Stone Circle sing to me all the song of the stars

@Larus :D Forgive me. I am so rusty at intro posts.

Stars crowded the inky sky, taking hold of the night as the moon slumbered somewhere distant and invisible. The chill of winter still made the dark hours cold, the rock beneath her only warm from her watchful presence on it. A cloud billowed from Nanook's parted jaw. She inclined her head to watch the heavens. Her eyes danced about. The constellations leapt in vivid memory; she could name them now, having found the knowledge in the Northern's wisdom. They remained constant, despite the many months she had lived away from them. She didn't realize how much she had missed them.

The Stone Circle rose as pillars behind her, and her thoughts drifted - from the stars, to her sister, to the troubles of the day. To Steph and Nikai's health, to Keoni's ability to heal them. Easthollow itself remained silent, her packmates asleep, save for those set to patrol, or anyone like her.

He had opted to patrol through the early evening and deep in to the night, with frequent breaks near the standing stones. Something about them was appealing to him. Larus couldn't place exactly why, but their presence was almost a comfort. They were so alien - they could not have been a natural formation of the earth - but being in their shadow calmed his pulse each time he passed them by.

As the stars began to make themselves known across an inkblot sky, he came upon the circle again. He was huffing and puffing, his muscles ached from continuous use, and he longed for bed - but he was alert and awake. As he crossed through the center of the circle (which gave him a new sensation, almost like a creeping sensation up his spine) he deviated back to the circumfrence and emerged the other side with a small sigh.

Nanook heard the stranger before she saw him, and she turned an ear toward the dissonance he cut against the quiet of the night. So much for solitude. She had yet to decide if her mood ranged amiable for company tonight, but the thought of talking with another didn't stir any strong emotions this way or that, which was a better sign than any.

From atop her rock, the Apaata turned her head in time to watch the other apparate through the space between the standing stones. He struck her as distantly familiar, but the shadows obscured him. Odd. Nanook tipped her head but made no movement further, nor any sound. She simply watched through eyes of smelted copper, and decided to see how long it would take for him to notice her there.

Her "at a glance" gif is very appropriate right now. Haha! (:

The sky was clear, but he didn't know this until he looked heavenward. In doing so he thought there was a flash of color in the dark, and this made him pause, his face contorting briefly in to a muddled expression. Thinking little of it, the man remained oblivious to his onlooker for a time; he watched the sky, tracing routes between the stars with his pale moon eyes. Larus was not well-versed when it came to the cosmos. He knew the basics, and a few little things that he'd picked up while on his travels. He was mystified by the clearness of the evening though - it had been months since he'd found any place to witness the sky with such clarity. Perhaps it was fortuitous.

When his neck began to ache he finally stopped looking around, returning to a more natural pose with a shake of his shoulders. A yawn then interrupted him; the cloud formed around his face and dissipated just as quickly as the last, but through it he thought he could see -- a figure? A face? The same flash of color as the starlight caught in the girl's eyes. It was startling and eerie, and he frowned when his surprise morphed in to a sense of defensiveness, naturally becoming stiff-legged and narrow-eyed in the next milisecond.

How long have you been there? He called out—albeit truthfully, he didn't want to know why this stranger lurked in the dark.

She watched him enter her vicinity, and turn his face toward the night. In the motion she caught the gleam of his eyes flash across her, and she remained still and unblinking, keen to believe he hadn’t seen her, unless he spoke and said otherwise. But he didn’t, and instead stayed swallowed by the night, seemingly enraptured by the celestial kingdom stretching oceans overhead.

In the pale glow of starlight, with his moon-touched face turned to watch the sky, she thought again he looked familiar. And yet, she couldn’t know this boy. He was their freshest recruit, a greater stranger to her than Birk - and yet...

The starlight fell in the twin specks of his eyes to rest on her and narrowed, more akin to slivered moons than to any of the constellations she knew. Nanook blinked, unruffled at his defensiveness - though if she had been the one being watched, she knew she would have acted in kind.

“Long enough,” she said, and eased herself from the rock in a low and cat-like stretch. “I was watching the stars before you came.” Her eyes never left him, but implored his face for the recollection of where she had seen him before. “They seemed to have taken you, too.”

When she descended from her perch Larus was transfixed. Whatever had made him so interested in the starlight seemed to have shifted to this wolf; something about her was familiar but, as it was quite dark and he was both too tired and too mindless to think hard on the topic, he failed in recognizing her outright. They appeared to study one another for a moment, and yet when she mentioned the stars again he was canting his head heavenwards to look, nervous perhaps that the'd have shifted position or faded in that brief lapse of his attention.

The sky is very clear here. That was not much of an explanation but Larus wasn't sure what she was after. He mused aloud mostly, and a thin smile found its home upon his face. He traced the stars with his eyes and then, maybe feeling the pressure of her presence (or perhaps the pressure of the season) he decided to flaunt his knowledge, starting with: Hm, Polaris. The bright one — there — it always leads the way.

Once he'd spoken, Larus felt a sense of deja-vu; he was struck silent then, and his smile faltered.

