Blackfeather Woods i took the stars from my eyes and made a man

not the greatest post in the world because i'm very tired but wanted to get one up :D

He had become, in the days of his return, an omnipresence - always there, but never quite visible. The shadows swathed his figure with stygian grace, and he embraced this unilluminated beauty; it was a gift, surely, to be born into such iniquity, masked by this auspicious cloak, and he savoured the woods' canopies, who cast down the shadows of the convulsing trees; they lined the territory as soldiers, standing guard. The ravens scrutinized from their treetop keeps. He regarded them, too.

Such esoteric creatures. The Silencer was not one to bother himself about nature bar in it's most raw of forms, but, when displayed to him in such an empyrean manner, he could not help but observe - the ravens, they were a symbol of blackfeather. The unspeaking watchers. This is why it had come as little revelation to witness a cloak of tenebrosity, newly lurking beside Tundra whenever their paths seemed to cross; which had occurred with a higher scarcity than he had originally anticipated...
 
But, there was her scent. And there, swooping low betwixt the branches, was a raven - beneath, her wavering steps dove, a delphic enigma for his mind to solve. It was without her archetypal hiemal finesse, and it was this which piqued his intrigue more than anything else; so atypical of the girl, to let down her guard, and while sweeping silently through the undergrowth to encompass her tracks, a broken shard of the warrioress seemed to let slip. It tumbled free in her quivering, trembling form, and something caught - it fucking caught - in his chest.

Aries damned it.

Perhaps it was because it wasn’t him that was causing this inner turmoil, so pleasing to the eye… it wasn’t him concocting the atmosphere of sorrow, that something uncharacteristically sour pooled in his stomach. But he couldn't halt his striding steps, gliding forth as a mere ghost, a skeletal soldier, and he did not stop, until he was by the water's edge, maintaining a fair distance between them. For a moment, his gaze does not seek her own - it slides over to the other side of the water source, scanning the treeline in his stereotypical indecipherable stoicism. There was no understanding this expression - it was one entirely void of emotion, his motives unguessable. While some might suggest he was observing for some unwritten danger, others might say he was lost in a clouded trail of thought. Others, in fact, might simply have decided he was doing nothing more than counting the trees.

Tundra.

Finally, glacial shards found their target, beside him, and he allowed his tongue to swipe over frosted incisors, behind sealed lips - there was something so fragile, tenuous about the woman before him now, so unlike that mask of feigned warmth, the strength of a thousand kings to curse him in an adamantine glare. It was almost as though, he pondered, her mask had simply... crumbled. No doubt it might gather itself once more, but, he found himself wondering just how much she hid, somewhere deep in the crevices of her skull. There was plenty more to her than met the surface, this, at least, was evident.

Aries savoured a mystery. But why did it feel so very wrong, this time, of all times?
In a commanding voice of fermenting thunder, his chest vibrating darkly, words finally pierced the veil of silence - "What's wrong?"

How uncustomarily benevolent of him. The slayer reassured himself that it was simply a hitch, and would perhaps continue to toy with her feelings, once he knew what was occurring - but, if he was callously honest to himself?

This time, there was no game, despite the demanding tone of his quiery. He could not fathom why.