Gyrfalcon's Keep That I could be looking for

This is really long, oops. I guess this is what happens when I can't sleep!

Tetsubo thought himself to be well equipped for all of life's many challenges. He had a sturdy body that he likened to granite of all things, immense, gray, and powered by something infernal, igneous. While recently he had been chipped and cracked on the outside, he felt like the same creature otherwise. A few chunks of him were missing but they would return to him. Once he was whole again, Tetsubo could serve his lord to the full extent of his many and varied abilities; yet for now, he made sport out of his days. Filled his moments with reconnaissance and study — thus the trip to the mountainside, and the current oddness unfolding.

Although to Tetsubo this was not strange in the slighest. This was a new world to him, one filled with many dangers for himself and for his lord, and it seemed only right that he get to know this place better. If he was to protect Skellige and the lives of his lord's kin, he would need to know of the many worlds surrounding it.

This was the logic that told him to pursue the stranger. He told himself these things. That his study of her was for the benefit of the group, that perhaps he could glean something of relevance from her, that Skellige could benefit from this. Yet the more he followed her - and the more she led him away from the edge of the world - Tetsubo knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he was lying to himself.

He didn't know what truly brought him this far. Or why he continued to lurch along behind her, following as if attached; she was no enemy from what he could tell. A wayward soul at best. Someone of little value to him, as Skellige had not placed any value upon her for the boy to identify her with - and he needed that. Someone to tell him what to do. To make sense of his actions.

The boy thought of all the reasons he had to follow her, to not follow her, to slink back to the beachside and return to his resting, but nothing cut through this self-imposed mission to follow; at least not until she spotted him, with a fleeting glance he should have seen coming, and as she did a double-take his steps abruptly ended, and he lurched as he came to a stop as might a locomotive with an engaged emergency brake. He anticipated revulsion or fear as those were the most common signals his presence ilicited. Maybe hostility, as nobody enjoyed being followed in this manner, or perhaps even a snap of the teeth followed by a chase — but no, she did none of these things.

Instead, she reached out to him. Tasted the air for signs of him, and probably found the layers of salt and pine that he exuded, as well as the thick scent of Skellige he wore, and the undertone of the various herbs that the medicine women had used upon him. Tetsubo quirked his head slightly, tilting it while his eyes briefly narrowed, and continued to watch her antics. He had no desire to truly meet this woman or to exchange pleasantries, and to be truthful he had no knowledge of how to speak to the opposite sex in the first place. As he opened his mouth - perhaps to try - he swallowed the thick perfume that dominated the air around her, and the cloying scent roosted briefly in his sinuses, his lungs, his belly, his everywhere.

Was she like him? An embodiment of something greater? He swallowed thickly and resumed his advance. He was much slower, steadying himself as he carefully came closer, and reached out for her - and that aroma - like a connoiseur of fine wine, his head lifting and roaming back and forth and back again, until their noses were nearly touching. Her scent was intoxicating to him; he did not know what it was, or why, or how to stop it, but as Tetsubo rested before her, he knew he could not leave, as if something was giving him orders from outside the realm of reason.