Neverwinter Forest slower & slower

@Lyra

Outside the forest, it rained. From the heavens fell a type of precipitation that was neither ice nor water — but it was freezing. The sheer lack of sunlight allowing the moisture to linger in his pelt for far longer than he would like, and a penetrating chill easily set it, so Komodo sought shelter in the woods that lay just to the south. Here, he had once considered weathering the hurricane of yesteryear, for the pines stood strong and provided a respectable shelter. In the end, the earthstalker had been driven coast-ward by nothing more than divine purpose. Now, here, the forest played the role it had always meant to.

To occupy himself during what was certainly the year’s bleakest season, the brute set to shuffling about the woods’ carpet of thick ferns and tried to pilfer whatever treasures winter had left him.  

Forget them. Forget him. She would forget those deceitful traitors and dash their faces from her memory. They didn't deserve to live there anymore. He didn't deserve it. What a waste. Lyra truly had felt something for Terance, but the feeling within her chest had flickered out of existence. He had chosen his path and abandoned them in favour of a weak man and his dull Redhawk girl. The green-eyed boy was as good as dead to her.

With a cool composure that rarely came to the most turbulent head of the Cerberus, Lyra strode through the dark forest with a sense of quiet confidence. She had picked up on the scent of another, a man, but the smell was wild and earthen, peppered with the unmistakeable aroma of plants and herbs. It drove her towards him with an insatiable curiousity. There. Even with the darkness, courtesy of the heavy cloud cover, she spotted him shuffling amongst the trees, a brute of a wolf who was nosing through the undergrowth as if he were looking for something.

Lyra approached with ease, letting her tail wave gently in an amicable nature as a soft smile played upon her features, waiting for him to notice her presence.

There was not much to be found, especially not so late in the season. The cold decimated anything that might have been of value to him in the way of herbs and pagan ritual items, so his capabilities as a shaman and healer were limited. It happened every year, and it was always a solemn time for the brute. His interior dialogue  always seemed to match the conditions of the earth; when the seas grew turbulent, he grew restless; when the earth was calm and bright, so was he; and in this moment, he felt gaia’s austerity as a deep sinking all the way to his bones. 

Komodo was grateful for any respite he got, especially when it came in the form of a woman — the soft sounds of shuffling footsteps heralded her arrival. The earthstalker at first looked over his shoulder, then drew around himself to face her. The girl sported an inky pelage that reminded him of Coelacanth but was not a small, waifish, starving thing as so many shewolves on the coast tended to be. “Hullo,” he chuffed in his roughhewn tenor, his half-assed attempt at foraging all but forgotten. 

My, he was handsome. He was an older wolf, she noted — at least, older than herself — his dark eyes holding a certain wisdom within their brooding depths. Lyra couldn't help but gaze curiously for a little longer than necessary before suddenly breaking contact, lightly stepping over the pine needles strewn on the frosted ground to move closer to the stranger. He had a warmth about him that was comforting compared to the chill of the air, and Lyra sought it out. Or perhaps she was just entranced with the idea of the man — a real man — after the recent betrayal.

Either way, he had ensnared her, and she breathed his dominating, earthy scent. "Hi," she responded with a sweet-as-honey smile, her tail arching with another cordial flourish. She was largely unaware of his current frustration with the earth, spoiled by Moonspear and it's almost year-round abundance of herbs. "Find anything interesting?"

She greeted him with a sweet smile, a gesture of which the brute returned quite genuinely. He did not need to move, nor meet her in her advance, for the tigress moved to meet him instead. Komodo stood there, regarding the sweep of her legs and the flourish of her feathered, dark plume, feeling somewhat stuck to the ground. He ever so slightly dipped his crown to her and let his gaze drift to the ground in deference, then lifted to find his normal composure. 

“Not much ‘ere,” the medicine man said suggestively, turning his visage to gesture at the landscape, still exhibiting the blight of the winter. Perhaps she had come to this place for the same reason and he, and might be similarly disappointed. He turned back, his gilded gaze easily finding hers. “Well, ‘cept you.”