Golden Glade a noble band of warriors

@Niamh - set directly after our first thread. <3

They had left the thicket behind and had trekked across a stretch of land until they were met with towering maples. Spring had afforded them new buds that were flowering in beads of crimson and russet against a brown backdrop. Even the birds found the new life to be favorable to their nests and they twittered softly overhead while the Nord and his companion passed beneath the boughs of the looming trees. The sun flickered through the branches, casting them in a golden glow that warmed Kodlak’s coat and bathed his frame in fever. Once he had found a suitable place to rest in the shade, the Nord turned to Niamh and smiled before he stretched himself out and propped himself up on his roughly coated elbows.
 
“These trees are appealing. I can only imagine what color they will take when the fall comes,” he remarked softly to her. The premise of fall was near to his heart. Fall brought chilling nights and the first snows before winter swept through with her gritty, icy claws. Once it snowed, Kodlak was certain that he would feel more of a comfort in their lands. “Very well, you had requested more tales of my homeland. What would you like to know, huntress Niamh?”

Niamh had followed Kodlak quietly, grateful for the calm that he seemed to carry with him in every movement and demeanour. Had he pushed her to talk, she might have finally realized she was following a complete stranger to an unknown location...And the thought did occur to her, finally, when she realized they were going to a more secluded place. Niamh was young, and she'd agreed to go simply because he was charming and she was naive...But she'd begun to realize she might not be one hundred percent safe with him, and thus, when he smiled at her and lay down, she gave him a smile that could easily have been discerned as being a bit awkward, before she sat down, facing him. She didn't want to lay down...Just in case. The second thoughts she was having were mostly stemming from the conscience that was yelling at her to be more careful around strangers. 

...But the serenity that swathed him was enough to make her other voice- call it the devil on her shoulder- to say that she was just being ridiculous. He wasn't going to do anything to her, obviously, so she relaxed a bit. She glanced up at the trees, and nodded. "I dunno. Some of them around here just go yellow, but some of them go like...Orange and red. Those ones are my favourite," She said. Naturally, Niamh didn't know enough about trees to know which ones turned which colour- until they'd already started to turn. 

Speaking of colours- when he asked her what she wanted to hear about, she already knew. She smiled bashfully as he referred to her as a huntress...He certainly knew how to stroke her ego, didn't he? "The lights in the sky," She said. "Is it the same as like the sun or the moon? I've never, like...Seen anything other than those- oh, and the stars- in the sky."

“I would imagine they take the form of fire in the trees,” he mused, pointed his muzzle toward the sky with a sweep of his sea-foam gaze toward the budding leaves. Maples like that had never grown in the northern territories. Jorrvaskr had consisted of very little foliage, but instead had stretching landscapes that seemed to run for years. When he had first departed his homeland, Kodlak had thought that he might never see the end of the frozen wastes. It had come as a great shock to him to discover that there was very much of the world that he did not know. The Nord was not opposed to this; his travels had paved the way for new interests and for his knowledge to flourish against the harsh realities of what the earth had to offer to the wild kind that lived upon it. Wild was all that he knew; the great Wuuthrad of the wolves of Jorrvaskr was contrived of all savage things in the world and placed in a humble, dusted shell.
 
Niamh inquired about the lights that he had spoken of before. Kodlak offered her a simple smile and pulled his gaze down from the skies and the birds that pranced overhead. The light of his gaze wandered to her and he drew his salmon colored tongue along his lips with a thoughtful expression. “The northern lights of Jorrvaskr are unlike anything you would ever see in a lifetime. They dance overhead in a night sky – great pillars and twines of tropical green and galactic violet – but they are a rare sight. We would often sit beneath the stars and wait for the northern lights to arrive so that we could chase them. They could never be caught, but it was a tribute to Hircine; the god of the hunt.” The more he spoke of his home, and their customs, the more he had started to miss the tundra where he had been made. It was good to share his experiences with those around him, but he wondered if he would ever get the chance to see the dancing lights again.

OK so I have two apps on my phone for Northern Lights warnings/probabilities so I can drive out of the city in the middle of the night and take pictures of them...So Niamh gets alll her curiousity about them from me XD

It was hard to remain paranoid or skittish about Kodlak when he talked about the leaves the way he did. She was easily lulled into a more comfortable posture when he described them, and she too glanced up at the trees again, imagining the colours. It wasn't something she'd really taken notice of before- but with the way Kodlak said it, now she wanted nothing more than to see the fiery colours of autumn. She did like pretty things, after all, like a magpie- for Niamh, it was feathers that caught her interest, hence why she spent so much time hunting birds. Their brightest feathers lined her den. Pheasants, in particular, were sought-after, as well mallards. Some day she hoped to catch a hummingbird so she could have a special little corner for those tiny, jewel-coloured feathers...But the likelihood of a wolf catching a hummingbird was slim to none. 

She was immediately drawn into his story as he described the lights- which definitely sounded like something Niamh had never even imagined. Lights with those colours- in the sky? And at night, against the tar black sky? She tried to picture it, and in her mind she could envision dancing pillars of light, but nowhere near as beautiful or vivid as the real ones, which would obviously blow her mind if she ever got the chance to see them. He said they were rare- but that they would wait, nonetheless, to see them and chase them. So they moved...Her mental image of the lights improved, changing from dancing pillars to ribbons, like snakes as they twisted in the sky above, the movement like that of fish under water. Unable to help herself, she looked up into the sky again, which was a lovely, but in comparision, plain blue. "How rare are they?" She asked. "Is there ever any chance we could see them here?" She asked. Obviously, now, she'd have to keep an eye out for them.

;-; that's so neat!

The sandy huntress seemed enthralled in his tales. Kodlak found this bolstering; he had never been one to fashion words into images that he could share. He had always used his brute strength and the sharp snap of his fangs to convey the messages that he needed. There were others who were far more capable of weaving a story that would take you to a faraway place. The Nord missed some of them, and the thought left a painstaking burn in the pit of his gut. Try as he might, Kodlak was not the storyteller of his people; he was the weapon and the leader of the Companions, but nothing more. It still warmed him to see such a sharp twinkle in the gaze of another, no matter how lacking his tales might have been. It allowed him to imagine himself in another role, perhaps another life.
 
She asked him about whether or not they could be seen from the Teekon Wilds. Kodlak’s brow furrowed over the swelling sea color of his gaze. He frowned thoughtfully and peered at their surroundings with wonder. “I do not know, but I should like to see it if it is possible. I will say we are in the wrong season for such beautiful tricks of light in the sky. We would have many months to go before they would start to appear,” he explained to her with a soft rumbling baritone. It would have been nice to see the northern lights again. He wondered if the huntress would like to see Jorrvaskr, or if she would trust him enough to travel such a great distance with him. He thought it foolish to ask, so he refrained.  

^^ Caught that pic in the fall of 2016 I think :)

Niamh was disappointed to hear that they weren't even in the right season- but at least he seemed to have an idea of when they might be able to see them. It made more sense, to Niamh, to see them in the winter- after all, he saw them in the North, where the earth was apparently blanketed with snow, so winter just seemed to suit the occasion. She could almost picture the reflection of the lights off the bright white surface of snow too- and figured it'd be all the more beautiful later on in the year than it would over green and brown. 

"I'll keep an eye out for them." She said- and she would. Part of Niamh would always be on watch for them now, when she did her patrols during the night- just in case. "So you said...You chased them, in honour to the goddess of the hunt? Hir...I'm sorry, I forget the name," She apologized bashfully. The words he used were new to her- it was hard to keep track of all these new names and terms.