Sequoia Coast was there ever a trap to match the trap of love?

@Aure

the wildling was troubled, and the winds that beat against the stone and howled through the damp caves did very little to ease his mind. he had set out on a path outside of the sound. his eyes had turned toward the looming cliffs one last time before he made a trail for himself and began to follow the twisting path in his mind’s eye. the length of his limbs carried him carefully over rocky landscape and across stretching fields. he had healed well since the fight. the help that he had received from erzulie and cadeau had been good for him. the only thing that remained was the jagged scar where his wound had been.
 
with a heavy sigh, illidan drew his crown upward and peered out across the sea. the sharp glint of his yellow gaze seemed to be swallowed up in the vast ocean waters. he wondered just how far they might stretch, or if they had been the ones to find the very edge of the earth. surely, there was nothing left but the swell and the slice of land that they existed on. it helped to ease his mind if he believed things like this, even if he knew they were likely to be untrue.
 
when the waters had grown tiresome on his mind, illidan turned his back to them and moved inland a short ways. it was there that he found a small cropping of trees. breathing in the scent of them, he did not detect another presence there. with the movement of a lean jungle cat, he moved into the wooded area and breathed deeply in the aroma of the wild woods. birds called out over his head before taking flight through the boughs and vanishing into the dismal grey that stretched overhead.

edit: turning this into a little botany thread!

Aure wasn't eager to acknowledge Illidan in the slightest, as seeing him brought back a surge of guilt at what she'd screamed at him. But most of what she said had been true to her; and then she remembered who else was in Illidan's clan, and with a thinning of her scarred lips, she dismissed him and continued on with her foraging. If those from the Sound cared not to listen to reason, and assault when they were entirely without it, then it was better for her to pretend they'd never encountered another in the first place.

But, her traitorous soul made her gripe, "Hello, boy."

The skayona held vigilant over such-and-so properties she'd already gathered, and watched him with a drawn, inscrutible look; never hateful, despite it. Hate, war -- these things weren't what she'd been bred for, born for. The amor for such couldn't reside within her, no matter how much her mind may wrestle with it. How could willing-to-dole-out bloodlust make itself permenantly evident? It couldn't, not when, within the pinked curve of her womb, grew the truth of her love for her cheka, her corsairs of the cliffs?

Just on the crest of her fourth week, the days following her bearing-news had sobered the she-wolf, in heart, in body; and most certainly in her soul. She'd began to carry herself with a familiar, personal air -- a quieted, tenderful, unassuming one. So, as much as she yearned to feel some sort of hatred, some sort of fury towards Illidan and that reckless Raleska... she couldn't. There was not place in her for such to reside.

the voice that sounded was familiar, but it was familiar in a way that bad memories are. it was like he had buried the encounter that he'd had with her and suddenly, it was finding a way to claw back to the surface and emerge. instead of turning to meet her, he wracked his brain in an attempt to place a face to the voice that lingered on the cold seaside air. the way she called him boy reminded him of grezig, but he knew better than to forget the voice of the woman who had helped to raise him. they had not always gotten along, and there were plenty of poor memories associated with the other woman... but she had done good things for him, and he would not have forgotten her in his lifetime.

giving in, illidan turned his attention toward the stranger. once he did and his sharp yellow gaze was latched onto the scarred features of the pale woman, he knew precisely who she was. she had taken the brunt of his anger over the results of their battle. she had attempted to combat his feelings with her own belief, and then had left in a furious mess – a different woman than what she had been at the beginning of their conversation. he wondered why she would approach him.

“hello,” illidan returned to her in a gravelly voice. his expression was haunted, but not unkind. he did not yet have reason to treat her as an enemy. after all, roz had returned to them... hadn't she? she was worse for wear, he'd heard, but she was still back in her home. no matter how he felt about the cliff wolves, he knew that he could not jeopardize his family or his pack by acting out. the pale woman might have held a hint of her feelings in her tone, but he was not able to pick up on it. then, as though he believed that making a joke of the situation would help them, he turned to her with a deadpan, “need to yell some more?”

If there was any mannerism she'd donned, subconciously, from spending so much time with her beloved, it was that any once-faint snarkiness had since become more evident than it'd ever been before. Verx had, whether he wanted to or not, wrought up an impishly-spoilt side of her that few could glean from the astronomess. But here it was, right in her little sniff of "Perhaps," eyeing the boy sidelong as she resolutely focused her attention elsewhere. Aure herself didn't view him as an enemy; the time since their encounter had allowed her to regret what she'd said. Well, the whole soulless thing and all.

Then again, could just be horomones flaring up; that was better than reminiscing on her last encounter with the Rusalkan urchin. "Wandering again?" His attempt at jesting didn't go unheeded and, despite whatever she felt towards him in this heartbeat — and she soon withdrew back behind the guise of a quieted female, although her slim brows did flick upward. Regardless of affiliation, her eyes, too, did course over his dark, lean body as if to pluck some sort of hidden hurt that refused to be seen; physical, anyways.

