Sleeping Dragon ad oblivione

maybe @Tsu'tseya ?

The earth here breathed, a ragged, sulfurous respiration that tasted of the mountain’s molten gut. Yvonne moved through the geyser field with the wary delicacy of a creature walking on glass, her small paws recoiling slightly from the unnatural warmth radiating through the soil. It was a landscape of violence and recovery, scarred by ash yet teeming with stubborn green life; a far cry from the pristine silence of the glacier she favored.
She paused only briefly near the salt licks, her pale eyes cutting through the rising steam to look East.
The stone-wolf’s promise of Great Sky lingered in her mind, a beacon pulling her away from this cloying heat. She did not speak to the sleeping mountain, nor to the deer watching her from the soot-stained brush. She simply adjusted her course, a drift of white smoke passing through the black, intent on putting the dragon’s feverish dreams behind her before the sun set.

His search for Seäe is met with failure with every eclipse. The help he's received from the kind peoples of Great Sky hadn't gone without gratitude, but their trails remained untouched. With every gust of northern bluster, his brother faded further and further away. The rift in his soul was great and oozing. Great Mother hadn't met the boy's prayers, and he found himself often too angry to speak with Her.

And still, he doesn't stop. From the sea of white plains, he cut toward where the soil thawed and warmed his toes. The heavy scent of something he couldn't name but made his nose wrinkle all the same blinds him. Spits of plumes and water birthed from craters. Fear grips him, ever present, as he navigated what felt like a mine field.

Tsu doesn't think his brother would brave these wilds, even in all his boyish pride and stubbornness. He likes to think that Seäe found himself somewhere warmer. Safer. Maybe a coast similar to their home, where the ocean would bear witness to the reunion of boys.

In the distance, there's a pale figure. His heart seized, as he wandered if moonstone @Ravah was up ahead, or maybe the moondancer. The yearling advanced with a hopeful sway of his tail, only to find a pale woman he hadn't met. 

He greets her with a quiet, calm chuff. @Faust's might made him skittish still. He hadn't crossed a rift in the warm earth, incase she would meet him with teeth, too.

Through the veil of rising steam and the sharp, sulfurous haze, she watched the yearling approach. There had been a flicker of recognition in his gait, a hopeful sway of his tail that spoke of reunions and familiar faces. But as the distance closed, that light dimmed. She was not the moonstone, nor the dancer he sought. She was merely a stranger painted in the same pale hues as the snow he had left behind.
He stopped on the other side of a rift, a jagged scar in the earth that breathed heat between them. It was a wise boundary. Yvonne did not move to bridge it.
The woman watched him with eyes the color of glacial ice, a sharp contrast to the feverish warmth of the environment. He seemed skittish, wary of teeth she had no intention of baring. He was young, she noted, with the softness of boyhood still clinging to his frame, though his eyes held a hollow sort of exhaustion.
When he offered a soft, quiet chuff, she did not recoil, nor did she lunge. She simply exhaled, a small puff of white breath mingling with the geothermal steam.
„Disappointment is a bitter taste,” Yvonne murmured, her voice low and melodic, carrying easily over the hiss of the vents. She dipped her chin in a slow, graceful nod of greeting, acknowledging him without inviting him closer. „You look for ghosts, boy. But I am flesh and blood, and I have no quarrel with you.”
She cast a glance at the bubbling earth between them, then returned her gaze to him. „The ground here bites if you linger too long. Tread lightly.”

cameo for now, will join unless tagged again ;w;

cleanly, close enough that his shadow stretched long across the cooled crust. he was always there, just beyond the edge of sight. moondancer had called him her shadow; for the boy, he became something quieter still: a presence, a guardline, a dark sentinel woven into the landscape.
the geyser field unsettled him. the earth here breathed like a wounded beast—hot, unpredictable, wrong beneath northern paws. he did not trust it. nor the strangers who moved through it. nor the way the boy’s hope wavered each time he chased a pale shape that was not his brother.
tsu’tseya stood on the safe side of a rift, the woman on the other. good. the boy was learning caution.
uktark’s gaze fixed on him first: the tension in his back, the fear under his ribs, the stubborn push forward anyway. he had spirit if he was anything like this one. stubborn spirit often survived.
the woman spoke. cool, controlled. no threat in her stance. still, uktark’s hackles stirred beneath his dense winter coat—protective instinct humming its low, familiar note.

