Ravenshook Cliffs there's a second wind coming, as we lie here in our bed

Another day, another night, blending into each other with the fair certainty of lovers who’ve been together for decades.

And yet, the inevitability of time was Lullaren’s greatest bane. But nothing less than flamenco dancing with the devil could change that, and they admittedly didn’t know the steps well enough to keep up. So time marched on, night and day kept up their sky bound waltz, and the black coated fool slithered past responsibility and loyalty at the speed only a seasoned hedonist could boast of.

They’d been alone for a while, they thought, paws dipping into divots in the rock underneath them as they strolled the cliff tops, inhaling salt infused air and wincing at the taste curling over their tongue and burning their nostrils so bad they had to look away for a moment. Despite a previous life on the ocean, they never had become used to the stench. At the first sign of clear enough land, they broke into a strong trot, burning through the humid air. It burned after a while, the stretch of muscle underneath skin, sinew cording, body warming up with the exercise that finally wasn’t fleeing beds and pack grounds before they were discovered for who they are. That thought sobered them for a time, slowing down as it rattled through their grey matter, before they shook it off as they always did and continued on.

No need for thoughts like that, darling, they chided themself, raising their head, snapping their hair into something more..showman-esque. Flashier. You never know when curtain call was, and the audience was always watching.

An audience was watching. 

He had been following the shape for some time, intrigued by the way that they moved. With the coming of night Mesa had thought to rest and rejoin their path in the morning, yet he could not find it in him to leave the stranger to their own devices. Soon they were investigating a high ridge that begged for Mesa's attention; it looked easy enough to ascend, and if the darkling could do it he figured, so could he.

As he went, he felt the earth give a shudder. Where the trees thinned Mesa could pause and take in the sight of a dying sun, and it was in that moment he felt another boom; he looked out, down — saw the waves of the ocean far below, shimmering, reaching up the sheer cliff, and felt a sweeping vertigo for the first time. He hadn't seen the ocean before.

For the time being the stranger was forgotten. Broken bits of light cascaded across the rippling sea, blushing where the white caps foamed around black stone teeth, and Mesa was transfixed.

He had the gumption to understand that nature was an audience of its own, but the wit to realize that birds weren’t good critics. Of course, the only birds he’d found here were screechy, and quite rude as they dove past him for the ocean below. He knew, somewhere in the back of his head, the part of him shoved away in favor of making merry, the part of him that was the chief healer of a pack before he was a year old, that the birds were merely looking for food. But it still hurt, to be so rudely snubbed. He was an entertainer at his core, even as he nearly tripped over another divot in the ground.

Lullaren swayed his step towards the very edge of the cliff side he clung to, dancing the dangerous game with mortality as he spun and weaved, spinning on the knife’s edge. He didn’t notice his audience in the form of another wolf, merely closing his eyes and praying gravity didn’t cash in its chips and send him spiraling to the ocean.