Noctisardor Bypass glistening shards

tag is for reference <3
also, aw!

The sky was a bruised shade of slate, heavy and swollen, pressing down upon the peaks like a physical weight. It was the late afternoon, that grey, liminal hour where the light dies without the dignity of a sunset, simply fading into the creeping cold.
Astier moved through the natural archway, a jagged fracture in the mountain’s spine that separated the wetlands from the hidden world beyond. The wind here was a living thing, a familiar northern gale that tore through the stone fissure with a hollow howl, pulling at his thick, white coat. To any other creature, the biting cold might have been a deterrent; to the Wraith, it felt like an old, harsh greeting.
He stepped out of the mountain’s shadow and into the bypass. Before him lay a valley sleeping under a thick blanket of winter. Even buried in snow, the land held the shape of a paradise paused; rolling hills rose like the white backs of sleeping giants, encircling a lake that lay dark and still, its edges crusted with ice. A creek cut through the plains, a black ribbon glimmering faintly against the stark whiteness.
It was a stark, breathless sort of beauty, the kind that usually offered Astier the solace of isolation. Yet, as his silver gaze swept the silent expanse, a phantom ache settled in his chest, sharp and sudden. @Siofra Hawthorne. The name rose unbidden, a splinter in his disciplined mind. It had been some time since their paths had crossed, yet her memory clung to him with the persistence of the frost. He found himself wondering, with a rare and dangerous distractibility, if she was looking up at this same heavy sky. He wondered if the silence of this valley would feel less oppressive if her stride were matched to his own.
He shook his head, a minute, sharp motion to clear the thought, physically shaking the snow from his ruff. Focus returning, he noted the jagged scar to the east where the earth had given way, a landslide that had littered the edge of the valley with broken rock and debris. The air smelled of metallic static and ice; the clouds above were holding their breath, ready to break.
The Wraith moved forward, his pale silhouette blending like a ghost into the greyscale landscape. He did not rush. His gait was measured, his paws making no sound as he skirted the edge of a small, skeletal woodland. He was a speck of winter moving through winter, searching the silence for a pulse of life, trying to outwalk the memory of a woman he had not realized he would miss this much.

luhtar had not meant to wander this far into the spine, yet the wind had a habit of pushing him toward places he did not plan to go, and he had learned long ago that resisting the north was like resisting the tide.

useless.

stubborn.

beneath him the snow packed down in dense, crunching layers, and his heavy paws sink deep, while his breath comes rolling against the air in thick clouds. puffing from his nostrils and agape jaws.

at first he thought the valley empty, but then he caught the scent of frost; and shortly thereafter, he saw a pale man cutting across the whitened world. looking almost apart of it, as if he had crawled out of the snow itself.

the norseman slows, broad frame steadying, and thick fur along his shoulders rising only enough to shake loose the cold that clung to it.

blackfell had told her to settle here—rest, regain what strength you can—and so she had obeyed, because she had nothing left in her bones for wandering. not while her daughter was still lost to the north. not while hope clung to her like a faint, flickering pulse.
each day she searched the bypass for herbs that could survive such cruelty. brittle stems, stubborn roots, scraps of life pushing through ice. she gathered them carefully into the fur pouch at her shoulder, telling herself it was enough for now. telling herself she would be stronger when he returned.
she was bent over a patch of winterbitten yarrow when the wind shifted.
two scents. male. unfamiliar.
her blood iced.
her head lifted sharply, breath tangled in her throat. across the snow, she spotted them—one gliding through the valley like a pale wraith, the other a massive norseman trudging through the drifts as if born from them. both moving with the heavy certainty of creatures unafraid of the world.
morwenna froze.
the pouch pressed to her ribs as she sank slightly into her stance, not fully crouched, but braced—like a doe that had learned teeth. her heartbeat quickened, loud in her ears, yet her body stayed silent, motionless against the stark winter.
blackfell wasn’t here.
she was alone.
and the last time strange males had found her—
she shut the memory down, swallowing hard against the rising tremor.
her lips parted but no sound came out. speaking felt dangerous, felt like offering herself up. instead she took a step back, then another, her breath misting in thin, careful threads. she kept her eyes locked on them, wide and bright with fear she couldn’t disguise.

Subtlety, it seemed, was a dying art.
Astier halted, his paws resting light upon the frozen crust that the stranger was currently pulverizing. He watched the dark, hulking figure plough through the drifts with the grace of a landslide, a sharp, noisy contrast to the stillness of the valley. But it was the second scent that sharpened Astier’s focus; the acrid spike of terror drifting from the treeline.
His silver gaze flicked sideways, catching the silhouette of the female. She was braced like a doe scenting a wolf, trembling with a fear that made her look small, fragile, and entirely too much like prey. If the behemoth in the snow noticed her, the outcome was uncertain. If the behemoth noticed him, however, the equation became simple.
Astier shifted his weight, deliberately stepping out from the blending palette of the snow to make himself a stark, unavoidable focal point. He didn't bristle; he simply watched the stranger’s struggle with a flat, unblinking stare, his head tilting just a fraction to the side as he raised his voice to cut through the wind.
„Careful,” Astier called out, his tone dry and rasping, loud enough to ensure the Norseman’s heavy gaze landed on him and him alone. He gestured vaguely with his muzzle toward the mounds of snow the stranger was fighting against. „I was under the impression the bears had already gone to sleep for the season.”
He offered a thin, sharp look, not quite a smile, but the ghost of one. „Or did you wake up early just to ruin the silence?”

