Deepwood Weald luto et nivis

@Lorcan

snowmelt fell from spindly tree limbs, turning the ground beneath her paws a sopping marshland. 

ankle deep in a mire of mud, velia trekked her way through the sludge hoping to best it and find solid ground. an hour later and she was passing the same tree she had five times before. no matter what odd direction she wandered off in and no matter how straight of a line she thought she walked, she always ended up right back at the same dead tree she had started at. 

the nymph eventually stopped after a time, letting loose a sigh and accepting the obvious. 

she was lost.

it had only been some weeks since he’d passed through this very territory with @Envy. but it felt like a lifetime, or whatever that corny fucking saying was. he told himself he was over it, but he often saw the ghost of her in his peripheral vision.

lorcan had made his choice. now he lived with it.

and thus, by living with it, he had to get a lay of the land. this is what he did. paws eating up ground, farther and farther away from the nice little den he had left his mate at. @Elowen could very well be pregnant—a daunting thought, truthfully, because lorcan had never thought he’d play the family man.

his trotting leads him into the path of a woman. staring up at a lone tree, almost like a believer at the altar of her god. lorcan is silent for several seconds before he clears his throat.

she'd heard stories of the shadows come to devour lost souls. she'd thought them only legend, only children's tales! but when she turned to look upon him, upon the void that swallowed his figure and lay forth an all consuming blight, she saw what children feared. 

"úmaiar," she called to him, braving the tremor in her legs. she would not flee from this shadow!

"you have come for my soul?" it could be the only reason why he was here, why he'd clawed his way from the depths of the abyss. 

wind rattled the barren branches above as she stood there expectantly, waiting for the beast to consume her whole. 

was this to be her death song?

he simply blinks.

what freakshow had he stumbled upon this time?

yet instead of lowering himself into the madness which she saw him for, he forces himself to play nice. stepping forwards cautiously, coming to veer around the tree, eyeballing it as if trying to find what she saw in it.

i'm just a man, darlin'. and he exhales a soft breath, watching as it visibly plumes into the night sky. eyes flash towards her, bleeding gold. what're you?

she wished to squeeze shut her eyes, to hide from what would surely be her end. but she forced them to remain wide, to stare down the creature who would consume her soul and tear her from this world. only, this úmaiar spoke, when the ones from her stories did not. 

a man. just a man. 

the tremble in her legs eased, though the tension in them did not. still stuck in the mud, still lost. "you be just a man." she looked upon him as if to convince herself these words were true. 

"i be just a woman."

lorcan watches her.

she sees him now—not as a phantom, not as a shadow come to devour, but as what he is.

just a man, he echoes, tilting his head slightly, the thin veneer of a smirk coming to pull upon a scarred face.

he takes a step closer. and then another.

just a woman, he says, and this time, there is something suggestive in his tone.

another step. close enough that the heat of his body may be felt through the cold night air.

she watches, moss eyes glimmering in the faint light that steals through the canopy above them. 

he takes a step forward, then another! there is unease, a hitch in her breath as she slides a wary step backward. a flinch comes a moment later at the pressure of a rock beneath a paw, buried beneath the mud, hidden from view. 

her focus on the man wanes for just a moment, and when it falls back upon him he is near enough that she feels the heat of his breath on her ear. 

soft, startled eyes peer upwards, "you be knowing the way out?"