Bramblepoint A knife in the dark.

@Damien

Amid a cloudless and starless midnight sky, the new moon observed the prowling of a dark creature. He moved silently and gracefully, with careful precision, slinking with ease between the thorned foliage as he hunted. It was not a thirst for blood that roused the wolf that night, however, for he was driven instead by a sweeter tooth.

Blackberries had been a rare treat in Cheydinhal, so to find a territory teeming with them was a quite splendid thing. Teinaava plucked a ripe fruit between delicate teeth, savouring the taste of it on his tongue while his pewter gaze scanned the darkness for another. Most of the mature berries had been consumed by birds and other wildlife, and so the raven turned his attention on another while making a mental note to return in a few days for better pickings.

When he'd foraged his fill, Teinaava found himself venturing toward denser wood. The forests were his favoured haunt, having spent almost his entire life lurking in shadows of the vast Cheydinhal. Leaving them gripped him with a strange sense of exposure - a vulnerability, one might call it. It wasn't in the spider's best interest to be seen, given the nature of his life's work, so he travelled only undercover of night.

Beneath the shelter of the fruit trees' canopy, his thoughts turned to the whereabouts of his sister. While it was not uncommon for the siblings' paths to stray with the setting of a sun, they could always rely on one to find the other. Two days had passed since Ocheeva's disappearance and, while the she-wolf was more than capable of handling herself, Teinaava could not deny the unsettling dicomfort deep within his bones that a part of him was missing.