She was after nothing more than to buy more time to figure out this mystery. His statement was so obvious it wasn't worth mentioning, but for once she didn't mind. The words brought his face to turn heavenward again and in the motion, she felt the recognition strain her. His face looked like sunlight, and his eyes, like the reflection of the moon. Where had she seen that before? Nanook watched him until and she found herself flicking her eyes away with a sudden heat. She stared up at the sky with him, jaw set and mind turning over every possibility, but never the answer to the riddle she sought.

And then, her breath caught, and she found herself turning toward him with a sudden jerk of her head, poise abandoned. The mountain. Polaris. The night she'd set to travel North. The boy who had set to motion the journey that would lead her back home. The stars seemed to fall from the sky and click the boy in place like a constellation. Her breath came soft on the air. "You." She breathed, and leaned forward, brow set in disbelief. But of course it couldn't be - but it was - and why not? Because the world just didn't work that way. And yet - "You told me that before." She pressed closer, her reservation abandoned to the disbelief she shared a home with him now - the man she'd once thought a vision of a long and fretful night. He was here. Tangible. Real. Wasn't he? "I followed Polaris. She led me here." All the way to the North and back. "Who are you?"

It seemed as if the girl was having a religous experience but Larus was oblivious to it; he watched the stars so fondly, becoming so engrossed that he almost didn't hear her when she spoke; but then he looked at her with a glance and saw she'd come closer, and couldn't take his eyes away. She looked vaguely familiar to him but the young man had been all over the place and back — he couldn't be expected to remember every stranger he'd encountered.

But her account of their meeting made something click in his head. Although she sounded a fair bit more awed by the fact they'd encountered one another again, he merely smiled. Larus, he introduced with a small nod of his head, feeling a bit perplexed by the situation. Larus Sveijarn, but I think when you met me... I might've been struggling to remember that.

A flick of the ear. The stars, for now, were not so important. Who're you?

His name meant very little, in the placing of things - she couldn’t recall having exchanged that information at all. It had seemed so trivial at the time. But now, that small trivia became the least trivial thing, and she found her thoughts repeating the mantle he gave her in an effort to remember. His smile reflected on her lips.

Larus Sveijarn.

“Nanook Apaata.” She gave in return. And her words, for once, stopped there unwillingly. For once, she found she wanted to say something more. She wanted to ask why he had forgotten himself, how he had remembered, who he had been, but any bluntness she normally carried fell to a strange twinge of nerves that whispered maybe, well, maybe that wasn't the right thing to say.

But blast the stars, she had to say something. Surely, their conversation would end there if she didn't, and the thought seared a heat between her shoulder blades that trickled up to nip at her ears. She settled on the first thing that came to mind. "So why are you here?" No, no, that wasn't right - "I mean, where did you go after we met?" The words felt clumsy, probably wrong. It had been at least a year, and surely he hadn't been here the whole time - she would have seen him before. Larus was new, and she settled her attention on him, for in the moment, his story became of greater interest to her than the songs of sky.

Larus wasn't aware that Valette's sibling lived with her; he didn't even know the alpha's full name and likely wouldn't make the connection for a while. He thought the name was pretty — maybe that was a vain thing to say — but it was, and his smile grew a little.

They were quiet for a bit after that, and Larus was idly thinking of what else to say or, maybe let himself get distracted by the stars, but then Nanook said something he almost missed. Her correction was clearer, and gave him something to think about. He'd been to so many places and gone through so much, but it was hard to remember the details.

The most important thing to happen was a run-in with a red-furred woman. At that point Larus didn't know what to make of her and had dismissed her eagerly - she seemed crazy - but that had led him on a personal quest outside of the valley. A brief stint with a mountain pack too, but that wouldn't make him out to be that great of a person (he did abandon them after all). So he resorted to being vague by saying, Here and there, didn't settle anywhere for long. But then when the winter hit... I dunno, the lonliness kinda got to me. He rolled his hefty shoulders and glanced at the dirt, hoping she wouldn't delve deeper than she had — but at the same time, enjoying her company.

He seemed pensive, but the silence that followed her question seemed a good kind. A thinking kind, one she often basked in herself, and Nanook allowed herself to settle into the moment with ease. His answer was nothing peculiar, nor very revealing, and out of the mouth of any other, his words were something she would have shrugged off as insignificant. Small talk. Breath that got you nowhere. But there was something about Larus that didn't make her think that about what he gave her to work with, and her head remained turned, piqued with curiosity - here and there, but where? Yet she caught the shift in his eyes, his downturned glance, and she decided, for now, not to press any further.

"The loneliness got to me, too," she admitted, and it felt strange to hear the words spoken out loud. For so long, she had thought the best way to live was alone, but the time she had spent in the North - she had witnessed a kinship among the wolves there that had left her wanting for something more than her thoughts, more than the sky, more than the earth. "The stars don't keep half as good a company as wolves do," she quirked her lips with the attempt to steer them toward conversation she, at least, could handle, and flicked her nose to the sky. "They tell great stories, though, if you listen."

