Silver Creek moon dust in your lungs

The gale winds tossed against strained cedars, forcing the strength of their boughs to bend and creak against the torrent of air. Fresh lichen had formed against the trunks of a few of the sparse fir trees; this was a promise of warmer weather. The creek rolled lazily, albeit actively enough to cause an echo of moving water to carom off of the sturdy woodland growth. Fresh as it was, life had been restored to a winter-torn landscape. Though stars littered the inkiest of skies overhead, a distant flash of lightning on the furthest reaches of the world afforded a glimpse at the incoming cloudburst. The winds brought an irriguous perfume as it lashed through outstretched branches. The trees reached for the cluster of galaxy overhead, and the prattling of the stream flowed steadily toward a distant ocean. There was a throaty uttering of frogs on the banks of the watercourse; they sang over the sound of their native terrain, relishing in the cool grip of nightfall. Crickets joined in the chorus with a softened hum and strum of their spindly limbs. It was the melody of a late night and it called to the starchaser’s longing threaded heart.
 
Tattered tendrils of dark ink rose like wisps along the back of the prowling hunter. Luminous eyes like the beginnings of flame scorched against the earth. Long limbs carried the nimbus in a beaten path, following a distant scent of other hunters that had passed through hours before. The vivid flush of sallow moonlight had cloaked him in dancing shadow and navy. The lurid guard hairs that played against the brush of air glinted against the softest touch of light from overhead. He appeared to be spun with the magic of the clinquant orbiting starlight. Orion waded through the shallowest of the river before seeking his direction from what was mapped overhead. The light led him east.

The humid air stretched well into the inkling hours, though cooler now that the sun relinquished his reign to the moon. Still, a sticky, constricting moisture pushed through her windblown fur and seeped into her skin. Even the wind, while brisk in its rattling whispers, brought little relief. The air would clear once the rain broke from the towering thunderheads. The humidity served only as a warning of the tempest that soon would break.

For now, the ground remained dry. A creek pulsed through the twisting shadows, its presence marked only by the sound of steady piling. Much quieter than Otter Creek - and she wondered if the Ice Bear had moved on from there. Likely - for her legs had carried her many days, seven turns, when counted - and he had his own ventures to follow, as she had hers. And she had travelled farther and longer before; she did not tire yet. No longer bound by the daylight wolves of Easthollow, Nanook clung fervent to the night. How she had missed the host who had watched her from the heavens through her trials and peace, and she glanced up to her compass for nothing more than to see them again. Her direction didn't matter; she had no aim.

But still she noted, the light led her west.

“We may never find a way from this dreadful place, Starchaser…”
 
That day, the light had shimmered down from overhead and released a trillion diamonds in the fresh layer of snow. The hollow soul within him had felt bent and weary from days of unrest. And still, Orion had endured. Though there was a dying light in his companion’s eye, the withered wendigo of the night had known only to carry on. No matter what, he was to carry on.
 
Against the backdrop of the winding creek, a fleeting heartbeat of all that he had escaped. Even though the sun had fallen hours before, the dark nimbus was reminded.
 
It was a bitter feeling to reminisce without willing it. Even though the Mal’um could not be felt at his heels – breath burning hot against the flesh of his back side – it was as though he could not live without the threat of them in his mind. Rodents were more pleasurable companions in comparison to the acidic burn of regret. It drilled through the thicker portions of him and settled in a noxious pool against the lining of his stomach. So many lives had been cast away for the survival of a small few. So many of their traditions had been shattered in an act of desperation. Repentance would not account for the brashness, and it most certainly would not return the lost stars to their earthly bodies.
 
Amid the gale there was a scent; misplaced, but still prevalent. The Starchaser drank in what he could before the clinquant glittering of his gaze latched to her wandering body. He followed the rhythmic swinging of her limbs and combed through the moonlight hairs of her cloak. The scent was driven to him once more, but Orion knew it to belong to her, only her. She, who was tethered to the earth beneath their feet.
 
The Starchaser did not stir from his predatory stance. The swarthy nimbus heeded her.

A distant peal of thunder seemed to shake her through until her very fur stood on end, the electricity charging. The tempest simmered nearer. Yet as she turned to catch a vain and habitual glimpse of the sky, a movement caught in her periphery. A lucid pull of the shadows. The glint of fallen stars. Her fur stood on end, and not merely from the spark of the lightning storm. She drew herself to a sharp and sudden halt and snapped herself to face him.

If not for his eyes - molten as the sun, and watchful as the stars - the shadows would have eclipsed the stranger. But she could see his eyes, watching her, and from this she discerned the vaguest face until her eyes adjusted and pulled the shape of his body from the shadows. She sucked in the sharpest breath. Moonlight brought the scattered light along his back to glint like stars in the inkblot sky, as if he loomed as an extension of the sky itself. The pulse of the gales whisked through his feathered fur, and she wondered if strand by strand the storm would take him, to dissipate and reconstruct him worlds away, without the need to raise a paw or strike the ground below.

