Barrow Fields now i'm in exile

all welcome but also for @Stjornuati!

her small frame had grown thin as the summer turned to autumn; she could feel the arriving winter in her bones, taste it in the air. she knew a shadow was growing just beyond the edges of her sense, and often she would wake from a slumber with her heart racing, having felt its breath at her neck, pearly teeth brushing against her skin as it told her in a language like the deep, bass rumblings of the earth to runrunrunrunrunrunrunRUN...

the barrows were a poor choice to take shelter.

death was already hunting; to be here was a defiance of its order to run. no.

you are the wolf that looks at me from within the waters. i do not fear you or your world, mirror of my own.

sadhbh wasn't sure if this was true. she was exhausted. and to return home, where she would be cared for in secret — that felt like defeat, not death. at least out here, in these strange lands that kept pulling her back in for no good reason, she could die knowing that she had chosen a path rather than simply follow one that had been laid out for her by her mother. sadhbh's existence was no less secret in these wilds — she was a wraith, lingering and then vanishing before anyone could so much as learn her name. she had not been well socialized.

she leaned against a mound before slipping down, down to rest, closing her fiery eyes against the moonlight.

243

The fields again. Eyes narrowed suspiciously as he surveyed the lands, his meeting with the wayward child so fresh in his mind. The wonderment of what he would discover this evening lingered at the forefront of his mind like a carrot strung ahead of him, just out of his reach. Both infuriating and tantalizing, it was the proverbial carrot that drew him forward and across these lands, once more seeking to discover the secrets that it held so preciously.

There was no surprise that lit across his expression when he came across the scent of another; these fields were vast, their grasses alluring whether for a rest or for a meal, and to find another adult was common place. Venjulegur. Also common place was the drive to seek out the companionship of another, even if said companion would only remain so temporarily.

As the bats swooped and swirled overhead, the man of pale creams and golds found his quarry sleeping against a knoll, her fur the color of pitch in the wash of the moon. The slumber that held her was curious to him; how did she sleep so soundly in the open like this? His brother and he had done so before, of course, but they were together and she... alone, judging by the scent of her.

Brave and perhaps reckless, Stjornuati would venture closer, a gentle nudge made to bony shoulder, seeking to rouse the woman who slept so easily here.