Serpent Lake To my dismay, I have forgotten how to leave

Nephele couldn’t stay in one place for long. Despite her unsettling last encounter with the woman in the woods, she was roaming once again, leaving the Mesa for her coveted alone time.

This time in the opposite direction. She wasn’t about to go back north and chance it again, so she picked the south, and started walking, passing through the area between her and the lake she had barely been able to spot in the far off distance. She didn’t walk for long, adjusting her speed between a walk and a ground eating lope as she traveled to the shore. This was a lot nicer than the various puddles she’d found at the Mesa, even if she enjoyed having a place to call home.

So she crossed the steppes in her way, until the ground gave way into..oh.

Nephele had seen a lot of things in her life. But she’d never stood atop a waterfall before. Water sprayed from its top, sunlight catching off the spray and crafting a shimmering rainbow in the mist. Perhaps this was Iris, her long forgotten childhood patron, welcoming her back. The link between the gods and mortals, the humanity those arrogant beings had long forgotten. A rainbow was a simple, elegant thing, a delight to all who spotted one high above their heads. She wished she could say she looked up anymore.

She shook her head. Nephele wasn’t a gods fearing woman, and when she had been, her patron had been Hermes. So, she blew out a breath, and continued down the sloping steps that made up the side of the waterfall, avoiding any suspiciously curled shadows, until she reached the bottom. Though, her eyes remained on the rainbow high above her head.

He remained ever alert for three things now: first, always @Kallik. Merrit had not seen his cousin for weeks now, and he felt the absence settle over him like the shadow of his patron stone. Second, @Alduin, who he'd promised his sister he would look for. Third, the trouble of Ursus. If they had left any trail in their dispersal, he had not been able to pick up any leads on where they had travelled or where they had settled next.

He would have felt far more comfortable, he realized, if he knew they still lived in the Valley. Their disappearance rattled him, and he moved as if on edge, for he was. Expectant that they might crawl out from any corner to finally settle their score against his people.

Perhaps these worries were what made him pause at the base of the waterfall. His head swam with so many shadows, that when he'd caught the glimmer of a rainbow in the mist, he wondered how such beauty still found a place within this world.

The waters drowned out the scent of the stranger who descended the falls, but her motion caught in the corner of his eyes. After feeling his heart skip with a fear that the bear-wolves had found him, he settled himself when he realized she was, indeed, entirely strange to him. "I've not seen a rainbow in many weeks," he said, "I often forget their beauty."

Nephele jumped. She wasn’t afraid to admit she did, especially after the last time she’d run into a stranger out away from Akashingo. She tipped her head to the side, blue seeking out the shape of the stranger for a moments thought, before they returned back to the falls, and the rainbow.

Its been...a long time since I’ve seen one. Years, probably. She said in reply. Her ears swiveled back, haunches meeting the ground with a soft thud as mist delicately coated her form, starting to slick her fur to her body.

They're a lot prettier than I remember. Rainbows in Cloudmirror were a rarity, like the universe itself knew there was no hope for the serfs until they rose up or ran. Even among the Monkshood, she had never seen hide nor hair of Iris and her colors.

She swallowed around a thickness in her throat. Iris was not hers anymore. She never would be again.

Ah - she spooked, and Merrit offered an apologetic splay of his ears. He had not meant to startle her. But this was his only apology. She seemed to recover after her initial start, and he thought best to simply let the matter slide.

"Oh?" he hummed in response to her easy conversation. She seemed quite comfortable for one he had just met, and even more, one he had just scared. Merrit didn't know what to do with that. Actually, he didn't quite know what to do with her. He noticed she was not the picture of beauty many women might flout around. She was oddly thin, and small, and scarred up in ways that made him wonder.

When mother was alive, and Arlette had needed him, he had not felt wanting of female companionship. But since mother's passing and Arlette's ascension into the place of wife, neither had any need for him, even if his sister might have thought so.

"Years is a long time, something I would guess neither of us have many of," he remarked, "where did you live, that rainbows were such an anomaly as that?" He had only found himself in places riddled with rain. The anomaly for him had only been in the dryness of these past summer weeks.

Nephele closed her eyes.

Not a good place. First, they were rare. Next, I lived in woods where there was little view of the sky. She said. She opened her eyes again, tipping her head around to look at her visitor again. Handsome, she noted briefly, because even the most handsome shouldn’t be judged on looks alone. That was how she had been suckered by Pidáo.

Never again.

Never.

Nephele cleared her throat.

Its nice to know they’re still out there, even if I didn’t see them.

