Northstar Vale i'd rather have this empty seat by my side

@Andraste, but of course all welcome.

Nyx.

Perhaps he'd forsaken her; whittled away from her grasp as he'd shed his youth and passion began to burn - this steady flickering within his chest, threatening with every beat of an iron heart to roar. Her talons had done little to shield him, but raise him she had, in her distant summons, whispers of night. Seething, she might be, after his disappearance from her claim, but the phantom did not rest, and the Melonii stood no more. Blackfeather stood no more.

Ironic, perhaps, that the two might fall. He'd witnessed their decay.

Olive.

His true mother, who'd clambered into the depths of his soul, unwittingly, and upon this did he blame the emergence of thought, of feeling, from the cracks of an indurated skull. It was why, in refined stoicism, he stood at length beside the fringes of Courtfall; this kingdom of ambiguity. Olive. Had he not been so convinced of her demise, she would have been the one to mark his next course - a journey of mother and son, reunited as the world had so generously intended. But no, came the clamour of an inssipated soul, what use was there in a journey of discovery, if the one he sought was no more than a buried corpse? He could not guarantee that his mother still walked among the lands, and so, he did not search for her. If she lived, they would meet again.

Now was not the time.

His pacing over the mountain range had rambled to him of only one thing, and it was @Tundra - this inexhaustible perseverance of timeless memory, it consumed his mind until his eyes forced shut! Shut, closed, still once more. It bothered him, deep beneath the surface of his skin, that he could not shed the craving of her countenance, her presence beside him. Aries was not a man of feeling, he could not utter that he cared, even if it was true, but alas, he did crave - ever the esuriant wraith of shadow was he.

And so, here he was, poised in cold splendour. The territory spread before him whispered of the scent that had painted the wintry hues of Tundra's pelt, as they had danced to the haunted sound of their own minacious game. He pondered, upon arrival, an early depature - but Aries was not a coward, and he would face this as he always had. So part did his lips, and from those charcoal jowls rose a summon; a call, gravelly in timbre, steady in strength. Diligent, yet not without intention.

Then, the silencer waited.

we can consider this a cameo post. feel free to skip me & tag me if melkor is directly addressed/i need to reply. c:

the voice that rises along the borders — though a summons for the illustrious fey queen — dredges up with it memories of old. flashes of a childhood melkor would rather forget. lost. starving. found by the blackfeather woman nyx and having rivalries with the packborn pups and her other ward neo. first tundra and now he appears at their borders for as soon as melkor shrugs into view, scarred visage lifted, steps steady and with purpose as he moves to greet the ex-blackfeather with scrutiny in his eye.

perhaps not all rivalries could be put to bed.

he looks the same as he had back then ...just older and perhaps covered with more scars than melkor remembers. then again kahlil had been a cream-puff not yet to make the transition to his adult colors. he doubts neo would even remember him. melkor was his roots now, he would create something worth keeping hold of in this vale and it was by and far time to let bygones be bygones.

greetings, he rasps. this is courtfall. what brings you to our borders? the tundrian inquires as he would to any one appearing at the borders of their claimant.

The mountains upon her; the misty remnants of the Vale brushing over her hips as the fée strides for the premises' beckoning. The sky was unblemished, this day; a high sapphire, but the midnoon sun had yet to warm;
the earth had been alive with the deep greens of midsommar; majoram and mint once piercing the soon-to-chill winds with their sharp fragrances; buttercup and forget-nots and snowdrop alike had once pushed through tangled growth, only to be bruised underpaw and unthaw. Clutches of windswept pine reached from their rooted lees; muted soldiers in the needly earth that yet remained.  Light streams out through montane jaws;
and she knows somewhere high above, behind the thick cover of dawn, is Soronúmë, the stars that stand over the westwatch of the Sunspires like watchful sentinels. Halfsight flits back down to all-earth—

Alighting upon a wanderer; Melkor;
though she is loathe to remain here and not press herself so against him and the offerings of his oresence, she is also Undómiel. For now, then, she keeps herself quieted; presiding over how this meet would be met out.

as if in a daze; the valitúrë drifts forward with her uncanny gait whilst dark eyes fix unseeingly forward. he was here and she tingled with churning apprehension and glee. it does not take long to find him; it never would yet she is still not the first, nor the second to arrive but the third! quite the audience he dragged in, which brought her back months previous to the borders of blackfeather. this was the second time he sought entrance to a pack she resided within yet last time she'd stood as decima, leading alongside maegi and with moonshadow and cassiopeia by her side. there is no point resisting the accompanying sting of such bittersweet memories and yet, she can find humour in the sight of both wintersbane and aries standing here. from the darkest of crannies to the purest of peaks in both the literal and metaphorical sense, the three former residents of the dark forest had surely made quite the change. 

