Wheeling Gull Isle going in town with six rounds

It had been a long while since he had laid eyes on the ocean, let alone strode along its sandy shores. Though the shoreline here he would have wagered was far from just sand alone; it was strewn with stones and other detritus. Tall grasses had pulled him forth into this world once again, though in a sense he had never left. The Hollow he had abandoned, shamefully so, but there was a resolute darkness to the place that he had never quite figured out. Perhaps it was the coming and going of sorts he did not like, or the occasional invasion of another.

Perhaps it was simply just a shortcoming of his own, the most likely of answers.

Despite the height of the season, he had thinned. A noticeable marker that he wandered alone, a certain disheveled appearance crossed with more sharp angles would speak far more volumes than he would admit to. Somewhere along the way he had let his own failures, his grief, consume him. It had stripped him bare and even now, he walked simply to mark the passage of time and it's cruel roll through the year.

He did not hear the hum of voices from beyond some veil now. They too had abandoned him not unlike the way he had abandoned refuge and craft. All there was in the emptiness he perceived was a void that deprived him of emotion once more, that left him to shy away further and further from his ilk on either side of heritage.

He heard them now, even over the whisper and rush of water just out of his reach.

The isle loomed but he dared not reach for it, instead scuttling along the shoreline listless and vague. His muzzle overturned stone and shell, parting the grassy break between sand and earth as though he would suss out something of great importance. Food, a stone, something he could carry and leave behind somewhere else when the night fell and the sun rose again. But he heard his kin again in spite of feigned ignorance; his body betrayed his efforts with a turn of an ear.

They would not have him either, he supposed.

@Rhælla — don't mind the length. haven't played him in ages and the itch to write is real.

Scouring the isle would lead her to the western shore where the beginnings of Aristos had moored only days before - cloak of nitesky plastered in places with the salt of the sea, slim legs crusted with sand. It was a feeling of homecoming, the wild seabreeze whipping her as she jogged. 

They'd yet to truly begin the preparations for foundation - including the establishment of borders - which meant that Rhælla couldn't really fault the rogue for his trespass when she spotted him on the horizon. The nightwisp canted  calmly to halt some leap away - chirping a whuff softly. 

"Merry meet," the dark fae murmured once he'd turned to face her - proferring a gentle smile.

np, I'm a stickler for long posts!

He saw her approaching first at a distance and his thoughts darkened.

He wanted her to go away and turned his head as though losing her in his sight would undo how she had materialized and send her back to wherever she had come from. It was a foolish attempt but with the open span of the sandbar and the way it led, he should have known someone would eventually come to cross it.

Swallowing thickly, he continued his mindless ministrations along his parcel of the shore, even as those steps came closer, and closer. The sound of paw against the wet sand started only as a dim thing in the ambiance. He could have tuned it out. He could have fled back towards the wilderness that had embraced him so fondly. He could have lived out his days like some coywolf wraith down among the rocks and weeds.

And yet he did none of those things, even when those steps slowed near to him and his flank. Nor did he flee when her voice reached out to him. Only then did he turn to her and take in her as a whole entity than the distant, dark blot on the horizon. A horizon that now seemed endless past the isle and its glory. He saw her for what she was—a wolf, one-eyed and scarred, an air to her that suggested she was not some meek feminine creature of the night.

”Merry meet to you, sister,” he found himself saying, suddenly hung up on her words. She was cut from the same cloth as he, but the meaning was there. But he would not dare wonder aloud if she too had come from worlds like his own, however secular and secret they were. He would not out her either, nor accuse.

There were few who kept the olde way but there were packs with roots as deep as Lirea, covens amongst the shadows - though their doctrines sometimes differed from her own. Still, the wisp recognizes - a glint in her gaze as her crown dips in understanding. 

"What brings you to the Isle?" She asked conversationally, avoiding the topic of religion for now - witches could sometimes be reclusive, skittish, regardless of gender.

