Blackfeather Woods each night reunites me with the feral tenderness of my own evil

a wild DB "The Ghosts, They Sing to Me" quest appears! b/c a kind of halloweeny-themed thread for a high af wintersbane seemed like fun!

it took some time but as dusk breaks and settles across the wilds the mushrooms that wintersbane had thought had been safe to eat — although why he thought it was a good idea to try any sort of mushroom in the first place is beyond even his own sensibility — had turned out to be otherwise. they weren't poisonous per-say. he doesn't feel sick but his head begins to feel foggy after an hour into his patrols and with the strange feeling growing he abandons the patrol and seeks asylum deeper within the woods. the world around him at times moves in a slow pace, there is one tree and then suddenly there are visual echoes of the same tree, as is if it were trying to multiply itself.

the tundrian's head swims with the high, pupils dilate and his steps falter as he staggers and presses against the nearest tree for support. shapes begin to appear; at first, little more than wisps of writhing smoke. but as he blinks and squints in the distance, the veil between the spirit realm and the realm of the living splits wide for wintersbane and the smoke takes form. into wolves he doesn't recognize. deceased wolves of the woods ...and gods and monsters — for surely the wolf-looking shape with multiple eyes and spider-legs, and the skeletal being translate to wintersbane as more monsters than gods. they speak in a language older than bones; words are guttural and foreign to the tundrian. he does not speak deity and their words fall on ...not deaf ears but ears that cannot translate their otherwise feral noises, like the rasp of bone against bone.

his hackles bristle as his flesh burns hot beneath his pelage, an additional side effect of the high he suffers through. and he pushes off the trunk, curious. wanting to get closer to the deities and ghosts of the woods now that he can see them ...even if he's far from a lucid state of mind.

He's been hunting for fresh poppies for a few hours, and has begun to run out of light. Mou hates that. He hates his dependence on the medicine, but mostly he hates the season shifting around him. The chances of him finding a fresh harvest at this time of the year is slim and while he isn't trained in that fact, the weariness and burning desire tell him as much. His head was pounding. His skin itched, his eyes watering and red-rimmed.

It was too dark. And so Mou stumbled along in a frenzy trying to find something to alleviate his needs, but instead of the plants and the seeds he is after, he finds a body. At first he thinks it might be someone he knows, but the closer he gets the less certain he is of that. They're darkly cloaked. Their interest seems to be in the trees, but Mou doesn't see what they see, and he wonders if something is wrong. A part of him is reminded of when Maegi overdosed on the sand but this is different than that, the stranger appears to be more active than she ever was. Mou sniffs the air but can't detect anything. He wonders, then, if this is a different sort of overdose.

And then, deeply, darkly, he wonders if there's more of whatever-it-is to go around.

he's only begun to learn about the deities of the dark woods and though their names come to him easily enough: mephala, the night mother, and sithis he struggles to tell which apparition is mephala and which is sithis. his brow furrows as he watches them with muted curiosity, ears and eyes attentive to the visions and little else. there is a slight prickle of the hairs at the nape of his neck, a soft shiver of his hackles. he doesn't feel threatened but he's never experienced anything like this before and he's have a hard time deciphering reality from hallucination. but it looks real and sounds real. it feels real ...not unlike lotte when she visited him in his dream.

his attention otherwise diverted wintersbane does not notice the approach of another ...even if he had he would have thought he was the ghost of the woods as the others. but unlike the ghosts and gods and monsters there is a scent attached to the newest addition whom wintersbane now sees from the corner of his eye. under normal circumstances the tundrian would've been startled and reacted accordingly but the surprise is so fleeting he barely registers it and wintersbane acts as if mou's been there the whole time. salmon pink tongue draws across his jowls once and twice. he's growing thirsty and yet his legs feel heavy. like if he tried to move from the tree that supported him he would collapse before the two gods, ghosts and packmate before him. he presses his body harder against the tree instead and swings his head to face the stranger in full.

"näetkö heidät?" wintersbane asks, motioning towards the far trees with a small gesture of his muzzle, not realizing that he's speaking tundrian instead of common tongue. in his high, his translator appeared to have broken and the mix of languages are nothing more than words. what are words to the dead and the deities that speak a language so old he feels it deep within the marrow of his bones even if he does not understand it? wintersbane assesses the pale, scarred man before him the best he can but he struggles to focus on the living while the dead and the holy convene around him. his head swims and he looks back to the divine duo once more, searching desperately now for a fourth. for the nightingale queen whom has surely ascended to sainthood. she does not belong in these dark woods with all their secrets and their lies and yet that does not stop wintersbane from feeling the desperation of wanting to see lotte as either ghost or divine.

it does not stop him from feeling disappointment that she does not manifest as the ghosts of strangers and the holy have.

