Thunder Dome death's door

@Stigmata (Silver text is stuff only he can hear.)

You should jump, said a voice beneath the wind. It was almost too soft to hear, but still he heard it. It was soft and sweet, familiar almost, but in that manner that an old friend's voice might be. Half-remembered.

The wolf turned his swarthy face to his right and his gaze focused on something there. An incongruent shape. A flickering, like beams of sunlight fighting their way through a canopy of interwoven tree limbs. Except, it was night. The sky was so thick with clouds that it was a black void, and the lower reaches of the mountain were limited in their own illumination; an eerie gossamer fog brought a dim glow to everything around him.

Sterling — you know you can't ignore me —

The flickering shape moved closer to him, and then a segment - what could've been a head - split in to a grin too long for a wolf's snout; he saw eyes gleaming at him too, but only for a moment, and turned away. Glanced at the shadows and the rolling fog below, almost tempted. But then he huffed and turned in to that shimmering shape, and it broke apart around him — a sharp, tin-can laugh rumbling across the stones that only he could hear.

stigmata had been born into fog, and sometimes wondered if it would be the fog that took him. he was a mountaineer by birth, but had spent many months in the lowlands that had softened him to the heights he had once been so surefooted upon. his steadiness was slowly returning, but his victories did not come all without defeats, and that night delivered him an unsuspecting thrashing.

he had slipped into a trench and spent a great deal amount of energy trying to get out of it. the wolf had succeeded, but was not dog-tired from his efforts, and keen on finding a sheltered place to sleep, if not simply to get warm. stigmata tiredly noticed a dark-pointed figure ahead of him, and paused to make sure it was a stranger before attempting to gift the fog-curled male a wide girth as he neutrally went around.

There was a trembling to the trees behind him. It was something he was going to ignore, thinking it was only more goading from that spectral voice — and with a sigh he turned away from the sloping cliffside, heading towards the trees. He thought, like before, that there was a voice there. At the very least the high pitched jittering of laughter - a child's giggle accompanied by the winter breeze.

He stopped when he saw a dark shape. It wasn't like the silverlight of what he usually saw, and so Sterling crept after it. The stranger's path arched away from him but that did not dissuade him (in fact, he didn't think to avoid the path at all, didn't consider that the shape might be trying to give him more space, he just followed doggedly). 

No, no, where'd you go? Sterling — Sterling— Two voices now; the child's, and something older, together. He huffed, and the sound of his breath was loud enough to echo among the trees.

He was distracted, trying to shake the feeling of eyes upon him, and caught a limb across a narrow elm's horizonal trunk. As his chest connected to the bulk of the fallen tree he oofed and tumbled over it, crunching in to the ferns and then fighting to stand up again. It wasn't his best moment.

As he got to his feet he could be heard mumbling, fuckin' forest with its fuckin' trees— while his dark-tipped ears slanted back.

ever with a stratagem, stigmata sauntered in a direction that both led him away and kept the stranger in his peripheral. he wasn't expecting any trouble out of the wolf, but found himself slightly taken aback when the sootfiend course-corrected and started to follow. he was interested, but felt too tired to treat the situation with the same deliberation he treated most things, so he turned to the face his opponent, rather than play hard to get.

he started to speak, but watched - with deflating enthusiasm - the august wolf take an unseemly tumble, that drew stigmata in despite himself. he did not speak, but rather came close (within several short bounds) and stood watching the handsome shadow closely. with ears pressed forward, he tipped his skull slightly and leveled the stranger with jaded eyes. it was the only indication of his willingness to know this wolf; and that window of opportunity, yawning through stigmata's lingering exhaustion, was fast closing.

their greetings were brief, quiet and fairly docile, before parting ways with the understanding that the wolf would only be allowed to stay in the mountains as long as he provided for diaspora. the wolf accepted these boundaries and remained only as long as his will allowed.