luhtar’s ears twitch toward the pale man’s voice first, and hears his words that roll dry across the valley. in response, the burly norseman halts with broad paws sinking another inch into the snow. he lifts his head, dark eyes settling on the wraith.
then, suddenly, a barrel of a laugh. jovial, thick in his chest. clever!
luhtar's laugh fades into a chuckle, and he walks parallel of the man. no bear, he rumbles with the warmth of humor, just úlfur with more fur than brain.
as they stand, luhtar does not notice the woman. far too engaged with the pale wolf, bemused by him and his obvious dislike for luhtar.
but why? he wonders!

morwenna stayed low in the snow, breath thin, the herbs still scattered where they’d fallen. the white one drew the brute’s attention with words sharp enough to cut the wind, and she was grateful—silently, fiercely—for it.

two males, loud enough, large enough, to rip open every old wound.

she did not step forward. she did not speak.

instead, she slid one paw back, drawing further into the shadowed line of the treeline, her body angled to flee if either of them turned toward her. her eyes stayed fixed on them—wide, bright, unblinking—fear sharp in the air around her like frost.

a soft exhale left her, hardly a sound at all.

sliding in here for a sec-- feel free to ignore <3

If nothing else, the day had been...calm.
The clouds above reigned, their darkening, silvered touch stretching across the sky's vast expanse. They prophesied yet another cold night. And though her steps had grown numb against the earth, Siofra had noted that the touch of frost had begun to lose its edge farther south...if only by a fraction. She moved in silence among the bypass, lingering only where the shade was darkest. Guided only by will. There was an odd rhythm to the woman's step, as though she were entranced by thought. And to an extent, it was true: had the voice of intuition not grounded her, she would have missed it.
The movement within the stillness of the valley.
A retreating shadow to her north...a glimpse of umber beyond. It beckoned her attention-- but it was a flash of ghostly white that claimed her. Siofra's body reacted before her mind. Her fluid stride faltered. His appearance felt like water upon an open wound: biting, stirring. 
...Astier?
...It had been quite some time. And he had left the taigas.
Siofra had labelled him, once, as a temporary interest in her new world. An acquaintance whom she vaguely admired. But the subtle quickening of her heartbeat betrayed the casual regard she believed she had. There was a quiet force which drew her to the wraith. Though she couldn't decide what shook her more: his presence, or the unanticipated magnitude of her emotion.
Slowly, Siofra rotated her chin, irises peering over the hills and ridges. Interaction was evident upon their numbers. She wondered if he could feel it-- the caress of her gaze upon his silhouette. An unspoken test of perception. Because it was the only thing she would offer while the eyes of others still lingered. Silently, the woman pivoted, sinking further into her cloak of shadow.

<3

The gamble paid off. The stranger’s laughter was a landslide of sound, effectively drowning out the quiet retreat of the terrified woman near the treeline. Astier watched her slip further into the shadows from the corner of his vision, satisfied that she had become a ghost to the bear. He did not know the doe-eyed stranger, nor did he trust the intentions of the man standing before him. It mattered little, however. The world could fill with strangers, but the Wraith had eyes for only one woman.

As the wind shifted to carry the bear's laughter away, it brought something else in its wake. A scent, faint, but unmistakable, a memory sharper than the biting cold. Astier’s silver gaze wanted to snap toward the ridge. He felt the pull of it in his chest, a physical tether yanking him forward. In his peripheral vision, he caught the ghost of movement, not the fleeing doe, but a different silhouette, one that had haunted the edges of his mind since he left the north.

His heart gave a singular, traitorous kick against his ribs. She was there, watching. Instinct screamed at him to turn, to acknowledge her, to close the distance that had stretched too long between them. But discipline was a cold iron collar around his neck. If he turned his head now, if he let his gaze linger on the ridge, the massive man beside him would follow his eyes. The solitude she sought, the solitude he needed to speak with her, would be shattered by him. He could not risk it. To find her, he had to ignore her.

With an effort of will that cost him more than he would ever show, Astier forced his attention to lock onto the norseman. „Honesty,” Astier drawled, his voice steady despite the adrenaline spiking in his blood. He stepped closer to him, deliberately placing himself as a wall between the morseman and the rest of the valley. „Is a rare virtue in these parts. I suppose it makes you less dangerous than a bear, if only just.”

He offered the male a dry, thin expression, „You have a name, dökkur?” he asked, demanding the stranger's focus, ensuring he had no reason to look anywhere else.

in fierce opposition of popular belief, luhtar is not heimskur.

norseman's head tips to one side, not unlike a bear sniffing the wind, and those rounded, notched ears of his too twitch. he is aware that he and this man are not the only two loitering the bypass.

just as he can see the way his eyes move in and out of focus around luhtar. and takes notice, visible notice with the shifting of his own eyes, that the man places himself between luhtar and whatever else lurks.

the bear-wolf rumbles an amused noise, more like a knowing chuckle than much else.  yes, there is a sharpness to this one that reminds luhtar much of a blade left out in the snow.

i am luhtar, he announces. and you are?

a flick of dark eyes, toward the treeline behind the wraith's pale back. they roam along the dying foliage, past the peeled trunks of tree that had been scraped upon by both prey and predator. then, they land upon the first dark woman suspended in wary fear. there dawns realization upon luhtar, and he looks back to astier. not yet to notice the other one, the one astier is truly transfixed by.

he chortles. já! you think me some kind of cur. because i am norðmaður. tsk. a raise of an eyebrow.