Sunspire Mountains for the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

for uncle @Aries

the wavering light of evening filters betwixt the rock, this great rockfall a still-fresh scar from when the earth sought to shed it's mantle and failed. somewhere near, the rhythmic knocking of a woodpecker rings out every few moments. the wolf weaves between the scattered boulders, most managing to dwarf even her. she tests the strength of her still-healing limbs and shoulder, pressing against the hurt. she is not as foolish as to attempt the climb; seeing the boy with three limbs served as a reminder of what came of being impatient with her healing body.  

but nor would she allow herself to be broken as she had been, not again. she remembers the shattered ribcage, the decay that had been her mother, and knows she must be better. the warlord pauses as something swings low overhead; muzzle canting back to regard the raptor that soars upward on a thermal. the sunset rims the creature in gold, gilded wings stretching the distance from her leathered nares to tail tip.

It was upon the feathered wings of a raptor that his gaze lit in the dim evening glow, pools of serrated ice outstaring the clouds and thunderous pelage shifting with the capricious tides of the breeze. A storm had been brewing upon the ridge in days past, he recalled, yet if the cursed heavens had opened their gates to let free the shattering of rain, he’d yet to call witness.

No, the silencer had stalked further; lean figure twisting betwixt the undergrowth and the boulders that heralded them, roots of green snaking upward to soak the summer’s warmth, that distant promise of sun. Under a tread of smoke did he suffocate the life beneath, calculated steps pulling him tirelessly along the trail of the mountains, cold stare gravitating from the predacious bird to the path ahead, until—

A figure. Tall, rustic in shade, as though born from some scattered remnants of a heretofore lit flame; warmth in ash, the last remaining heat of once-searing embers. As the rim around the raptor had once shone, an aureole of liquid gold bathed the fringes of this poising figure, and it took the fleeting of the bird before he identified of whom the body belonged. The starborn stood tall upon the grave of rock he perched, peering down the incline as a raven might scrutinize from their crook – a raven of umbra, black and daunting.

He watched, as he always did.

it is the tug of iced fingers along her spine, that prickle of something not quite conscious. intuition has her gaze return to the earth and stone, prying into the stretching shadows and empty spaces. watching for that flicker, small as it may be, of movement of life. she finds it in the motionless silhouette perched atop the stone; this stranger, as if a continuation of the rock, sets his gaze on her. 

aggression might have been her answer should not the dull spar of familiarity catch somewhere in the rear of her mind. a moment, in which thoughts and memories are sorted through and discarded. "hello, uncle." she is certain. gaze traces him more closely; this man, made of the stretching shadows and grey rock, shaped and given breath. it's been a long while sine she'd seen him last; she's been made a killer, a warlord, a survivor. she wonders if these experiences mark her in some way like the scars do, if something in her step, the angle of her features, mark her as all she is and has done.

He did not cease his boundless watch; incessant of eye, those pools of ice whetted to pierce oncoming gloom. Poised, phantom king, the silencer stared down the jagged incline, that bulwark of rock and earth, with little admiration – a gleaming of nefarious nonchalance, inhumanly detached, void of heart-throes and the pities of anguish.

Her greeting did not cause him pause, did not shatter the wordless stare – so fathomless in weight, yet glazed in the last prevailing rays of sunlight; quick, before it might meld into starlight. Of storm-wrecked glass and rivers of ice. She stood there, among dirt and stone, in ruinous thew, soundless in scrutiny yet wrought with some unspoken belligerence. Mettle, confident. Closer to himself than her mother had been – interesting. Black lip thinned, some brooding rumination, yet thought unreadable.

“Hello,” he returned, canting an iron-forged chin; she smelled of the saints.