Neverwinter Forest can't take my history

pack meeting! @Pangur @Cicerø @Luhtar @Velia @Raedwulf @Rhaena (who I think is joining!)

sólhárr stood atop a moss-slicked rise, his broad form haloed by the last pale strands of morning mist. gold-blue eyes swept the evergreens, steady and unreadable. behind him, the quarry slept still, quiet but full of promise.

he lifted his head, the great weight of his voice bellowing low and long over the hills.

a howl for a gathering.

it echoed through the trees, to the denmouths and shaded groves.

his tail flagged behind him, and the wind curled through his coat like a herald. there was much to say. the future had changed shape. and sólhárr would see it spoken with his own tongue.

the beckon of his Hárkonungr was met with haste. the bundle of medicinal plants and herbs he'd collected before the sun had full found it's spot in the sky now forgotten and tucked away into his personal cache. limbs groaning in protest that would fall upon deaf ears as he hobbles toward the heart of forneskja. 

eyes of silver drifting upward to find the man standing proud and strong, as he always tends to do. cicero does not speak, only bows his head in acknowledgment as he takes a seat. awaiting to hear the words of their leader, while trying to not look so obvious to the fact he was searching the crowd for the saxon man.

the call found him deep among the lowlands, where frost clung still in shaded hollows and the trees grew too thick for sunlight to pass cleanly through.
a broad-chested saunter, heavy-limbed, with his ears pricked and tail high behind him. though the shoulder still ached from the cougar’s strike, and the gouges bore the healer’s salves, he did not limp.
he arrived with fur brushed and jaws clean.
his brown eyes found sólhárr first. then cicero—whose silver eyes flicked up in search. raedwulf finds a smirk gracing his jaws as he goes to stand beside the healer man, but does not make any further eye contact. he is just there.

The attack still haunted her, a sharp lesson carved into her bones. She had been reckless, naive; if not for the red man and the coal-frēond, she might not be standing here at all. The world was not kind, and she knew now she could not face it alone; so she chose to follow them.
The red warrior bore the name Solharr; another viking, cut from the same cloth as Raedwulf. They spoke the same strange tongue, shared the same unshaken confidence. Rhaena wondered if all warriors carried themselves this way, or if it was only them.
A call split the quiet, and she answered without hesitation, stepping into the clearing. New faces greeted her, unfamiliar and unreadable. Her periwinkle gaze drifted, searching, and there; Raedwulf, smirking beside another man. But the look in his eyes told her what she had not yet wanted to accept; whatever bond she thought she had built with him, it was not the same in his mind.
The shadow girl swallowed that sting and stood in silence, waiting for the words that would follow.

Much had changed. The air held this tense and uncertain coldness to it, forneskja's forests seemed quieter, emptier. She saw the turmoil as it brewed in Hárkonungr, and she felt the shake of their foundations in the abence of Seiðkona, who had once brought such warmth to this grove.
Pangur searched, she owed it to them both, her friends, but none of her efforts had come up with anything. She heeded Solharr's call as she skulked the outskirts and tasted the wind, turning her attention back inwards and arriving soon after some of the others had come. She would settle near to the darker girl who she was yet to meet, offering a smile and flick of tawny ears for a quiet greeting. Hazel eyes then fell to him, to wait for whatever words he would have for them.

luhtar arrives, broad frame cutting through the trees like a bear come down from mountain heights.
he answers the howl with low chuff, steps heavy thuds across thawing spring ground. his breath ghosts in the cold, yellow eyes sharp beneath a heavy brow.
he says nothing, but his presence is loud—thick muscle, brown coat marbled in lighter tones like thawed earth. he moves to stand a few paces from sólhárr.
he was there for the first meeting in neverwinter, and he would be there for the last.

his voice broke through the murmurs like a blade through frost.

the seiðkona is missing.

a stillness swept over the wolves of forneskja. heads lifted. ears pricked. no one dared speak. only the fire cracked, and the wind hissed through the pines, like it, too, was listening.

sólhárr stood tall atop the rise, his frame cut from iron and shadow, dark fur stirring with the cold. the blue-gold of his gaze swept over them—all of them. warriors. he thought of mothers. the nuiruk.

she left of her own will, he said, voice low but carrying. there was no mourning in his tone. no softness. only fact. not by force. not by hand.

a beat.

then—his gaze turned west, toward the deeper woods, where the shadows never thinned and the memory of her lingered like a scar.

this forest is haunted by her.

his voice dropped like thunder.

we will move.

a ripple spread. surprise. unease. a few jaws parted as if to question—but none spoke.

to the quarry.

his muzzle tipped to the sky, eyes sharp as a whetted blade.

the stone remembers. it does not lie. the old ways can be honored there—away from ghosts, away from her.

he looked down upon them once more. firm. grounded. unshaken.

gather your hides. at first light, forneskja walks anew.

the news broken leaves the healer speechless. the white sylph, the very same woman that had tended to his leg way back when, the same woman with gentle words and wise knowledge—she is gone. their seiðkona is gone. 

her absence sits heavy in the heart of not just sólhárr. cicero has never been a man easily swayed by emotions and yet...it aches. he and white sylph had just began to form a kinship, one far from just a mentor and her devoted student. he'd respected her, and she him.

for a moment, he wonders if there was anything he could have done, or if this was cruel fate playing a terrible hand. 

the moods shifts. heavy, sullen. not a word is uttered; no one dare interrupt the mourning man as he speaks. not even when he announces that they will be leaving these grounds to make a new home elsewhere.

this ruffles the man—he'd only settled just recently. carved himself a home, built himself a blooming cache. the trouble of having to move everything...his disdain is written in his eyes, and the way his lips purse. 

but he does not refuse. it is not his place. even if he dislikes this plan, even he has to admit that staying here felt innately wrong. 

the forest was not the same without their sylph. he imagines it never will be.

the great hound stands among them. a woman, gone. one of power, perhaps solharr’s. a wife, a seer. the seidkona. he feels the hush, the reverence that stills the others, and in that quiet, he bows his head.
for the old ways. for the chief’s will. for the steadiness of this place even as it moves again.
ġehīered. he murmurs to no one in particular, more to the air itself, perhaps to solharr if his ear still lingers. a voice of assent, of support, spoken low beneath his breath.
at first light, they would walk.
and he would walk with them.

y'var'la stood at the edge of the gathering, her sleek form barely stirring, as still as the shadows cast by the firelight. her golden eyes flicked up to meet sólhárr's gaze for the briefest of moments, but quickly, her attention returned to the others, taking in their reactions. the air was heavy, thick with the weight of his words, but she remained unmoved, poised as ever.

the seiðkona was gone. y'var'la felt the stir of unease ripple through the pack, though she didn’t show it. there was no place for it in her demeanor. she had learned long ago that fear was a distraction, and she could feel it radiating off others now. the pack shifted, and she was a part of it, but she never allowed herself to be swallowed whole by it.

to the quarry, she murmured softly, barely enough for others to hear, the words slipping from her like the quietest of winds. it is fitting.

the stone would indeed remember. and the memory of the seiðkona’s absence would not fade so easily. but there was no room for sentimentality in her heart. she knew what needed to be done.