Morningside Cuesta unbound

I got carried away oops <3

A cold ripple of amusement stirred inside; a rare, flickering light in the grey landscape of his mind. She spoke of food and water as if he were a common scavenger driven by the base needs of the gut, rather than a man who had spent months refining his hunger into a singular, sharp-edged pursuit.

He liked that she poked at him. He liked that she didn't settle for the easy silence. The wraith didn't pull away from the provocative heat of her shoulder. Instead, he leaned into that daring intimacy, his gait remaining mechanical and steady even as his inner thoughts sharpened with a dark, appreciative wit.

„The bear had nothing more to tell me,” he murmured, his voice a dry, low rasp that seemed to vibrate against the very air she breathed. He did not cast her a glance immediately, keeping his gaze on the fractured horizon of the ridge. „He was merely noise in a world that requires silence. A variable I had already solved and discarded.”

He remembered the Kaan; he, too, had offered the same hollow comforts with a heavy hand of high regard. But honor had proven a fragile thing when the war-drums began their march across the ice. When the glacier finally shattered, those he had respected hadn't stood firm; they had dispersed like ash in a gale. They had left him to drown beneath a frozen sea with a cougar’s teeth sinking into the marrow of his neck while they sought their own safety.

Astier had learned then that a full belly was a poor shield against abandonment, and that ‘provision’ was often just a down payment on a betrayal. He would not be lured by the simple things again; not by a bear, and not by the promise of a stable hearth. He had already paid that debt in blood, and he wasn't looking to open a new account.

„You ask what I seek as if the answer isn't currently walking beside me,” he continued, his tone dropping into something dangerously quiet, his gaze still away from her, „I do not seek 'something' greater, Siofra. I do not chase shadows for the sake of the hunt. I am here because the trail ended the moment I caught the scent of sea salt on a mountain that has never known the tide. I have found exactly what I was looking for.” A ghost of a smirk, jagged and cold, touched his muzzle. „Now, I am simply deciding if I like the answer I’ve been given.”