In the meantime, Aure did her best to mime his deadpan expression, but she truly wasn't made for it, try as hard as she might to seem emotionless. There would always be that quirking, soft curl to the corner of her lips; an unyeilding gleam in her argent gaze. The fact that she was trying to lessen her thick accent for his favor was obvious. Even if she tried to match the flavorless tone of his voice, "Home too depressing, as well?" for all the world, she still looked, sounded... so Aure.

as much as he had built those walls to block out any who might try to peer into his inner feelings and hurts, illidan found it incredibly difficult to hide away the burning pain that had lashed out against him when she had last spoken. he could not release the idea that she believed him to be without a soul. more than this, the young ghost could not convince himself that she had been wrong. he had turned away from their last meeting with a newfound ache – a self-loathing weight that had made a home within him. every day was a new reminder... she's right, you know. someone with a soul could never behave the way that you do.

“wandering seems to be a habit for me now,” he answered her query with a haunted smile that lingered on the edges of his dark lips. “or a coping mechanism.” then, he turned his hawkish yellow sights to her pale features. if she were to peer closely enough, she would have seen the sadness that echoed inside of him. young as he might have been, there seemed to be ages of grief hidden beneath the ash and ink of his pelt.

then, she inquired about his home and whether or not it was a place that had created an air of depression for him. as much as he wanted to tell her that she was right, he did not. instead, he allowed for his gaze to linger on the slender length of her muzzle for a long moment before bowing his head. the breath of the seaside wind rocked against his lean frame. “home, and everywhere else...” he finally responded. then, as though he was surprised by his own moment of honesty, he cleared his throat and furrowed his brows. there was a mixture of shock and shame inside of him. he knew he should not have been so open with her – she was the enemy, wasn't she?

“did you mean it... what you said before?”

the words fell from his mouth without his permission. fire burned through his entire frame, turning his flesh to tattered ashes. he could not pry his gaze away from her face in that moment. it was the first time that he seemed to carry emotion in his voice. if she were to look at him, she would see just how deep her words had been embedded in his flesh.

"No." The word left her, too measured to be a fib. "No, I did not mean what I said. I don't expect forgiveness, but with this stalemate, this... this..." Her scarred lips pressed thin, and she couldn't help but avert her gaze for a moment. "I never meant to lash out as I did, and you are young." And Drageda is mourning, and I will not do them any good by doing the same.

It wasn't to say the hooded boy wasn't knowledgable of the world and its turmoils, but through her own melancholy and the frustration of trying to make him understand, she'd called him soulless, even if it'd taken her this moment to realize. But she never expected her words would've taken such a toll on him - she wasn't even of Rusalka.

After a lengthy pause, she let her argent gaze sweep along the late-winter shrubbery beneath their paws. The points of silver alit on her little bundle of greens, and a little distractedly, she mused, "Would you happen to know where I might find rosemary? I'm sure it grows somewhere along ze coast." Fidgeting a bit, her tail beginning to flicker about her hocks. After her almost-death by Raleska's jaws, she wasn't too keen to linger about another of the pack's; no ill-will towards Rosalyn, of course.

the tone in which her response met him was too genuine for him to cast it off as being something to ease his mind. still, he could not help but to question the pressing feeling that he had inside. she had uncovered something in him that he hadn’t thought was possible. the pale woman from the cliffs had inspired a wave of self-loathing so deep, illidan thought he would never rid himself of it again. in truth, it did not matter that she belonged to their kind. she might not have been rusalka, but that only meant she had been free to speak her mind without boundaries based on allegiance.
 
part of him knew that she had spoken the truth that day. her anger might have sharpened the words into a finer blade, but the handle was made with weighty honesty that was not so easily bent or broken. he did not feel the need to push the point any further than he already had. she was kind enough to retract what she had said – to take it back – but illidan did not believe that she could ever remove the damage that had been done to him. he did not think that she would ever know how much she had changed him by saying such simple things.
 
when the pale woman asked if he knew where rosemary was, the ghost turned his head thoughtfully and frowned in response. he knew very little of plants, but he recalled the pale purple of the flowers that bloomed on that particular plant. he knew it well enough that he could have pointed it out for her. “i’ll help you find some. come on,” illidan offered, gesturing with a soft motion of his muzzle. as he moved slowly in the direction he believed they would find success, he felt it was important that he offer conversation to her.
 
“have you thought of names for your children yet?”

Had she thought of names for her children? Verx’s children? She’d meant to — meant to, and certainly had been trying to. Often, whispers of either of her tongue had had come to mind; but nothing had felt close to perfection. Not yet. Aure said as much, tentatively drawing closer and falling in alongside the little wraith, ”Not quite. I have thought of them; dreamed them up. Perhaps an epiphany will come to me?”

If only she’d known the manner said epiphany would arrive from. But she was a mere silver, and knew nothing within the hours to come other than all those remedies and rosemary meant for her to-be apothecary. She knew nothing but the love she cradled in her heart and womb for Vercingetorix. And she knew it wasn’t within her to hold prejudice for those deemed enemy — only half-so, at least.

he wondered what that might have been like. he thought it almost fanciful to dream about the lives that didn’t even exist yet… that were only tiny lumps that were growing into actual beings. he wondered if she had dreamed of personalities for them, or if she could sense what they would be like before that point entirely. then, he wondered if his own mother had dreamed of him and his siblings. for all of the trauma that they had experienced after their birth, he hoped that she was not disappointed in all of them for what had come to be.
 
the boy trailed alongside the pale woman quietly. he asked her a few questions here and there while they sought the herbs that she needed. as their time passed, he found that he felt far less animosity toward her. still, he could not remove the words that she had spoken before. he wondered if she would ever realize just what kind of an impact that had had on his growing and changing mind. he also wondered if her own children would experience anything like what he had in his first year.
 
only time would tell.