Mount Apikuni these things that you're after, they can't be controlled

@Barracuda

when the sun rises caw is already awake, staring wide-eyed at the sky.
 
his fur is stiff and matted with dried blood, as is common, and the sensation is not entirely pleasant, but whether a feeling is good or bad is not something that has ever really bothered caw – in the end it is a feeling and that is good enough for him, even though when avis finally arrives from her hunting she grumbles about it as her weight settles on his back. the touch of her claws is familiar as she grooms the scattered feathers threaded into caw’s scruff with careful sweeps of her beak.
 
he lets her because he is perfectly aware that she does not put up with complaints, and because he is still distracted by the curve of the moon, still shimmering with a faint, eerie red where it meets the deep early-morning blue of the sky. it was a long walk up the mountain when he caught it in the twilight, and now even though he is more than a little exhausted, from the trek and a sleepless night, his ears flick eagerly.

"videsne id?" he demands, wiggling with barely-restrained excitement as he cranes his head around to peer at the crow on his back, tongue lolling from between parted jaws. his raw-blood eyes gleam against the ink-black of his muzzle. he does not wait for her affirmative chirp, instead spinning back around to continue peering at the object in question. 

he has heard the stories of the red skies before, of course, from his family, from the crows. it is another thing entirely to see them himself.

The night had held many things for him, and between his spindly limbs he had held something — someone — which was a feeling he had nearly come to forget.  Perhaps he would've been better that way.  He had given into the lily's desire, upon the stipulation that she let him hold her once their coupling had finished.  Beneath the bloodied moon he had sought to groom her.  He stroked the fur between her ears with his tongue, had sprawled his limbs around her spiderlike as they lay satisfied between the birches.

The morning brings with it a different a different light.  The moon is still fresh and raw.  He is hungry and emptied and tired from doting in the way that women want.  The ghoulish wretch approaches the shadow of the mountain during the early hours and does not quite make it before foriegn tongue punctuates the marrow bled morning.  One tattered ear swivels atop his narrow crown, and he jerks his head in the direction of the stranger with a low growl.  

Still some distance away, he adjusts his course.  Peering from the darkness come those too yellow eyes as he crouches, watching the man and his crow.

under the watery light of the rising sun and the full rust-red circle of the moon, everything is still and eerie in a way that feels more familiar than foreboding, but without the accompaniment of the flock and his family, it feels incomplete. he has avis -- they have had each other since he was little more than a blind cub -- but perhaps this is the first time he feels something close to missing where and what he used to be.

it is a feeling that, at least, passes quickly, lost in a mix of his own curiosity and both an inability to comprehend it and a disinterest in trying.

"quid tu scio de illa?" caw chirps instead, sweeping his muzzle to face his companion, but in the rush of movement his ear catches something -- a faint sound, too quiet to make out, but present nonetheless. his ears flick to attention, head tilting as he blinks owlishly into the murky semi-darkness of an early summer morning, and avis does not need him to point anything out; she shifts and sweeps off his back in a flurry of beating wings. 

he trots a few steps along the rock he has spent the night atop, mouth half-open like a snake scenting for prey as his nostrils flare. it is perhaps too difficult to make out anything other than vague, shadowy shapes but it is not that caw needs in the end, nor sound or smell -- it is the reflected gleam of light off a pair of eyes in the dark, and nothing more.

"te video!" caw trills, pleased with himself as he slinks forward, the slow purpose of his movements distinctly predatory. he casts his gaze along the brush, picking out the gleam of light from the corners of his eyes as he grows closer. by now he is certain there is nobody here that speaks his tongue, so there is little purpose in introducing himself in such a way. "hello!"

He emerges from the underbrush to come face-to-face with the man that is as wrought in as much brimstone as himself.  This is the second he has met in this lands that look like they could be his kin; fortunately he recognized most of those, and few of them were still alive as it was.

He rumbles an indistinct greeting, his eyes flit to the crow atop his back.  You are comrades?

caw does not bother moving away as the wolf, having clearly been found out, emerges from the brush, putting them what would be uncomfortably close if caw cared at all about the concept of giving someone space. he is dark enough that caw has some trouble picking him out from the brush while staring straight at him; so he keeps his gaze fixed on the gleam of yellow eyes that is the only thing he can really see.

whatever he says at first is lost among the noise of the wind, and caw blinks owlishly at him for a brief moment until he continues. at which point, if only for a brief moment, he breaks his gaze from the stranger's as his head swings around to try and point just where avis is. in the end he doesn't have to search for more than a second before her weight settles somewhere along his scruff.

"yes," caw says. "my friend." his tail sweeps in a brief, eager arc, eyes gleaming as he inspects the man. caw has long since lost the ability, if he ever had it, to act, well, anything approaching normal in company -- his unblinking gaze has the same sort of feel that one might expect a curious child to fix upon an insect before crushing it. he smells like other wolves -- in a very particular way -- which caw might be more interested in if not for his current fixation.

"you see?" he asks, canting his head in the direction of the sky. his eyes do not leave the stranger. "blood moon." he murmurs something quick in latin, and avis caws back a sharp answer. "is..." he struggles briefly with the word. "important for crows. sometimes wolves." he blinks, once. "is why you are here?"