully she was imprisoned here because she was in the wrong. But it wasn’t intentional...and surely that wasn’t worth being eternally damned, was it?

Turning back to Corvus, she simply laid it out, honesty shaping her words to be almost emotionally innocent. “Corvus - I have reasons to believe you might be a Divine.”

She apologized, though it seemed to surprise her for those words to spill forth, oddly. Whether she was apologizing for asking or for the losses he'd suffered, he wasn't sure, but the gesture was appreciated. Either way, his answer was the same: It's fine. And like that, the iron gates to his mind slammed shut. Corvus decided not to comment or inquire anything regarding her spiel, which would have been perturbing if she were talking about the physical realm. Well, her vengeful nature was still reason for concern, he supposed, but her own concerns seemed to lie only with this celestial place.

He blinked at what she said next. Oh? And why is that?

He didn't take to calling her psychotic, but he hadn't exactly offered her anything but a question. Perhaps he knew a woman's scorn was more powerful than what some imagined. Especially if they were a Divine.

"You just have that aura about you. Something that does not belong here on this planet." She turned to him, analyzing him even more, but the more she did, the more she ended up knotting herself in more and more questions dealing with him. So in the end of it all, she simply turned to the heavens and fell silent.

How could she possibly explain it to him without him too thinking she was absolutely mad? Despite his question to her which embarked this quest to see who he was as an entity, she couldn't pull herself away from the drowning pessimism that he was like every one else.

"You just have that aura about you. Something that does not belong here on this planet."

Corvus' dark jaws split wide open, and a piercing cackle erupted from his throat. He tossed his head back as he guffawed. Once he finally collected himself, the nosferatu said, I must truly be mad, then. He spoke with a pointed grin on his face, ivory teeth flashing against his dark pelage. Corvus hadn't laughed at her, but rather the sheer irony of her words. How insane did one have to be for someone to think they were quite literally not of this world?

She turned to him as though he had admitted he has just contracted the plague. At first, it was disgust with herself that she had believed him to be different than the rest that had called her the crazy one, but her disgust melted into sympathy as he labeled himself as the lunatic. Had something happened? Who dared to call him crazy? He was the sanest she had crossed since being stuck here. She, in some terrible way, felt as though she had to protect him from those who simply didn’t understand them.

“No, you are not. You are the only one I’ve come to meet who seems to have any sense, Corvus. It is not insanity which you emanate, but something much more. A hidden power of yours that you simply haven’t exhibited yet. But it is there, and I feel it, and recognize it’s potential...even if mindless pawns do not.”

The mystic woman stood and stretched, arching a fine weave of dark fur tinged with hearthstone into signature eclipse of a nimble spine. Forelimbs held her in the close embrace of the mountain edge as hinds pushed her derrière scandalously to the stars. A lithe roll of shoulders crafted a tide of ebony to wash with the mahogany and crested with the lighter rusty cream of her most secret of divine define across lean hips and through thighs. Banner curved over her streamline back, draping the illusion of her being more feline than lupine. But to her, she was neither, and all.

After her muscles had been reinvigorated, she curled her spine back with a merciless sway, and turned to the raven. Did he have plans to head anywhere?