She flared her nostrils to catch a scent of him, but the wind cut strong along her back to gust toward the stranger instead, affording her nothing but what her eyes could see. Her brow furrowed and her own gaze glinted sharp in question, still not certain if the stranger was a wolf, a spectre, or the stars made manifest themselves.

Ah, she is wary, he thought to himself with the lightest tug at the corners of his lips. The luminous glow of his gaze traveled the length of her frame in a sweep that lasted only a heartbeat before he latched to her face. The stygian coat along his neck and shoulders bristled, as though lit with fire by the light of the stars overhead. The moon glimmered against his inky frame before being concealed by a wandering cloud. Orion blinked wearily in the direction of the she-wolf; he exhaled, and the weight of his breath seemed to exhaust him. Another flash of his lids before he roused life into his haggard body and drew his skull upward.
 
A softer breeze passed across the fine features of his muzzle, carrying her scent with it. The Starchaser allowed the memory of it to linger against the back of his throat before he issued a hoarse bark. He was alive, yes. While the glittering sky might have played against the swarthy quills of his back, he was very much corporeal. Her inhale drew his ears to stand erect atop his crown and the slightest cant of his skull was what met her.
 
Another breath of the gale forced itself against him. An owl’s mournful coo echoed softly to the east.
 
In their standstill, Orion felt the intimate burn of paranoia. The shadowed nimbus tightened his limbs, making them taut. The slate woman had not issued a greeting, and so the wraith crinkled his nose and uttered in a broken growl, “have the Mal’um sent you?” It was the intensity of her stare that rattled him; the glittering of golden lights in her eyes, searching him. He felt as though she could crack him open and dig through his insides. The leering of his former homeland was branded to his soul. Even while she stood so far from him, no hint of aggression in her studious watchfulness, he was gripped by the fear.
 
The haunted call of the owl drifted overhead once more, and then the sound of crickets rose in a symphony of delicate strings.

The moment seemed to pass like hours, and she would have believed it, if the unmoving shadows didn't tell her otherwise. The leaves rustled above, sometimes obscuring his face from sight, sometimes obscuring hers. His utterance did little to sever the effect of his ethereal presence, and the whirl of the coming tempest paired with the nocturnal calls did little to turn her thoughts to interpretations more astute. For all she could decipher through scent and sight and sound, he was the embodiment of the night.

Yet he was a stranger, and whatever fabrications she wove for his life could not overwrite this one thing she knew. Whether or not he descended from the stars, she did not know him, and for this she remained on guard. The stranger held no bias in her one way or the other. Even as his hackles fell and rose, she watched through a slow and neutral burn. And at his gruff question, she offered the slightest tilt of her head. "I do not know these Mal'um." But she noticed an edge to him - seemingly buried, but there. Fear. And though he made her many things - wary, uncertain, alert - she didn't feel afraid - but she wondered which side of left and right these Mal'um stood on, and if maybe, she should feel afraid, too. "They follow you?"

Once the pointed query had passed by his lips, the nimbus clicked his teeth together in a gritted hold. It was here – this pivotal moment – that the starchaser believed her ire would unfurl and he would be chastened for his wrongdoings. The wendigo stood with eyes like a doe, wide and fearful against the shape of her earthly form.
 
But, the subastral stranger uttered a phrase he thought never to hear.
 
I do not know these Mal’um.
 
How?
 
Even on the face of the cosmic wraith, there was awe. It was almost as though the uncelestial creature had reached within him and stolen his very spirit. The breathlessness that overcame him was all but palpable. In his sudden onslaught of misery, the starchaser released a sharp exhale that dropped the rigidity in his lean frame. The weight of his shoulders fell inches before he stood, swaying with the touch of the zephyr. It was in this release that the air around them shifted; he was overcome with a weariness that ached in the marrow of his skeletal frame. Another notch had been taken from the years of his life in only that single exchange.
 
The earthly woman inquired to him if the Mal’um followed. The wendigo gritted his fangs together, creating a clench in his jaw. It was arduous for the nimbus to illustrate the intentions of their kind. The Mal’um did not follow; they loomed, waiting for the hand of good fortune to brush against them. It was only ever a matter of time.
 
“They scour in search of stars,” his haggard tone latched against the back of his throat upon exit. “The Mal’um seek only to massacre.”
 
Yet, why should he share such paramount knowledge with a body that did not know what it meant to saunter amongst the galaxies? Once, it had been said that the great stars should discern what it truly meant to fall – to become one with the terra beneath their shoddy paws – and to know from the earthly creatures what it meant to withstand. For all his years on the harsh planet, Orion had only ever known how to endure; he did not believe he could lucubrate from hounds and hunters that had not known his grief. Still, as he searched her cloud-dappled frame for a reason, he met only innermore defeat.
 
“You should be wary, earthly huntress. They will not hesitate to slaughter one of their own kind.”
 
The warning was all that he might offer on the subject of those who hunted him. But, warning was enough.