She closed her eyes, and Merrit surmised he had struck a bad memory. Her words made him certain. She did not seem adverse to sharing, at least, and Merrit tipped his head in quiet thought to what she said. He knew of no place that fit her description. Not even Ursus had been deprived of the sky - though of light was another matter.

He considered her again, and the sad beauty reflected in the cadence of her words. Finally, he said, "Well, I am glad you get to see them now." He offered her a small smile. Glad, indeed, that she had rid herself of the dark place she had been born, and he thought, briefly, of that one child of Merrick's who had stumbled across Easthollow. Merrit had not thought of him in a very long time. He prayed anew that he'd had the strength to pull himself from Ursus' shadow.

"And what other things do you delight to see, now that the sky is yours? For it sounds as if you have found brighter ground to walk."

Nephele gave a little happy chuff of a noise, tipping her head towards the sky.

The stars. It was so dark in the woods I lived in, the sun barely made it through and the moon was a moot point. I missed seeing the stars. She said, a small smile tugging up her lips.

The moon too. Once I left, that’s what I travelled by. Moon and stars. With only those two as her companions, she had made her way here. To Akashingo and Sabah and everything else.

Nephele breathed out, ear swiveling to face the man.

And you? What is your favorite thing in the sky?

Her answer charmed him, perhaps merely by the pleasure he heard in her as she recollected the moon and stars. Merrit couldn't imagine what sort of place she had come from. The more he heard, the happier he was that she had found her way here, even if these Wilds were untamed, even ruthless, at times.

He once again hummed in consideration, before blinking twice when she doubled the query back on him. Ah. He should've known to have an answer ready.

"Hmmm..." he thought aloud, "you'd think I'd have an answer, seeing as I was the one with the question." He chuffed something like a laugh, and continued, "I would agree on the moon and stars. I have travelled by them, too." But were these his favourite things? He twitched his ear and squinted, thoughtful - and then, he smiled. "Have you ever stopped and watched the clouds at sunset?"

Nephele blinked. Had she ever paid much attention to the clouds at sunset? Not really, if she was being honest. She had never even truly paid attention to the stars when they were there. Instead, she just used them for navigation, never thinking of their stories as she wandered beneath their silver glow.

I..I’m ashamed to say I really never have. Maybe now that I’ve settled, I can look and appreciate them. Especially with the mesa she now lived upon.

She breathed a little sigh.

I just realized I never even told you my name. It’s.. She stopped.

Sabah. Might as well keep using it while she was a known pack member of Akashingo.

Sabah.

Merrit had caught that all familiar pause before her syllables sounded. He had felt them too, when he had sought justice against the bear wolves and had not believed that his own deeds would not find him, and his family, out. So he had become Theseus, at Hydra's command. Theseus, who walked with Moonspear. Who was miles braver than anyone Merrit could be.

"Well met, Sabah," he said with the pull of a smile, "I am Merrit, though some know me as Theseus."

He had no family to protect anymore. They were gone, and not by the bear wolves. Providence spoke, and took them when their time was right. Still, Merrit wished he might have had them longer.

"And where have you settled?" he broke his thoughts, finally saying something on her prior remark. "Near to here? Far? Not in a forest, from the sound of it, if you will be able to appreciate the clouds."

Nephele took in a breath.

Sabah she was, then. For the moment. For those who knew her. She nodded sharply, tucking her limbs beneath her to square her shoulders in some attempt of comfort from one who could not find it elsewhere.

Over there. She said, tossing her head to the Mesa in the distance, eyes never leaving the grey form beside her.

A pack called Akashingo claims the top. I am one of their rank and file.

Merrit noted her breath, the squaring of her shoulders, and tucked these things away to consider when he was alone, when he would think back on their meeting and the things they had shared.

He looked towards the place she pointed. Though Merrit had noticed the Mesa before he had never had any reason to think on it for any time longer than he thought on it now. He had never had much business down here, anyway, either when he had lived at Moonspear or Easthollow. He had never had a reason to remember the odd cropping of rock that jutted from the horizon, nor the flat plane of its levelled peak, nor the hostility of the land that graced it.

"You will see the sky well from there," he said, and he paused. "I am actually almost jealous of how well you must." Another pause. His brow furrowed ever slightly, and his mouth twitched in something like a smile. Nervous. "Are you heading back there soon? I may not be able to enter your land, but the sun will be set in a few short hours, and it looks to be a clear night. And I might like to see your face when you look on the sky with new eyes for the very first time."