Morningside Cuesta unbound

Astier didn't offer a rebuttal, nor did he ask for a destination. The request, the command, was the only invitation he needed to break the icy stasis he had maintained since arriving at the cliff’s edge.

The Wraith turned with the mechanical precision of a soldier, his paws falling into the rhythm of her gait without a moment’s hesitation. He did not trail behind like a subordinate, nor did he lead. Instead, he paced her, closing the distance until the heat of his body was a silent radiator against the freezing afternoon air. He walked near enough that the tips of his pale fur nearly brushed her flank with every stride, a deliberate invasion of the space she had just claimed, yet he remained a razor-thin margin away from true contact.

It was a predatory sort of proximity, one that demanded she acknowledge his presence in every breath she drew. „Rumors are usually the desperate attempts of the bored to explain the unseen,” he murmured, his voice low and vibrating just beside her ear, carried on the slipstream of their movement. „If you were looking for a ghost, Siofra, you should have stayed in the bypass. I was quite invisible until the bear arrived.” A smirk stretched on his face then.

He didn't look at the path ahead. His silver gaze was fixed on the side of her face, tracking the way her breath misted in the cold. „But I am told ghosts don't leave tracks in the snow,” he added, his tone sharpening with a hint of that dry, familiar wit. „And I have been following yours for a quite some time."