Reclusive was a correct thought—it was very much what he had become in the months that had passed his abandonment. Consider it some twisted, irresponsible sense of necessity to atone for things well out of his control, but he had done it. Even that guilt may have streaked through his thoughts when twilight bridged day to night and again night to day, but he did not consider that when she poised her question to him.

He saw past her, across the sandbar to the isle and how it loomed. Perhaps had the day been earlier it may have been concealed in a thick fog and left alone to lurk akin to apparition. But the day was far from that young; he fumbled to connect the dots for a second too long before it all made sense where he was, and what the grand scheme of things were. Drawing in a breath, he brought his gaze back to her single lilac own, and let it drop to the division of water and sand as he surveyed the coast.

”It's yours?” Rhetorically speaking—she wouldn't have asked why he was there otherwise. This would have been a more social incident that he would have long fled if that were the case, could still have been the case, but he felt the pull of something otherworldly connecting him now. His attention shifted again, back towards the island and the grove of trees that proudly announced it.

”I was only wandering by,” he concluded softly. He couldn't have claimed not to be aware of their existence there. He had heard them, after all; his heritage didn't lend him the ignorance to say that he hadn't sensed them either. No canine lurked along without some sense that there was something there, be it another or a marker declaring a note of importance.

Sharp intelligence glints in his shrewd gaze as it rises over her, nodding with a slight smile as he draws his conclusion. "It will be," the exile murmurs in promise, lilac orb sliding away to the forests proudly. 

"I know," she reassures softly, smiling kindly to put him at ease. They're not official yet, with no boundaries at the moment and a particular distaste for such things - the woman had no plans of chasing him from their land. (Though she would be keeping tabs on his presence for the duration of his stay.)

"Are you hungry?" The wisp inquired after a moment, eyeing the scalloped wave of his ribcage with a glint of concern.

Ah, so it wasn't yet entirely her own. If ever an opportunity presented itself, this was it. Though to what end he did not yet entertain the thought of, not with the uncertainty that held a violent grasp, emboldened soon thereafter when she revealed that she had kept an eye on him far longer than he had released. She must have had a decent vantage point to have seen him, though he had hardly gone to pains to mask his location along the stalks and waves of grass and dune alike.

Or, he soon thought, perhaps she possessed a power greater than that, that the mind's eye had foretold of cheerless stragglers and that she turn her gaze towards the mainland and its shore. Nothing seemed impossible, though the greatest power any of them had to hold was their intent. Her intent was, needless to say, strong if not ambitious. An undertaking he had no aspirations of for himself; his focus had long been on survival and nothing more.

The opportunity mocked him further as she extended an invitation, or so he perceived in her offer of a meal. He should have balked at the offer and excused himself, but temptation was a mighty thing in regards to survival. Her company he was not quite ready to rid himself of either; he was too full of questions that would not come to his lips, lingering still on her greeting.

"Generous of you to offer strangers a meal," he rejoined, wondering to himself what strings were attached.

The girl bit down on a smile - unsure if it would heighten his wariness - chastising herself silently for not expecting that he would be suspicious of her intentions. 

"No catch," she promised - reading into his words. "Oft have I played the role of gypsy; would that I had been greeted with kindness."

"Though unfounded, Aristos offers aide - even to strangers. You would be welcome amongst us, a visitor of my hearth," the wisp inclined her star-kissed crown formally, earnestly. Even if Aristos proved a puzzle that he could not fit into, she hoped he might be willing to discuss craft with her.

"Should that you find the Isle unsuitable, you would leave unscathed," she swore further, smiling as she added, "but should you decide that you like it here - there's room within our ranks."

She had a keen grasp of emotion, he would give her that. Though he was often not one to wear his wariness openly, she had picked it up from any matter of things. Time alone had dulled his hold on such things, though still wondering of otherworldly things he supposed she may have been an empath in her own right. Or at the very least, someone who walked a similar trail as the one he had been on.

Perhaps it were through these experience that left her kindly.

"And your craft as well?" He ventured gently as her offer concluded itself. He worried not whether the isle would be suitable. He suspected it was if she had singled it out and sought refuge in its embrace. It was isolated, even guarded at the distance it kept from the shoreline. And like he, not necessarily so easily swayed, but unlike him that it yearned to belong.

