Bitterroot Valley shadows fall, and hope has fled

Under the aurous haze of eventide, the moonscape seems set ablaze… and the prince has never felt so far from home as he does now. Petite paws still in reverence, ears cupped forward. A rush of bittersweet on his tongue, a hollow chill in his chest both soothing and aching. In the days since his final departure, Amadis has learned the final lesson of freedom: it is cold and beautiful and empty as the sea — and in the dark of night, it is nearly indistinguishable from loneliness. He would not give it up for anything.
In moments like this one, struck homesick and joyously free, he almost feels whole again. When first his paws had struck coarse barren loam, Amadis had very nearly panicked. The Rattling Wastes over again, he'd thought, and despaired — but the similarities had ended there. Alien glimmers of life light the landscape; carmine dappling of exotic flowers hugging the gravel, nested in peculiar fleshy tendrils of sparse verdure; sporadic susurration of beating wings on the breeze; whispers of skittering murine feet. The titian glow of sunset energizes the land, and with it, Amadis. He inhales the green, earthen scent of it, so thick and foreign from the gossamer brineflower of Elvhenan, and he feels alive.
Revitalized under the evanescing sun, the prince starts forward once again, a giltfire smudge in the gloaming.

insert cat with wry smile

every step was cumbersome apart from her sibling. 
ergo, miseria returned to the scattered sonneting of forest-fowl, espying droves of grazing animals drawn to a peculiar attraction of salt licks below the belly of a volcano.

the twilight creeped in before the girl spotted the darkling with bright lacquer. squinting mindlessly at the sight, unaware she was exposed

An errant smear of starlight draws the eye of the wayward prince, a streak of silverfire fallen from celestial throne. It seems that he, too, has been noticed. Thoughts of the path ahead fade from his mind, leaving Amadis statue-still once again, frozen in a moment of mutual wordless acknowledgement. He does not think to call out, nor approach the stellar-sterling stranger whose countenance at a second glance seems swathed in shadow, as if creeping terrestrial murk had gathered to meet the fallen star and now swarms, smothering with infectious inkblood tendrils. Something foreboding in the sight of it, and so the prince hesitates.

was it the implicit species-affinity between the pair in likeness?

or, did again another light die upon appraising her?

governed by demurity; the girl turned elfin under the striking stranger's ken. heedful with wary step; having bore witness to the capricious nature of man ( or just her brother ) she addressed the beaming sun with the subdued whisper of a half-pious acolyte:

"have you come down from the sky?"

Startling, the way the starlit stranger comes upon the prince and questions him as if they know one another, as if Amadis is any more to her than a passerby. He blinks, ears twitching, tilting toward his crown then upright again. What is he to do with such a question? Has any wolf ever come down from the sky? Have you? He parrots dumbly, awestruck by the stranger's whimsy. Has he stumbled on some celestial soul, cast down from the heavens clueless of the terrestrial world?

But there is no answer. Mute and mysterious, the stranger flees his company as quickly as she'd appeared, and Amadis is left to wonder.