i think that they could be the better half of me.

Her thoughts of where he would have been were true to a degree, though Mordecai had been working his way in from the borders as the storm brewed. The reality of the last good bout of weather they had received had resulted in the fire, and he did not wish to linger and tempt fate to see if it would happen again. It seemed unlikely, as the weather had turned to a much damper and warmer environment since that fateful night. But again, it was not something he wanted to tempt all the same.

And he would have ventured further into the territory, if not caught by a call rising and fading away swiftly on the wind. He turned his head with a gust of wind, straining both neck and ear to see if he could catch anything more of it. But there was nothing and for a moment he could not help but linger, thinking it would rise again. It did not. And so he went towards the borders once more, pushed along more by the change of weather of the growing evening. The hours were growing late, perhaps later than he realized. Time had a funny way of getting away from all of them, some moments preserved crisply and suddenly in a flash, weeks behind.

With tension in the air of what would come was not entirely lost on him, though the reality of what would come would not set in until much later. It seemed as though it would storm, but in truth that storm that would tear across the wilderness was still hours out. Had they been at sea the swells would have churned and thrown them with abandon; the undertow would have surely drug them beneath its heavy waves. But they were not, thankfully. As his eyes scanned through the dense undergrowth in its full movement, he spied out the mottled coat of Harlyn. Mordecai moved to close in that distance, thankful for a familiar face midst the brewing skies and turbulent earth.

"Hey," he called out to her, words stolen more or less from his tongue. "Was that you I heard?" The wind was something else, needless to say.