Otatso Wetlands When I get low I prefer the cold

@Qeorvik ME, I START, no rushhh <3
For my own reference this thread is set between the Everett threads

Time passed in a series of stuttering leaps and brief flashes of forever. A second passed in an hour, then an hour in a second, and Reverie did not know herself from the space around her. She did not know herself at all. She wandered in a daze and saw nothing, and left Everett far behind.
She remembered The Gilded Sea. She remembered her parents, screaming until their voices were raw, until her name became only meaningless noise, and then on until it became something else entirely. Until just the sound of it hit her like shrieking in her ears, and she couldn't stand it anymore. They'd only wanted her to speak. Just a word, any word, but she couldn't. She never could when it mattered.

Though the wetlands had plenty of shelter to offer by means of its thick-boughed trees, it was extraordinarily cold here; for a lot of the water that pooled here had frozen into ice-water ponds and the ground was stinging underfoot with a practically Siberian chill. The wind didn’t help either, and Qeorvik was miserable in his solitude, pushing through the territory as quickly as he could.

His eyes caught sight of something gold flashing between the trees. A wolf. Their steps were uneven, their stride inattentive. There was something odd about the waif’s glassy-eyed movements, but the boy would not miss an opportunity to be noticed.

Hæ! he barked out, lifting his tail and prancing forward. You stop for greeting me!

She was alone, and then she was not; then there was a voice, a presence, but she couldn't quite focus. Who...? Reverie could only blink in the general direction of the sound, utterly confused. What... It came out a whisper. What's happening? Where am I? Her own voice sounded as far away as the world looked and felt and seemed. She wasn't addressing him, not really; she didn't even know if he was real. Was he...?
Reverie looked at him and found him too bright, too blurry, which was odd. His fur was dark, wasn't it? Dark but limned, sharp with the kind of light that burned into your vision and left its ghost lingering. No, he wasn't real. Couldn't be. Nothing so beautiful could be real.

Though the wolf’s golden crown turned in his direction, she did not look upon him, her gaze lost as if blind. Qeorvik felt that this would not do, so he moved into her line of sight, holding himself tall and proud in an effort to determine if she was in fact sightless. He had no use for someone who could not see him – or tell him how handsome he was. She seemed to see him then, but her disoriented expression remained.

Er eitthvað að þér? he asked, unkind. You are... ruglaður? Ah, foggy in brain? It took him a moment to find the common word. Confused?

A voice. Words. Reverie did not comprehend, but the tone nonetheless was a cold glissade down her spine. She shivered and reached for warmth, for him. He was so bright, what could he be but warm? Hers was a slow and hesitant advance, easily brushed away or evaded. Unaware of herself, Reverie moved as if underwater; nothing quite wrong or clumsy about her movements, but so painfully slow. She sought to press her nose into dark ruff, then draw him closer, almost an embrace if she was not denied.

Punch-drunk and eyes swimming, never focusing upon him fully, the girl leaned closer. But if she thought Qeorvik was bright and warm, then she would soon find him blazing, burning, hot as the sun. He recoiled from the stranger’s touch and lifted a paw to stop her, setting it out firmly to meet her chest and keep her at bay.

You not ask for touching me, he growled. Of course, he could not blame her for wanting to touch a specimen such as himself. But it was rude of her not to ask first.

Reverie hardly registered the sensation of his paw against her chest, aside the warmth it brought. Yet even that faint feeling drew her nearer. Her head dipped and she reached for his foreleg — not to harm but simply to take the limb between her teeth. To test the feeling of it, the scent, the taste.
If the contact was allowed, even briefly, she fixated for a moment on the pulse of blood beneath his skin. Warm, alive; everything she craved. She cared for nothing else. She knew nothing else.

Qeorvik was dumbfounded at the girl’s next move. He stared where an older or simply wiser wolf might have snatched its arm back, out of her grasp. But he was just an adolescent, a child by many standards, and he was at a loss here. This had never happened before. She moved too slowly for him to feel endangered, and the motion was so odd that it jammed up the gears in his head, causing him to stall.

She now held his foreleg gently between her teeth, and they both stood there for an awkwardly long pause. Hvað er þetta? Qeorvik frowned. You making bad times? He snatched his leg out of her mouth. What you doing? he demanded, thoroughly confused.

Reverie was, in fact, making bad times. But she did not hear him; she was occupied. The dark was shifting and the quiet became whispering, and she knew this place. Reverie blinked and came alive, but elsewhere:
A garden, overgrown in deep green, the air misty and cool from the touch of burbling waterways. Strange, she thought, and was startled to think so clearly. She stepped through the garden, following a rose-petal path while the real world swept on without her. Someone called to her. Rose? No, that wasn't her voice. Reverie did not recognize this voice, yet it sounded familiar. As if she'd heard it her whole life, as if she had never heard anything but this.
She realized the voice had called her Reverie. A deep shudder ran through her, one that carried to the real world as she jerked away from Qeorvik abruptly. Her expression was unchanged but she looked away from him and went still again. In her mind she was running. Not away, not in fear. She just wanted to see —
And the garden fell away as if it never existed at all, and she fell too. Into endless blue sky, into crisp air and gilded clouds; they were warm, like @Turmeric had imagined. Yet she fell through them and came away with fur drenched in gold, glittering, down down down
Reverie?
She closed her eyes.
Let me show you how we dance here.

i sincerely apologize for this boy Dx

She jerked away from him, backlit eyes turning to stare elsewhere, like he wasn’t even there. Qeorvik’s frown deepened, his frustration building as she continued in her refusal to acknowledge him.

The auric diviner seemed lost, seeing everything and nothing all at once, as if peering into the whirling depths of a crystal ball; he turned his head to see what she was looking at, but saw nothing other than icy woodland, stretching on and on as far as the eye could see. He looked back at her, and he would have smacked his lips if he could. But since he couldn’t, he’d smack something.

Qeorvik lifted a paw and sought to ungently slap it down on her head.

NO DON'T APOLOGIZE I LOVE HIM. Last from me probably!

Somewhere far away, Reverie danced with the man from the garden. Something new to her, yet she danced as if she had known the steps all along. As if she had known him all along. Maybe she did know him —
But each time her eyes focused upon the dark figure his face blurred and she saw only stars. Millions of stars, endless flickering lights in blue and green and colors somewhere between. He was kind, she felt, yet the hair along her spine prickled when he twirled near to her. Kind, yes, but dangerous too. She felt the threat of him like the ghost of razor's edge along her skin; a touch to make her shiver but not to make her bleed. A warning; a promise. You are safe here. Nothing will touch you here.
Then the air shook and turned dark around her. Reverie —
No, no, she wanted to dance — !
Reverie, you need to run.
She ran.

There. Good. He’d slapped some sense into her, causing the girl to flee from him, from her dazed, slow-moving actions. The silver-caped “hero” snorted, satisfied by this outcome. She would be a better wolf because of his firm paw, he was sure of it.

Proud of himself for helping, Qeorvik kicked snow over the place she had stood, as if erasing the odd encounter from existence, and he turned to lope westward.