Sawtooth Spire a silver whisper, take flight and steal into my mouth

assuming anyone joins, will be slow w/ responses, currently scarce/absented but don't want her falling inactive

in the small hours of dawn, couchant on a flat slab of stone that jut from the earth and commanded a view of the valley below, esme stared broodily through the pall of rain. sometimes it drizzled, mostly it just came down in buckets. all the same, there wasn't much of a view to command these days. the sunrise was hidden behind a brume of greige, somewhere. east. that was the extent of her knowledge. 

her squinted gaze turned to the wet masonry sustaining her, features twisted into a scowl as the last of her rouge dahlia identity seeped from her coat as old blood fled in a thin stream of ruddy-brown. "adieu, lothaire, t’es rien qu’une petit salaud," she said and spat into the drainage.

there weren't many words she knew from her time in french-speaking lierse, but those few that she did know would suffice for the dirty old man's eulogy.

she shifted her weight and thought of the weeks behind her. mostly she pondered on the run in with her mother that had ended on a ... high note, and briefly of her anger fueled quasi-tryst with riley (he'd buggered off, as like as not taking her advice to forget about her after such a toe-curling [and not in a good way] encounter). after the latter, she'd swung back and retraced her steps to track wylla's scent here. 

she'd had a feeling in her bones that wylla's presence in the region was more than just an opportunity for the universe to queer serendipity's pitch for the two, and she was oh-so-very-much ill-disposed to being told what to do, so when wylla shrieked that she wouldn't come near her home and disrespect her, esme had a full mind to do her one better march right up to her doorstep and do just that.

only except, she climbed that stupid mountain for nothing. her mother's trail grew faint and fainter. by the time she was on sagtannet's former portico, the place was ghost town. it wasn't so much that she was expecting a welcoming committee as she was expecting ... someone? anyone! or something. an accost. a trebuchet with her name on it.

it borne repeating, she climbed this stupid mountain ... for nothing! 

then the rain came and turned an already precarious mountainside into a prospective landslide and esme wasn't really in any position to be brazening out karma's tolerance for her bs at the moment. 

thus, upon the deserted mountain she would remain until the skies cleared and the terrain wasn't like to inter her in a burial mound of mud.

it'd been a while, now. long enough to drive esme mad with boredom. 

in the meantime, she peered over the ledge of the stone, eyes making out the vague shapes of treetops though the rain and fog made the vertical drop difficult to discern.

unsurvivable was her reckon, and that was good enough for esme. 

the wolf placed her paws on the lip of the stone and struck her legs out, traipsing like she was navigating a tightrope. she closed her eyes and laughed nervily when she staggered or misstepped, but the adrenaline highballing her veins, of knowing a wind shear or false step could carry her off the edge, was an intoxicating feeling, and the thrill revitalized her as much as it imperiled her.