Duskfire Glacier One different Scent

Where Scarlett felt glee, Malachi felt resistance, and his heart willed him to turn now and leave. But when he looked at the ivory queen, with her head lifted in an honoured tilt and her voice concealing her eagerness to hear, his mouth ran dry. He couldn't turn back now.

Malachi eased onto the barren ground and cast a fleeting glance toward the sky. The cloudy cover hid most of the stars, and those that peeked through watched for but a moment before veiling their faces again. But before he could lose himself to the dark expanse, he pulled his eyes away and settled his gaze upon Scarlett while his thoughts compiled. He had always been one for stories, but the histories he had recited in the Vale had felt far removed from him. The one he would would share still struck him far too close.

Clearing his throat, he began as tradition held, his breath but a hush in the night and his words more a whisper to ease his own wary nerves. "Ears, come and listen; heart, be not cold; mind, be ever ready for the history you are told." He paused and drew a breath. Then, with eyes trained just beyond Scarlett's eager gaze, he spoke.

"Tuwawi and Njal Sveijarn founded the Glacier at the end of summer's waning rays. They forged a new fire here, a new life with the family they had formed with one another. I was an outsider welcomed in, but I came to call this family home. We shared this hope between us, whether kin or one brought in, building on the joy and expectation carried in the chorus of our claim.
"But as days passed along, a darkness arose and felled our small family to fear. The lynx made a claim to this land we call home, and held to the hills with paws made of stone. We worked side by side to force them away, but still they lingered near, until the day their threats became more than empty steps and hollow wails."

The night still came clear to his mind, and he drew in a ragged breath. Tuwawi's frantic cries, the musk of cat mingled with blood and wolf. Anger sparked in his heart again, grief and guilt, but this time not only against the lynx who had destroyed them. Shadowed fur danced around their tawny forms, ghastly yellow eyes laughing at him through a mocking stare.

He lost himself then, blinking shut his eyes while silence tightened his throat. The poetry that had flowed from his mouth vanished to the night, leaving them to the gentle whistle of winter wind through the boughs of skeletal trees.

Agh! D: That's probably one of my worst fears when I'm about to send in a post D:
Also, I am glad that you are excited about this, too :D I'm definitely having a lot of fun with this thread <3