Ravensblood Forest you're by my side, but are you still with me?

<3

whether or not, the only intimacy merrick found in caiaphas was her willingness to validate those darker parts of him, as he had wished indra might. but the dead one had turned away, where the crone gave acceptance. merrick was by turns fascinated and perturbed in her presence, but his nightshade need not worry herself with such things.
a selfish creature by nature, the boy had drawn inward, and so remained untouched by the seed of worry that had sown itself in the blackened fields of his lover's heart. here he paced after caiaphas, casting a one-eyed gaze round for any hint of a following they had not accepted.
content to fall back now and let the old woman flicker ahead, merrick frowned at the slinking violence of the shadow, pausing to reach out toward astara with a low whine and a twitch of his ravaged ear: what plagued her so?