The boy licks his lips. He's an agitated beast at this point, always wanting something to fill the void that the medicine has created. Hungry for it. Needing it. As he moves he's deliberate in his action but his haunches still quiver, and for all that it mattered it felt like his soul was shaking too; he wanted to know what the stranger was looking at in such a fixed manner. How could he achieve the same thing? This couldn't have been the poppies. They were medicine that eased suffering and the floating sensation was something he was desperate for, but Mou would take anything at this point. Whatever this wolf had been eating brought him to another state of conciousness beyond the floating, perhaps right through the veil.

The stranger spoke, but it was with sounds Mou didn't understand and so he ignored them. The tone was all he could go off of, and the slight motion of his broad snout towards the trees and the shadows; he answers only with the hinging of his muzzle and a few airy huffs, because he cannot answer even if he wants to. But Mou continues to stalk around the stranger until he finds a cluster of mushrooms that look as if they've been disturbed. There are pieces missing and Mou can figure out the rest.

He lunges for the mushrooms without thinking, letting the stranger fade in to the blackness of his eyeless side as he grabbed and gobbled. Soon he would be on the same plane as this young man — but most importantly, he'd find something to replace his medicine with, something stronger, something better.

it is a struggle for wintersbane to choose what to focus on. his pale and scarred pack-mate? or the ghosts and deities that call the woods home? the delta's no in state of mind to multi-task. it's one or the other and considering he has this belief that the favor of the gods is more important to him than a pack-mate's acceptance — he'd never been religious but he's seen and experienced too much to be a nay-sayer these days. and, in part, this desire likely stems from both his want to be integrated into the culture in full and might also be an attempt to impress the dark priestess. mostly, it was extremely hard to say something doesn't exist when he can see it right in front of his nose — shroom high be damned.

the stranger's footsteps break are heard by the tundrian in the haze and he swings his head towards the pale male as he gobbles up what's left from wintersbane's mushroom stash. "hei! odota." he calls out, pressing off the tree in an effort to stop him. it's too late — wintersbane's body feels heavy and his movements are sluggish. he's in no physical state to stop anyone but he still tries. just as he tries to communicate in tundrian as if he's speaking common. all he knows is he's speaking words and the other male isn't listening and it's becoming rapidly frusterating.

"älä syö sitä." but it's by and far too late. still, the disclaimer's out there. the delta huffs and his weight becomes too much to bear and he lowers himself into a sphinx-like position, attention going back to the ghosts and gods with an annoyed noise and a roll of his eyes. you'll regret it, wintersbane thinks smugly not realizing that his companion might not mind it as wintersbane does. the tundrian minds it a lot and knows that he won't be touching those mushrooms again. his senses are dulled and his focus is out of whack and he almost prefers that the deities of the woods stay invisible to him.

The boy should know better than to eat some random mushrooms, especially after his incident with the parsley, and especially because the stranger before him was obviously reacting to some aspect of it; but that's Mou for you. He was either being outright stupid or pointedly ignorant as he gobbled down the chunks of mushroom. It was a good thing that most of the cluster had been consumed already or Mou might've overdosed, if at all possible. He wanted to be high and that's precisely what he'd be getting — but there was no telling when it would set in, or what he would experience. He licked his lips and turned his attention upon the swarthy male nearby, hearing him say more strange sounds but making no move to intercept him. They're faltering a little, laying down and watching him, and Mou stares right back with a distinct lack of propriety. Its at this moment he recognizes the man as one of the pack's higher ranking wolves — often in the company of Relmyna, and someone he recognized vaguely from the previous gathering.

When they break their eyes away from Mou he feels a sense of triumph that comes out of nowhere; its not something he's used to feeling, not something he wants to feel. Whoever this is, they can't look at him. Mou watches as the man's attention drifts and struggles with focus. Mou slowly becomes aware of a heat trailing through his skin, like he's sitting in direct sunlight at the height of summer. He takes a deep breath, slow, deliberate, and swallows — realizing his mouth is dry. He's been staring at the warrior for a handful of moments too long but cannot take his eyes away. While Wintersbane is looking around, Mou is watching him. He begins to see stuttering after-images of the wolf as he is turning his head and letting his attention drift; Mou thinks he can see so many pieces plotted before him.

