Honeyed Pasture entolés poréas ⚔

For an expansive place it was quite loud, as dawn lifted to blush the sky, and a chorus of starlings welcomed it. As the light touched upon the field it was not gold that came to his eye, but fetid browns and reds, having descended to the earth with the coming autumn winds. They blustered against him while he climbed down in to the meadow - a humble gait giving the bullish man an unkindly hunch.
As he crossed along an animal trail cleaving through the tall grass, silence followed him abruptly. As he moved the fidgeting of the birds, their tittering, and the flash of dark wing against a bruise-blue sky, barely registered for the sulking wolf.

she had gone, in the night.
merrick made ready to depart, to find his blackbird. she had left the dismal scent of sickness in her wake. recovery was not a bedfellow of his lover, and he feared all manner of evil. 
but merrick was nothing without her, and so he would not let her go.
he would put a band around first for asperas, and so travelled in that direction. dawn found him determined, swift, ignorant of all else it would seem, though the torchlight of his eye poured over the stranger.

He did not tower over the grass so much as sink in to it, for even at his full height the centaur was a pit of warm blackness flanked on all sides by stalks of gold.
The other man was similar; wiry in places where he himself was stalwart, but near enough to be a brother. Gold crowned his neck and shoulders - which could have been a trick of the light for how brief Orthaon glimpsed him.
Those sharp eyes, hawkish.
He knew the expression well. The look of a man with a quest, a missing charge. Orthaon swings his attention along with the roving body and calls out, knowingly:
Whom have you lost?

"a daughter. a wife."
ursus shrank into itself but the burning blood remained.
the single eye scanned the man before him. hale. handsome. surely without the racking cut of loss.
a blink turned merrick's face into an eyeless plain of scars.

The bite of such loss characterized the man's reply, scything the air.
Orthaon watched as the light dimmed about the man's face.
Describe them. Perhaps one or both of them had crossed his paths, but it was unlikely.
Were they anything like this brawny, ragged thing?

"a woman. a warrior. built from night, with purple eyes. our daughter too, wears one eye the same, and the other is mine. they are both shadows."
and they were both unknowable. undiscoverable. astara's bloodline were the quick footsteps of a rogue.

a shake of the head.
i have not seen them. if they had wanted to be found the warrior would have crossed their path, most assuredly, but if they were as dark and silent as described, only should they will it themselves.
i have not seen anyone for some time. 
this man chasing heartache, was the first in a while.

merrick snorted.
what good was this man to him then?
but the single eye did not shine with cruelty, only a brief and raw sorrow.
the bearwitch turned aside and began to hunt for their scents in the earth.

there was no answer from the man.
a piggish sound, then truffle-hunting, was the best way to describe it.
orthaon wondered what do say, for he could not be of help - perhaps he should move on.
the thought of a mother and daughter lost was heart-wrenching but it was the way of the world, and this man was not his charge. it had been too long since the wanderer had a purpose; he did not think the gods as kindly things, but perhaps they knew of his loneliness, and this could be an opportunity.
quick-thinking and calm, that was orthaon. if the gods saw fit to place this pig-man before him, who was he to refuse?
i will hunt with you.
it was not a request; the pig-man looked worn down by the fates, it was only right that orthaon lend his two good eyes.
if i find them, who do i call for? where shall i bring them?

merrick turned back. "we are ursus. i am merrick."
the tattered features carved themselves into a lightless wooden grin. "what might i call you?"
in the weeks to come merrick would discover that this quest would pale to little in the face of what would occur.
in this moment, he was ensnared by his own curiosity.

ursus.
merrick.

i am orthaon. he looks away from the wounded man,
testing the wind silently.
it occurs to him that he could say more, but he does not.
the man before him will not care how he titles himself nor wonder why he is here in these wilds. orthaon is glad for this fact - he does not like to share needlessly.


good hunting. he concludes, moving at a stalk away from merrick of ursus.

orthaon.
the changing sheen of merrick's eye remained the only response.
the stranger departed. merrick did not watch after him before he bent his muzzle back to his own tasks.