Moonstone Quarry gatekeeper of an endless war

Laughter, however gentled;
it thrums through the foyer of his deep breast and sweeps through the pillars of her ribs, and the stricken allows the sacchirine melody of it to sway her against her momentary anchor-made-flesh. Preen the dark withers as she would like, she cannot; and so settles for scything her fangs soft through tufts nearer to her that have gone awry; smoothing over with modest, meek lavings of tongue. Wintersbane, yes; good, safe; necessary to the fragments left behind. 

"Yes,"  is what she muses, voice gone just as vague; notes the tremble within his hip with a misted eye, but does not meander to kiss it as she once might have -- might still, had she never been romanced in the manner she had never thought possible for her person, ever. And yet:  "Wintersbane."  Not Panther, nor any other epithet he might have gathered when his eyes had once been as fogged her own were now, would always be.

"You near my claim,"  once again resting herself along him, chords almost chiding; all before drawing away away away to peer up into that marred face,  "but ze earths shiver. There is ... ash from earthembers. How were you able to travel all this way?"  And why? Even as she enquired after him, Andraste once again felt the stirrings of an impending doubt. North, north ... not here, not in the Wilderness ... Missed him she had, and yet there were no herds, no hunting; all had fled north.