He blinks. The trailing images continue, but more shocking are the shadows — they have begun to take on a blue tint in some places, a dark purple in others, and the light, it's become too sharp and difficult for Mou to look at. He squints and the light contorts. The shadows seem to grow, to flutter, and Mou begins to think they aren't shadows at all but feathers.

the ghosts flicker and writhe in wintersbane's vision, drawing nearer but at a pace that feels as if it's a snail's. perhaps, the tundrian considers, it is hard for them to remain manifest. hard for them to move even though the veil has lifted. or, perhaps, it has only been lifted for him and not them. does it hurt them? to try to walk through the land of the living when they cannot truly leave the land of the dead? er, the void as the wolves of blackfeather believe? he feels the pin-prickle of eyes boring into him, the fur along his spine crawling. he feels the eyes of the dark mother and the dread father staring at him. seeing into him. he looks to them and he sees them just as clearly as he assumes they see him.

but the feeling persists even as the holy duo turn to face one another. they speak again in that archaic language that the tundrian is not privy to. that bone trembling rasp that is somehow both a comfort and a tone to fear. they disappear back into the mist and shadows they were borne from and wintersbane's head swings back to his pale and scarred companion having, admittedly, forgotten he was there at all to find the other male staring at him.

so his unrelenting gaze was the third he felt searing into his flesh. the proud tundrian stares back, for while the ghosts remain the daedra have vanished for him. what does the pale man see, the tundrian wonders? he might've been flattered by the staring under normal circumstances but instead he feels tired. the high is beginning to burn itself out of his system now. there is a desire to ask the pale man what he sees but even as clarity comes back to wintersbane inch by agonizing inch the delta assumes he will get no answer, just as all his previous words have gone unanswered ( though he still does not realize he was speaking tundrian that whole time and not common ) and does not bother vocalizing his curiosity, letting it, instead linger mutedly in his expression.

Soon the trees aren't populated by leaves at all, but with those shadows, those feathers. He stares up at the trees and watches the transformation but really, isn't perceptive enough to see it. One moment there are so many sharp-edged leaves; the next they are soft, silent things. Fluttering between one another and falling from the boughs overhead.
As they fall, some feathers become more — they seem to take flight of their own volition. Mou doesn't realize he's watching a host of crows moving between trees. Maybe he is, maybe that's also a fabrication, he has no way of knowing as the mushroom is absorbed by his system. The most important detail is something he entirely misses, though. Some feathers fall and fly off, others fall and keep falling - but as they do so, the blackness peels away from them, exposing the many shades of autumn. No, not just autumn --- he can't make it out. The feathers aren't black but shades of red, and as he watches one in particular land before him on the soil, he wants to say he understands but he honestly doesn't. The feather isn't a crow's or a raven's, and brings to his mind an image of a hawk —

Mou begins to think of the hawk in his vision; the bird burned black by shadow. The trees shake and dance and he's overwhelmed, suddenly, by the falling feathers. Mou begins to snap at the air as if to catch them but there's nothing there. He murmurs a sad and airy noise meant to be a growl but it comes out a wheeze, and then he springs away from one row of trees and then another, thinking they're coming alive and reaching for him. The boy is overwhelmed by avian imagery and can't understand any of it - nor can he fathom why his companion isn't reacting to the encroaching darkness. Does he not see it? Does he not feel the pressure of being buried beneath it?

it does not occur to wintersbane that they are not seeing the same things.

the fact that the high of the mushroom caters to the individual's mind and does not have a general effect or experience for everyone is one that he misses. the concept goes over his head; his mind far too hazy to consider such complex things. he blinks his attention away from his pale companion, out towards the ghosts that writhe and hears a sharp, shrill caw from the foggy depths. his ears splay to the side and he visibly jumps, the sound startling in the otherwise silence that engulfs him, broken only by the sounds of his pale pack-mate, that wintersbane realizes with a swing of his heavy head in his direction, wasn't near him any longer. the other's footsteps, wintersbane thinks. that's what he's heard after the startling caw of a raven overhead.

the tundrian scowls up at the treeline but lets out a long yawn as the tiredness settles deep in his bones from coming down off the high. the delta will be asleep before long. his eyelids grow heavier with each passing second and the ghosts have finally vanished back behind the veil that closes on it's curtain call. he glimpses at mou once to see how the other male is faring before he rises to his legs, stretches and heads off to find a secluded place to rest.

edited in a conclusion for archival.