Raven's Watch palid face of the unchildlike child

@Nuiruk Hope it's alright that I started smth for them!

The breaking of Aokatti plodded just behind them like a yoked ox. 

Its hot breath on her calves, the sour and metallic stink of its waste in her nose, her mouth. Whenever a cloud wiped away the sun, a rat disappeared just centimetres from her teeth, when a twig gave way under her weight and sent the birds flying -- she began to feel more and more certain that they were cursed forever. The overlook sneered at them under the brim of its stone hat. More and more certain that when they passed a tree, the remaining leaves dropped, and rot devoured the bark into stringy, fleshy white.

She wanted to spit and shake her fist at the sky and shout, when will it be enough? Thinking, poor Nuiruk, and at the same time thinking damn Nuiruk! Coward, if it hadn't been for her I'd be Tartok with the rest of them. 

Turning back to look at Nuiruk's exhausted face, shame riddling her up on the inside to the moments before a sinkhole collapse, Nauja finds herself overcome with nothing but love and a distant rage.

Malguk, she splits the quiet, but lets it return and stretch on until it's stretched so thin you would see right through it to the words on the other side, I'm sorry, I love you, I'll protect you, but all she says is ...never mind.

she glances with wearied eyes to her loving sister at the under-the-cover murmurings of her name. realizing the molasses speed of her step, she prances up to nose her sister's shoulder hopefully to console her will to walk on at least. malguk is very uch like a blemished cantolope, brownish now from all the loam sweat-stuck to her knees and pits and not to mention her newfound misandry thanks to unfortunate trading of the heart.

she doesn't like to think of his promises to dine on unsuspecting seahawks in the moonlight and teach her to remove the shell of a crab, or the wonders of his kisses — no, he was a restless ghost now, drifting the shore perhaps looking for a another woman's heart to steal from her chest, to make her walk on butterfly carpets;

she was freudian and heart-eyed once maybe, but the sisters needn't a man or children to be happy anymore right? then again, they had not relinquished their roots and customs in their entire. her stomach frowls and grumbles for the third time today.

alqus hixtal hingamaxt?

Whatever the first had meant to say, it would likely be interrupted by the appearance of the man, his cream and gold fur easily separating him from the shadows of the forest that ringed the Watch. The raven's cry overhead only punctuated his arrival, close enough to scent the sisters, to hear the tongue of one of the northern tribes. Instantly, his curiosity piqued, a glance cast to the raven that settled in a tree nearby; was the hringja working with them even now, he wondered?

The two of you have traveled far, He observed, posture one that bespoke no violence of vehemence. Each looked bedreaggled, exhausted, and Stjornuati knew that his statement would hold true. There was a look to any loner that could be picked out, one where the furs lacked the plush warmth, where the skeleton protruded from beneath the skin like a monster reaching from the depths. He was curious of their origins, and of their intentions, signalling that he awaited an answer by ears pitched forward and dark eyes flickering between the two.

Though she welcomes her touch, Malguk's stomach growls and she turns away, closes her eyes, wishes that there was another noise to mask it. What she looks at everytime she sees her face is only her own failures reflected back at her. What a sadistic mirror. Inside her head with nothing but the dim red membrane of her eyelids to separate herself from the world, the snowdrifts of Unnuakvik have not yet melted. Haagat ii, she remarks, half-question and half-fatigue.

The man's voice steels her. Suddenly she is not malleable and languid but rocklike, high on the Mohs scale and manic-eyed -- Who speaks? is what she says but what the rest of her is saying is stay away, everything from her bristling hair to the bared teeth just as subtle as striped barricade tape.

It's really just paranoia fueling her, the big mental centrifuge in her head gobbling it up and creating a world where everyone was out for your head, every stranger's face a wormhole towards certain death.

Malguk gives her sister a nod, though when was Nauja ever wrong about her? She always felt a stronger connection to her sister than their brother ... perhaps for the skinship of sister and sister they shared, kneading each other in Sedna's womb and seemed almost attached to the hip. It didn't mean she had stopped loving her brother, but her faith dwindled that day. 

The scent of man becomes all too apparent.

All traces of a soft-faced, melt-when-wet lady were shorn of by the steel that steadied them both to Stjornuati. Her appearance was less than, and she could have swore she wore a corset underneath.

Answer.

Impassive and forever on edge, Stjornuati watched the both of them with cold, dark eyes; observing, gauging, calculating. As if by magic, the thorns of these blossoms grew wickedly long and sharp, brandishing their weapons as though he had come to threaten their existence. There was a chance, of course, that he had; the Watch was theirs, after all — his — though there was no official name they ran under. It was where his family, those both of womb and of covenant, lay their heads to sleep and he would allow no harm to befall them.

The pair had given him no reason to show agression, their eye contact and vocal demands of him not enough to ruffle feathers or fur, and so, he kept it all within; jaws parted to respond, though he paused a moment as a raven cawed above them. It was in their own language -- and his! -- that carried his words. Stjörnuáti af Stormskýli. Not many this far souuth speak the language of my people. For Tartok was his people just as much as Stormhaven was. Where do you hail from?