Meadowlark Prairie perfect, you're my poison

In the shadow of Akashingo, a war raged.

Not visible to the naked eye, not entirely at all. This was Nephele’s internal war against Sabah, against duty she chafed under while the other her was vaulted by it. Nervous blue eyes took in the distant mountains, where, she had heard, the Saints resided. She did not know of what, or where, or who the Saints were, other than there was war.

Nephele was not made for another war. She was not made for the first. She was runner, she was not fighter. Sabah was her front, her respite in this odd time of tension where soldiers marched and she, for some gods forsaken reason, got to lead them. Back and forth she paced the meadows and prairies, around and around the base of the mesa, twining her scent with flowers, grasses, rocks, everything. But she was one woman, and Akashingo was at war, and at her heart, she was a coward. 

She dragged in an awkward, clipped breath, sinking her toes into the dirt. She didn’t have to be a coward, if she became Sabah. But Nephele was the first name she had chosen herself, the first time she was allowed to name herself something and mean it in her heart. Nephele, the woman created from a cloud. Nephele, who was shaped in the image of a goddess as a trick for a mortal man. Nephele, a cloud who could vanish on the wind.

Who could be gone in the sunlight, leaving a clear dawn behind. She let out a short noise, teeth digging into her lips, before she was back to slinking across the prairie she was wandering under the pretense of recruiting. As if she was any good at that. Sabah would be, something internal hissed at her. She pushed it aside.

route map

the time between stepping from silvertip and this very moment was uncategorized.
merrick knew only that he had left the burial plinth of his mate behind beneath the proud branches of a crimson copse.
if others followed, the bearwitch scarcely noticed himself. her blood, daubed thickly between the hairs of his nape, blackened and began to carry the ambrosial sick-sweet fragrance of death's own perfume.
no need, this time, to wash the scent of ursus away. he entered a darkened forest, skirted the coldwater village of moonglow, descended into a glen, traveled along a lake.
the man slept and ate as if he were an automaton. the killings were quick and precise with no pleasure in them. it seemed the only live thing left in merrick was collecting itself from archives deep below. each morning the luminescence of his one-eyed stare grew and festered with a fevered incandescence.
merrick did not know this side of the sunspire. he knew only in which direction bearclaw valley held its mighty paw — and he knew from that direction where the canyon of the saints might be. tunnel-view focus, narrowing and narrowing until the bear came to the faithful servant, and whispered.
shadows. 
merrick curved his path and came to the long flat plains foreign and wild. 
the bearwolf did not pause. the wolf's-trot which had eaten the miles behind him continued.

The war came to a standstill, halting for a moment as Nephele heard it.

Steps. Perhaps distant, perhaps farther away, perhaps near her with teeth ready to kill. Nephele was not ready to die, she’d never been. Blue ranged away from her paced path through the prairie, twisting to try and find the creature coming her way. They could be ships passing in the night, unaware of each other. In that case, Nephele would not intervene.

She tightened her jaw. Sabah would.

But Nephele did not equal Sabah, did she? Or should she? The monochrome woman swallowed down a lump in her throat, turning her head to her paws as she stood, rooted in place, until she found the creature coming her way.

merrick might have well been the crushing hull of a ship for all his willingness to stop.
he had almost drifted beyond the grey dove when some saunter of bloodlust rose in his gorge. and so the bearwolf stopped, and set his single eye in its bitten socket upon the woman. "who are you?" 
his voice carried the stale dust from within a tomb. the cyclopic stare clutched at the stranger, seeing all of her and none of her.
behind the bowed head, a narrow spine. his teeth itched for a moment to break it.

She dared not breath. Blue found the single eye and held the gaze for a moment, before Sabah drew a breath, digging her toes into the ground.

She should run, some part of her whispered. She should fight, whispered another.