so peculiar to stand by the two men she associated with the shadows and to look over and see not maegi, but the seraphic andraste. yet, no longer does the warrior feel a bitter sting at such a fact, acceptance settles serenely within and she inhales steadily with a swish of her feathered tail. turns out what she'd told rowan had been right, home was more than the place; with each wolf she became familiar with here she would feel the beginnings of an easing of such a frantic soul. there is no need to speak, wintersbane had said what was necessary and although she would inform andraste of her....familiarity with this shadowed man, right this moment she simply let the corners of her mouth tilt to accompany the smile already dancing upon sylphlike features. yet there is no challenge or motives to the gesture, it is not forced nor is it coy; it is simply just that, a smile.

To the borders came the guardian by the scent of a stranger upon them. As he arrives, the fiery man is not alone. Melkor is there, a man which he did not know by name though had scented time and time again, even so on the pelt on his Lead, often laced within one another. Had they become a pair this season? It seemed as such. His eyes then flickered to Tundra whom arrived just before he and Olo watches the pelt lady smile into the direction of the stranger - stranger, perhaps not. Coming to stand out to the side of the group, he, as the others, remains silent. Only watching, guarding, as he should.

A sole lead was not summoned forth from the chasm, but a quadruplet - an array of faces, anticipated and not. Eyes, those portals of arcane irradience, brushed upon each indiviual with a careful, calculated sweep. An audience to greet his oration... ought he to be charmed? Intimidated, perhaps? He was neither; apathetic he remained.

A man of frosted tenebrosity, bathed in silver - the first to emerge from the thickets. To be faced with a revenant of past ceased to be unheard of, but abnormal it remained. Admittedly, the other was barely recognisable from those unlit memories, but Aries was a man of wordless thought - although he may choose not for lips to part, he failed to forget a face, however aged or scarred it had become. Odd, perhaps, was this - adolescent wards, faced once more, but after the moon had passed a great many times, and their figures had truly warped into their own. Aries had shed his former moniker, the falsified alias of Neo, and remained no longer a ward of Nyx - nor did he care to revive a quiet fued from youth. In another time, perhaps he might've leapt upon the idea, but no, he had not trekked these paths for Khalil...

Eidolon of scars. This was who poured forth from the kingdom next - a woman of hiemal hues, commanding implicit control in the graceful detachment of her countenance.

But then, then, it was she --
Tundra.

Starborn gaze dove toward her lips, as they twisted into a smile - remaining free of satire or coy simpering, and he bathed in her attendance as though vision alone was drugging to his tongue, and his eyes, and his mind alone. A dusting of stars, she presented to him in the watching of her stygian, honeyed eyes; he savoured it. Lips of his own twitched in musing, casting back a smile of his own, genuine despite the haunting of a pockmarked visage.

Hardly did he ackowledge the final presence, ensnared in traps of Tundra's inadvertant creation, but he would not bypass the vision of russet at the corner of his eye.

Now befell his least favoured part - the starborn had naught to prove, but present he must, as was the way of the wolves. And play their game he would, if it may grant him ingress; access to what he desired. "I seek a place among your ranks," he recited, voice as thick and gravelly as forewarning thunder, a dip of his chin to follow. "If you will have me. Mercenenary," he gestured to himself, "and I'll pull my weight."

archiving w agreement!

Sensing some thing between the argent, the raven;
some thing that is a bit more than polite. No conversation, no touching; but there was some thing there between them, like a small monsoon and after-image to sear. Know another that they might, Undómiel steps forth, a wondering cant to her crown. Lips remain parted and voiceless, until—

“It has been my understanding that ze ... protectings of such a haven as ze Vale can soon seem a tad ... unnecessary. What with such peace, how could it not be so?”  A pause:  “We become lax, then, if we do not bolster our own borders. We let in those that we should not.”  Halfsights sent to gloam; alit upon her own suitor. Steadying against her own ghoulish me’mru. Then, returning herself to the proclaimed mercenary:  “How am I to have faith that you are one that we should allow?”

To his credit, he gave her more than enough ample reason (abiding by whatever personal limits he had so set for his own privacy), and so, just enough contented with his admission, Undómiel would pry no further;
and drew softened and shameless to flit by her tundrian’s side once her sentries had continued their respective vigils.