Porcupine Ridge my darkness is shining

this place owned many shadows, and many things moved under such cover. 

accipitra and anathema settled in. a headache’s cold front inched its way across the girl’s skull; one of many phantom pains to never leave her since rivenwood. 

today she was not ava, nor was she accipitra. it felt as if one of the grey shadows of this place had slunk through the opening in her eyes and curled around the front of her skull. 

she followed the scent of @Muskrat in troubled silence.

splashed in blood, almost, this accipitra who had come out of the gloom with a sister carrying holy things. now one was here and one followed hex.

muskrat was no fool to what the next months would bring. once more she would avoid it, but the presence of the strange young women settled for her the problem of restoration among the shadows.

sunflower eyes now paused to rake over the specter.

tousaint's warning echoed in her mind.

"come," and she set off for the cliff swam upward with tendriling moss, a cliff which overlooked the no-wolf's-land where only two cairns stood.

beyond that, the vale. her chin lifted in fierce pride. "montagne, that way." cold wind chilled her mouth. "i told they want attack ridge."

not-ava fell in step behind muskrat, picking her way between ruins of rock that demarked the cliff’s tumbling ascent.

moss and lichen and shale and old root and all manner of hardy sempervivums clawed a living here. the girl instinctively followed muskrat’s proud gaze, noting the defiant jut of her chin and the way she spoke.

her gaze rested pointedly on the assumed enemy, the tilt of her head asking ‘why’?

"one came to me." muskrat's eyes were a copperhead glittering in that starfallen night; she smelled pinewood and moss around them, observed moths crawling the lacy fungi which climbed the cliffside.

"one tell me much. much. do i believe? or — careful?" she said, and pretended to walk her paws there upon the green-flecked stone. "not trust. you and sister, sleep in day. be ready for night." under the patrolling of daytime hunters, the two would be free to eat and heal and slumber.

night upon the ridge would forge them into specters.

the warrior revealed that a confidant had come to her. not-ava was still young in the ways of the world, but she understood subterfuge.

muskrat's paws danced across the greenstone. the girl watched, sharing a glance with her as the question lingered: do i believe? she shook her head no.

then came instructions, which would have been curious to some but altogether route for the girl that fled shadows her whole life: sleep in the sun, walk in the darkness.

they readied for something bigger. and the girl, listless for many months, relished the chance to finally be part of something worth fighting for.

for a while longer, muskrat watched the land of the cairns for any movement, any other sullen lurkers who might see fit to bring secrets into the blessed dark. "your sister say name acci pitra," the sentinel murmured, able only to speak its sound in syllables of separation.

her fanged grin was bright and swift. "but i think you are hidden place of secret things. pakasqa kaqkunapa pakasqa sitio," and how wondrous the flow of the words which had never left muskrat.

she winked. "pakasqa."

now the sentinel turned away from the cliff, moving back into the shadowland.

ayyyy <333

the girl's gaze followed that of the seasoned huntress. she looked to a land bathed in shadow. if anything moved there, she did not see it.

then, muskrat spoke - the gleam of a fast smile brightening her severe features. acci pitra; a noble name from the order of hawks. a name the girl only knew after she'd been christened ava. now, she was straddling the line between two names and could not pick.

but muskrat picked for her. her mismatched gaze lifted hopeful, understanding.

pakasqa. and in her, something unnamed moved to be so readily seen.

<333

it would be so.

"when you rest, after sleep. come here. watch. see if others come to standing-stones. is peace. is a threat."

one of those two, and posting sentinels through the eldritch land would only ensure their safety if teeth should seek to surround them.

the ridge was as strong as its many eyes.

the girl is instructed to return here. not-ava, now pakasqa, surveys the seat of her new kingdom, where her watchful eyes will mark every passing shadow as a hawk.

she shook out her ruff in affirmation, and wishing to show some level of skill for her new leader, motioned silently to a darkly shaded thicket. water glinted between spines of douglas fir and oak. what was that place?

muskrat's coat darkened slightly as she bent toward the elritch hues of that place, a slight smirk curved beneath her sunyellow eyes. "has no name," the sentinel informed pakasqa, inching into the thicket.

come and see.

she herself had not spent overmuch time here; the thorns closed in upon them, dark red and crawling with vines of fruit.

an owl called somewhere in the gloom.

has no name; for a girl with no name save what others gave her, pakasqa found this sad. 

she leapt down from the stone after the graceful tread of muskrat, head low as she nosed the trail as they went. an owl overhead caused her to pause for a moment — as she drank in the scents of the darkening forest, she was struck by the age here. it clung to the moss, and the trees, and the loam — secret, ancient things just waiting to be unhoused. 

pakasqa picked up the pace, closing the distance temporarily made by her dawdling.