Sabah. Of Akashingo, just over there. She twisted to point to the Mesa. Sabah, of Akashingo, the ghost intent upon ruining her existence. The war Sabah wanted to thrust herself into. The running Nephele wanted to do, even now, in the exact opposite direction.

The monochrome woman took a deep breath. She’d answered the question. She need not say more.

the shrinking, tiny thing said two names, neither of which were recognized by the man.
he flicked his gaze over her shoulder, toward the range of cursed mountains guarding the expansive murdering saints;
he felt nothing for the impending clash of their teeth;
for merrick knew he would have his pound of flesh in dozen.
"forgive me. i'm new here." the words were mocking but the tone was dead. "who leads akashingo?"

Nephele bit her tongue, just to try and keep her sense about her. He said he was new, but his tone said otherwise. She bit down a bit harder.

She was known for being a lier.

Pharoah, that is what he calls himself. If he goes by another name, I am not aware of it. Oh, she fully knew his name. If she had used it, she could not remember. But for all she knew, this man was a Saint.

The thought chilled her. He could be one of their enemies, and she would be nothing more than a legacy. Here lies the first captain of the guard, stupid to the end.

She did not mention Satsu, despite knowing she was equal to Pharoah.

pharaoh.
merrick did not know this either. the unfamiliarity of the names and the place and the pull of the mountains beyond —;
they staggered his breath and cut the hackles upward, up and up and up —
"i am looking for someone, sabah. a few of them. will you help me?"

Nephele was torn.

Sabah saw a potential for an ally.

She wished, for a moment, that she had woken later this morning and decided not to go for a recruitment walk. Perhaps she could have avoided this moment. Sabah nodded, Nephele thought to weep.

As much as I can. Fostering good will among the other wolves of this land, she thought, was perhaps a good idea.

"very good."
"a large pale woman. a gigantic man with stripes."
he did not say his name, nor theirs. not that of the saints, nor ursus. 
a sucking breath but he did not look away. "they have murdered my wife."

A large pale woman. A gigantic man with stripes. They had murdered this man’s wife, and all at once, her suspicion both faded and grew exponentially.

Did this pale woman have yellow eyes? Could they be against the same enemy, this man and Akashingo? Did the woman who had hurt Pharoah and left Maggie like..like she was, could this have been the “Nyra” spoken about by her superiors? Her teeth dug into her tongue again.

the ugliness of merrick's muzzle twisted into a hoarse and sardonic laugh, the rattle of bones at the back of a graveyard. "like the fire of hell itself," he seethed.
if the small woman, sabah of akashingo — if she had not liked his look before, merrick rested all his gaze and intrigue heavily upon her now.
there were surely many snowdriven wolves with yellow eyes. merrick would not bid himself more than this until the stranger answered.

Nephele knew what she was doing.

Perhaps she always had. She received her answer, blowing out of a graveyard held behind lips. She pushed everything that made up Sabah to the front of herself, hiding cowardly Nephele behind the dawn’s iron walls.

Had she held more brainpower, perhaps she would have laughed about it. How Nephele was shadow yet Sabah was dawn. Two sides of the same fucked up coin.

I do not know if she is the same, but we had a woman come by not long ago. She attacked Pharoah. I only caught glimpse of her, but she was large, white as snow, with eyes like fire. She ran just before I was on scene. Her mouth twisted.

She has left a friend of mine in a very bad state.

for a long time, merrick was silent.
if nyra had come so far to murder his blackbird, then he saw no reason why she would not have struck elsewhere.
"i am merrick, of ursus. others will follow me here."
a breath. he laboured with the sudden enormity of his own grief, but it was burnt away in the next by hatred.
"take me to pharaoh."

Ursus, he spoke, and she dipped her head. Others would come, others would fight, and shadow would assist in the wholesale slaughter to come.

She only wished to not have more blood smearing her own body from wounds scored with teeth.

Of course. Follow me, if you would. Her heart was screaming, but if this Merrick went for Pharoah…well.

She could run as fast as ever, she was sure.