The nightwisp's dark features turned towards the forests once more - thinking, and drawing a blank. 

"I know not if they practice - I think not," she murmured honestly, uncertain if any of her recruits believed in a faith of any sorts. 

"But I do, and I will. I hope that in time this island might draw others of our ilk to join the ranks of Aristos," the exile murmured, smiling fondly at the thought - how long it'd been since she'd met a practioner to compare and converse with.

"They may not, but they can learn," he answered in a murmur. "Provided they are willing." His had been the sort to turn away the curious, but he had thought against that doctrine and never openly. To do so would have cast him out further than the events that had brought him here, but he was hardly blessed with the fortune to perceive the future. Not even simple scrying of tranquil waters could tell him how things would go, not that he had bothered with that since his descent from peak to forest and now to coast.

And the spirits, well, they had long stopped guiding him. At first it hadn't mattered if he turned a deaf ear to their whispers—he could not hear them now, even if he had tried. So far out of his practice, he had unknowingly shut himself off from such things and found the void there as painful as everything he had lost.

As she looked to the forests that so proudly stood along the isle, Tarot stole away to look her features over better. How it must have been a hinderance to go without an eye, how uncomfortable. It drew him to another point instead, and he tore his gaze away from her to study the same plot of land her focus was on.

"If you have need of someone who can work with herbs, I may be able to fill that role."

The shadowed sprite returns to him, the vision of Aristos' future fading as he spoke, bringing her focus back to Tarot. 

"Aye, it's not for lack of desire - I would love to share the Faith of Lirea, of the Seven," she smiled, ever fond of the religion of her once nation. Rhælla can still feel the warmth of sun on her back where'd she sprawled in the Gardens on so many summer afternoons, enraptured by the words of her nursemaid as she painted vivid, colorful imagery of their pantheon. 

"But I will not require them to keep the olde way; I will teach only if they are willing to learn," the niteborn resounded with a firm nod - more to herself than anything. 

At his words, another smile - borne of excitement and hope - curled across her lips. "We have need of all sorts and walks," she confirmed gently. She'd yet to determine what exactly her recruits were skilled in - they were all able-bodied, fit, capable; that was enough for now.

"Would you like to see the Isle, truly?" The girl asked then, chin tilting towards the heart of the aisle in gesture. A tour would help him become familiar with the land, not to mention that her scent would mark him, and Rhælla was hopeful they might be able to delve into discussion about their similar doctrines.

It bothered him not that there was to be no forced indoctrination. It was perhaps better that way, though he felt certain there were downsides to that as well. Yet like minds had a way of finding one another, no matter how adrift they were. Even if there were differences in the old gods they prayed to and called upon, he knew that the craft remained relatively the same.

"I think that I would," he found himself answering. The reservation was still there; he made no move to guide them closer to the sandy pathway that would take them out to that isle. But he made no move to turn away and debate a quick retreat. A linger prickle crossed him instead, thinking of the wolves of the Hollow, and then passed. She had not inquired his history and perhaps she was truly kind.

Dark features lit with warmth, crown of similar pitch canting to gesture inland of the Isle - as if to say, this way then.

"Breakwater Beach surrounds the boundaries of the Isle along the south, west, and north," she began as the pair set off down the beach, star-kissed muzzle bobbing to various landmarks as she fell to welcoming him. 

last from me likely! :)

Onward she led him, her words gently describing what laid ahead for them. He found the sandbridge quite an interesting thing, almost uneasy by the way water leapt to each side of it. The sand there was wet beneath his feet—he would soon learn that this very bridge itself disappeared from time to time, pulled beneath by tides only to be reborn again at another juncture.

Beyond that however, laid the shore of the island, littered with stones and driftwood.

In no matter of time it seemed, they set foot onto the isle and then onward and quietly, he took stock of what she offered him. Somewhere in those midst he learned her name and she his, and from there it was only a matter of wonder as to what the future would hold for them and the merry band of canines.