Neverwinter Forest but i got my grip on the devil's horns

hoping for @Callyope but AW to anyone who was pledged to moongrove!

days became weeks.
peregrine lived in a haze. he did his duties, he hunted, he patrolled. he spoke little. he ate less.
why was this hitting him so hard? it wasn't as if he had never dealt with death before. shit, both of his mothers had died on him. and yet he could not seem to let go of ariadne.
something about her was so special, so — rare, and not in his typical lecherous-ape-brained way; she was good, she was pure. she had a family that she loved. she had so much life to live and so much that she had left behind.
she was his friend.
he came to the woods where she had last lived with no real intention other than to see it, to breathe in what was left of her. pine needles clung to the dark of his shoulders, and his nape was disordered in every which way. he looked a wreck. he probably was one, too.
was anyone still here? should he notify anyone of his presence? he stands amid the evergreen like a dumbass, directionless, staring blankly at the endless wood which all looked and felt the same. he does not smell her here, does not even feel her.
for the first time, out of nowhere, it truly seems to click in his mind that she is gone.

In the heat, she dreamed of iced places.

She wondered if it might be so terrible to steal away to the glacier. She still dreamed of that long walk. Callyope still held many dreams, but found them monochrome in the shades of grief.

She was not angry and she was not overcome by her sadness.

She simply was.

Here was a man of a moon village who looked disheveled in a way she might have expected from a parent or sibling. Callyope did what she had taken to doing and greeted him with warmth. Prepared to be a beacon of hope for anyone who came here — for mourning or otherwise.

Come rest in the shade, She did not think too hard on how her voice sounded like what she remembered her mother's to be, when it had not been shushed by grief.

there is a girl with kukutux's face. she comes to him as if she already knew him, and it reminds him starkly of the sunshine wolves.
you're her sister, he announces it plainly, stiffly almost, his feet dragging along the ground as he pulls himself beneath the overhang of a conifer. she was my friend. a good friend.
his eyes fall to the floor. sickness grabs hold of his gut.

She thinks her sister must still be in this land.

Still in the leaves, the roots, the waters. She would never say it but some part of her wondered if she should have been buried here to know rest where her soul had left.

I am. Confirmation that she knew he need not need.

She did not try to seek his eyes, she knew too many who could not lift their own in the wake of this loss.

Tell me your story with her.

He did not have to, but she'd rather him spill his grief here than in the ears of her mother. In this way she too could continue to carry on the memories and stories of her sistraa.

there wasn't exactly much to tell. peregrine does so anyway, the words spilling soured with notes of nervousness and despair. he tells her how he'd met her purely on accident when he passed through moonsong, back when it was only her and the shining gleam of ambition she carried in her soul. how they'd talked once, laughed together, and then did not cross paths again until recently. he tells her how he'd always thought of her.
and now she was gone. dead. just like that.
but his pain is nothing like what this woman must feel. it shows in the way his gaze averts almost ashamedly to the ground as silence settles over him.

moonsong.

she thinks on this now too and dreams of the glacier in the moments between his words. the silence that overcame him was too heavy, she thought. but how did she pick it up and hold it for him?

you have done me a favor, coming and speaking words of her to me. her eyes were warm through the grief. will you visit this place often? it would welcome you.

her words very nearly bring tears to peregrine's eyes. they were certainly kukutux's daughters, now that he thought about it — they were all unabashedly, unapologetically selfless, and they all had the same cold shards of flames behind their eyes.
he almost wanted to say that he didn't feel her here; she had existed here only in name to him, and besides, all it reminded him of was the fact that she was dead. she had moved here merely weeks before. in his eyes, this place killed her.
but he doesn't. he gives a resounding maybe, his lips twisting into a frustrated, sullen grimace. i don't wanna be a bother to you guys. wait, actually, who, um-- who else is here?

edited this to add on a fade for his NPC status, but he'd be welcomed whenever :)

a bother.

she could not imagine it. she wished more walked here but she knew the pain was too great for some. the air still too fresh with tears.

for now it is a nephew of mine and myself. and she had an idea! one that might make the man feel more welcomed, less of a bother to the small pair settled here.

you would be no bother if you come teach me hunting — there is no first hunter here to do so.

but she would welcome him here no matter if it was for nothing more than simple talk and seeing the forest. here he could rest before his climb back up to moonglow.