A burst of hot, broiling water spouted from a crater. Tsu startled at the gust of it, the vibration that rumbled beneath his paws. It’s violent here. A rotting taste on his tongue. The pale woman was shrouded in mist, cloaked behind its veil. She spoke of ghosts, but his people name them tirea.

His muzzle wrinkled, his sorrowful eyes falling to gaze at the crack in the earth just inches from his feet. His brother is no tirea. Tsu refused to believe it, whether out of will or denial.

"No ghost." He doesn't like the weight and taste of that word on his tongue, and decides he won't speak it again. "He alive. I—I feel." He lied. All he's felt of his brother is empty, hopeless. Loss. A grief he doesn't fully allow himself to feel but has dug beneath his ribs to make itself a home.

There's a shadow on the ridge. In his peripheral, Tsu see's him. Moondancer's man. A pillar of strength and slate and everything Tsu'tseya is not, but wishes to be. He watches. Tsu feels safer, pinned in those eyes, even if he hasn't come to trust Toruk yet.

Tsu sat. Stared upon the new, pale woman with none of the warmth reserved for the two previous.

"I no...quarrel with you." He parroted. The earth groaned beneath his feet again. He doesn't want to startle with Toruk watching. "I look for my brother. What you searching for?"

you're more than welcome to hop in at any time <3

„To feel is not always to know,” Yvonne answered softly, her voice a cool balm against the boy’s heated denial. She did not press the wound; she knew well enough that some lies were the only things keeping the heart beating. If he needed his brother to be flesh and blood, she would not be the one to turn him into smoke.

The earth groaned beneath them, a deep, tectonic shudder that made the steam dance. Yvonne saw the boy’s gaze snap to the ridge, seeking an anchor in the shifting landscape. Her own eyes followed the line of his attention, cutting through the sulfurous haze until they landed on the dark silhouette standing sentinel against the grey sky. He was a void in the mist, massive, silent, and watchful. A guardian carved from shadow, watching over the boy with a possessiveness that made the air feel heavy.

Yvonne did not address the brute. She did not offer him a nod, nor did she bristle at his looming presence. She simply filed him away as a threat that was currently leashed, a weapon kept in its sheath for the sake of the child. She withdrew her gaze slowly, returning it to the yearling who sat on the other side of the fissure, trying so desperately to mimic the stillness of a man.

The question hung in the humid air, heavier than the ash. Yvonne looked past him for a moment, her eyes losing their focus as they drifted toward the north, toward a memory of ice and silence that she was beginning to fear existed only in stories.

„The same thing as you, perhaps,” she murmured, her gaze returning to meet his, pale and unreadable. „I search for a face that has been lost to the wind. A memory that I am trying to hold before it melts entirely.” She shifted her weight, turning her shoulder slightly to the heat of the vents. „But ghosts are hard to catch, and memories are harder to hold.”

he did not speak. did not descend. his silence was deliberate—an anchor, not an intrusion.
the earth’s violence rolled beneath them, heat and noise and unease, but he stood apart from it, steady as stone. his eyes never left the boy. he watched the way tsu sat, the way fear and resolve tangled in his small frame, the way he tried to be still like a grown wolf.
the woman’s voice carried. uktark did not react to it. his attention stayed fixed, protective without spectacle, presence without claim. a shadow that promised this: whatever rose from the ground, whatever crossed the fissure, it would reach the boy only by passing through him first.
and so he stood.
and watched.