King Elk Forest king of cups

@Nova! :) set after he talks to mato, keeping it a little vague for now

his skin itches with the weight of his new - responsibility, goal, ambition, he can't quite pin it down but maybe it doesn't matter. he has his silvery prince's approval (not that, he will insist with a touch of ego, he expected anything less) and he has purpose, and he feels simultaneously heavy and light.

the sun's set already as he creeps the forest floor, still feeling a little antsy from the past days events. he needs to.. he needs to make plans, track down seabreeze and talk to her, and there are the others in the pack he hasn't met yet, maybe relatives of mato, their scents carrying a vaguely familiar sweetness from what he caught at the pack's eclipsed founding. the androgyne sighs and pauses in his aimless pacing - he's found a sparse spot, and the sky above is brilliant (he'll only admit to himself that like the silvery stream before it reminds him a little of mato, and maybe this - whatever it is - of his is getting out of hand, but if he only holds it in himself and never, ever lets the barest hint of it out, then it doesn't matter and doesn't count. he's rooting for seabreeze, anyway.)

Nova has taken stock of most of the pack's resources, tracking not only the various types of plants in the area (only with a rudimentary knowledge of them at best) and she has spent her time trying to learn the lands as best as she can. It's partially because of her more reserved, almost shy nature, and partially because her head is in the clouds most days that she hasn't exactly sought out many other people. She's spent more time on the heavens and earth than anything else and now she's got to change that. Nova lifted herself up from the small grove of trees that she has settled as her own to find a decent view of the sky, trying to track the weather at various times to compare it to what she already knows. Winter is unfamiliar to her even though she approaches her first year and all she remembers was it being so cold and the time she had gotten so sick. 

Nova froze when she caught the scent of another nearby, tail giving a few cautious wags behind her as she let out a low chuff. Maybe this was some sort of intervention, she needed to explore more and she needed to get to know her packmates, why not start there? It was harder to find the darker figure in the growing night but when she did Nova offered a small smile, giving a polite nod of her head in greeting.

the scent in the air startles him: for a moment, he thinks mato has materialized with his inappropriate thoughts. but, no, it's not quite the morwinyon's particular smell, and the chuff that accompanies it confirms this. embarrassed, the boy ducks his head with a frown as he turns to greet the interloper. another relative of mato's, he thinks, and then realises he has yet to say anything to acknowledge her greeting and makes a sheepish chuff in return. "sorry, hi, umwas distracted," delight mumbles, then finally looks at her properly.

he hasn't met her yet but he knows she was at the founding as well - ah, so, another opportunity. he doesn't want to jump into it immediately, though. the androdyne hasn't seen seabreeze recently and the power dynamic with mato (or rather, his own issues of idealization) disrupts the opportunity for a real friendship, and that leaves him with, what, his antagonist uka, or trajan, who's more like an older-brother figure than a pal -- delight, in an odd turn, kind of wants to make friends. if he hasn't already mucked it up. this is not his strongest suit. "nice out tonight," he tries, glancing back up at the sky with eyes made iridescent by the reflected starlight.

 

Nova might have smiled given the way that it wasn't that long ago that Brienne had startled her the very same way. Although it seemed like he was more in control than she was, he hadn't jumped after all like a dolt, it was still almost this weird comfort to know she wasn't the only one who got caught unawares sometime. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you." She said with a smile - wanting to be sure that she was as open and welcoming as possible. Although she was 'just' Mato's sister she didn't want to make a bad impression on others because of what she did. As happy as she was to be with her brother she also knew she needed some friends in the pack. "I'm Nova," She said with a smile, tail sweeping against her hocks for a moment. 

"Isn't it?" She agreed warmly, bright eyes turning up from his darker form and towards the skies again. "Do you know much about them?" She asked curiously, even with her name wasn't enough of hint, she'd almost always been destined to love the stars. It was her fondest memory with her sister, after all, and it helped her to keep her ties to her family. 

"it's okay," he says, and tries to match her smile with one of her own. not that he's never smiled in his life, but it feels a little foreign and after a second he drops it, settling for a wag of the tail instead. she gives him her name and he nods, returning his own: "i'm delight singing-sunlight." gone is the characteristic puff of the chest (he's been mocked quite enough thank-you-much) - he's settling into his own skin more  these days.

the androgyne's attempts at small talk seem to have worked, since nova brightens up at the talk of the sky. well, figures a girl named nova would care about stars, though delight himself knows little about them. "uh, not really," he answers to that affect, following her gaze upward once more. "do you?" delight doesn't think it would be so bad to listen to her talk about them. loads better than uka going on about the fish at least. his silver-moon eyes slide back down to the girl, watching her thoughtfully as he takes a seat, gaze open and curious.