He nodded at her comment and looked skyward, going quiet once again. There had been so many nights where the stars were his only company; he hadn't made up names for them or anything, he wasn't that creative. However, he understood her sentiment all the same. They were beautiful things that seemed almost pointless, but without them... Maybe he wouldn't have survived as long as he had. His family might've been gone but the stars would always be there, persistent and watching.

That made him think of something else though. Larus glanced at his new friend and then cast a look over his shoulder to the stones. And what about those? He stared at them, these dark obelisks with constellations sparkling just out of focus behind them, and then looked to Nanook. Do you know anything about the stones? They don't seem natural to me, then again, Or, well, I guess they're natural. The stars seem unnatural too but, in a good way. Maybe they're the same? Crap, he was rambling again. So much for being all mysterious and suave.

Though she couldn't guess the thoughts that roamed through the sun-kissed boy, nor whether his silence stemmed from disinterest or wonder, he stayed in her company, and that alone gave her assurance he didn't mind her. And that was enough for her. Nanook watched skyward and let herself roam across the galaxies, touching from lone star to constellation until her gaze fell a little longer upon Polaris. The North Star glimmered as the brightest of the heavenlies tonight, her own constant guide when she had been struggling to remember herself.

Her companion's sudden shift broke her focus and she turned first to him, then to the backdrop of looming pillars he gestured toward. His words were many - a tight mess that brought the glimmer of a grin to her face. At least she wasn't the only one stumbling over words tonight.

"All I know is we call them the Stone Circle, and they've been standing there long before Des - " she caught herself - "ah, before Valette, found the pack." But his idea - the end of his rambling - she rose from his side and drew toward the stones. They loomed like a monster's claws, grasping at the sky, and she squinted to stare up the length of them. Like the stars... "Could they have fallen from the sky?" she turned to see what Larus thought. "I mean, I've seen stars running through the sky before. And I've heard they sometimes fall to the earth. Maybe that's what happened here."  But her ears slicked at the thought, for the idea seemed sorrowful, somehow, their striving toward the heavens. Like they pined for a home they would never touch again.

He didn't notice her bumbling over Valette's name and if he had, he probably would've assumed the pack had a previous alpha who had been lost, or something else equally dramatic. His ears turned to catch every syllable that Nanook uttered while he stared at the towering stones. It wasn't long before he was considering her words, ruminating upon them, wondering if maybe she was right. He turned and noticed that she'd come closer - but then Nanook was walking by the stones and he, enjoying the company, followed after her.

Maybe, Larus concurred, Anything is possible. They could've landed like seeds and sprouted, or something. Grown like trees. But, his golden face furrowed as he considered another option, if that were true then wouldn't there be more of them? I've been so many places but I've never seen anything like these. He ducked beside one of them at that point, crossing through a cast shadow, and emerged from the dark on the other side; the stone stood tall between them and for just a second Nanook's fur in the night reminded him of Saghani and he thought his heart skipped a beat.

The sound of his paws fell in step behind her, and she felt a tingle in her chest as she listened to him speak - dissecting her words, turning them with his own curious bent, and proposing further developments to the thoughts she had chosen to plant. This was different than how most others spoke when she sought to make sense of things they would probably never understand, and she didn't quite know what to make of it - but she decided that, for once, she felt excited to say more.

"That's a good point. But if they're really made of stardust, maybe that's enough to explain why we don't see them everywhere," she peeked around the stone that stood between them to catch his own twin stars, bright and reflective in the mask of his face and the glow of the night. The explanation bordered on fantastical - but this was fun, and she hardly cared. Stars did fall, and perhaps they really could grow when given the right earth and the right climate to thrive in.

But another thought came to mind, one at which she furrowed her brow. The idea seemed strange to share - maybe even offputting - but when she weighed her options, she didn't see much she could lose. "My sister... she says the souls of the wolves we love go to join the stars when they die. I don't really know if I believe that, but maybe the stars fell here to help the ones we love to find their way back home." The thought pressed an unnatural chill through her spine, and she rounded the stone to stand nearer her friend, a nervous laugh in her throat as she eyed the stone she always caught Desna leaning against. "But maybe that's a little creepy."

What would make stardust any different from normal dust? Or from soil? But he didn't bring this up. It was entirely likely that the stars did fall and maybe that's what the entire ground was made of - maybe they were walking on all the stardust right now? The more he thought about it the less inclined Larus was to believe it; but then Nanook turned the conversation deeper in to an esoteric direction and he was struck by the curious things she was saying. It was a nice thought. Such a thing would no doubt comfort Valette after the passing of her daughter — and it made him smile.

He was about to say something, voice a thought, but he stopped when he heard Nanook's shy laughter. He watched the shadow of her silhouette move behind the stone and kept pace himself, emerging from between a set of two misshapen stones just as she said, - maybe that's a little creepy.

Not creepy at all, he murmured. That sounds.. Comforting. If I had lost anyone dear to me, believing they were somehow still watching and still present is... Sweet. It was his turn to feel sheepish. How often did men talk about the stars being sweet or whatever? His ears fanned about on his head as he sorted through his awkwardness, releasing a breathy but deep laugh. This petered out though as Larus watched the sky. He wondered if his mother was up there — maybe Caiaphas was floating about in the dark, her two yellow eyes set as brilliant stars.