Blackfeather Woods i'm wide awake

Though Cicero had passed periods of being away from Damien in the past — when he had travelled, when Damien had shunned him — it was treating him more poorly than he had thought to do so now. Perhaps it was because Cicero was not so sure if this winter would treat him as well as the last, or perhaps because he felt like a ticking time bomb. The unrequited feelings were stronger now than before; now that he had slept within his brother's embrace for so long. To have that ripped away once more was more than he wished to handle. It was so sudden, too, to see his brother departed, and he was beginning to think he may have to go look for Damien.

And so one evening, when he least expected it — before it had always happened when he was not alone — Cicero felt something stir within him, and he knew that something was wrong. Yet he also knew that he could not stop it, and the more he thought of all the things the beast had done — to Alexander, with Alexander, to Desna, and who knew who else — the more he was losing his control. A brief glimpse had shown itself that night with Alexander, but now there was no stopping it. It was perhaps lucky that Damien was not here to fall prey to the clutches of the Beast, thought Cicero, and it was the last thing he felt as he crashed from the den, tripped and collapsed into the frostbitten underbrush of the dark woods.

By the time he came to, a dribble of snowflakes had accumulated onto his back and Sheogorath looked up at the bark of a tree someone had his their head on. He groaned through the headache and shook the snow from his head as he looked around. A smile started to form on Sheogorath's face.

Playtime.

"Cicero!"

the boy called a greeting to the skeletal male, recalling him from their joining and from the times he had spoken with Seff when he had been young.  he found Cicero very...interesting, he had not seen him since he had joined, but after a bout of hunting brought on by thoughts of Freyja, he had come across the male.

the teen sat, having come to Cicero from the side, and with a soft smile waited for the male to say something. he certainly looked as if he had been sitting there for a while, snow having dusted his back, and for a brief moment Seff wondered if everything was quite all right with the male.

He turned his head to look who called Cicero's name. He remembered this boy, though not overly strong. He meant little to Sheogorath, but he remembered that Cicero had once taught him a thing or two about plants and their effects. Sheogorath was not as avid as Cicero when it came to the abuse of such plants. He preferred more lively forms of pain, and he preferred to be in control.

Sheogorath scrambled to his feet to look at Seff, who'd sat down by now, adopting a more dominant posture than Cicero tended to (he did not curl his tail up or raise his head high, but he made more eye contact and held himself a bit higher; like a leader rather than Cicero's neutral posture). "What's up, boy?" he asked. "Glad to be back?" Likely the answer was 'yes'; why else had he returned? Sheogorath sure shared the sentiment.