Meadowlark Prairie perfect, you're my poison

route map

the time between stepping from silvertip and this very moment was uncategorized.
merrick knew only that he had left the burial plinth of his mate behind beneath the proud branches of a crimson copse.
if others followed, the bearwitch scarcely noticed himself. her blood, daubed thickly between the hairs of his nape, blackened and began to carry the ambrosial sick-sweet fragrance of death's own perfume.
no need, this time, to wash the scent of ursus away. he entered a darkened forest, skirted the coldwater village of moonglow, descended into a glen, traveled along a lake.
the man slept and ate as if he were an automaton. the killings were quick and precise with no pleasure in them. it seemed the only live thing left in merrick was collecting itself from archives deep below. each morning the luminescence of his one-eyed stare grew and festered with a fevered incandescence.
merrick did not know this side of the sunspire. he knew only in which direction bearclaw valley held its mighty paw — and he knew from that direction where the canyon of the saints might be. tunnel-view focus, narrowing and narrowing until the bear came to the faithful servant, and whispered.
shadows. 
merrick curved his path and came to the long flat plains foreign and wild. 
the bearwolf did not pause. the wolf's-trot which had eaten the miles behind him continued.