Ocean's Breath Plateau careful when you come through my way
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#1
All Welcome 
Ivory paws sunk in to the sand, though the cold wind whipped past the long fur of her cheeks. She blinked against it, inhaling sharply and noting the salty tang it brought with it. Her green eyes were perhaps the brightest of the current scene, given the roiling storm clouds that drifted above, bringing with them sparse flurries, despite the proximity to the sea waters. Ketzia had never been to the ocean before, and she was intrigued as she stared out at the vast body of water. It was endless.
 
She too had thought herself to be endless at one point. An ear flickered idly at the bitter thought, and she blinked, maintaining her slender features to remain impassive. The sun only now rose in the horizon, indicating the start of a new day. Ketzia did not know what land she stood in now, or how far her journey had been, and while the harshness of winter was upon them now, she refused to further rush, and instead took the time to admire the view.
stormblessed
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The warhound had struck out in search of the orange wolf who had ravaged one of their own. His cruel mismatched gaze searched everything that he passed with a savagery that was unbecoming of him. The hunt had not been kind to him. Through the ravaged wood that had formerly been his mother's home, Ford had followed as far as he could have before he had stepped out onto the plateau. There, the wind whisked against his coat and frame, biting with the harshness of winter. The earth felt cold beneath his paws, but it did not deter him from his goal, and it wouldn't until he had accomplished what it was he had set out to do.

Marching forward, the titan prowled with purpose. The thick muscles along his shoulders and back rippled with each step that he took. Though the frigid winds raised bumps along his flesh and bit into him like a wicked snake, he did not stop and he did not think to turn back to the bay.

Out there, he caught sight of a pale shape. For a moment, he thought to turn away from the stranger so that he might continue with his task. Instead, he thought selfishly of his pack and of the wolves who were waiting for further numbers to join them. Ford swung toward the sharp-looking wolf. Once he had closed a good deal of the distance between them, he drew his crown upward and chuffed in greeting, hoping that he might avoid frightening her by drawing so close so quickly. There, he waited to see if she would grant him permission to move closer or if she would turn him away.
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The chuff drew her gaze from the ocean, her eyes studious as her chin tipped delicately over her shoulder to look at the behemoth that beckoned for her attention. She shifted her slender form, considering how the stranger remained a respectful distance from her. As polite as he remained in the moment, it did not stir her trust and the diminutive female shifted to better regard him, should he try something.

She might have felt lost, but that did not mean she would be taken advantage of.

As she looked to him, quiet in her assessment, the she-wolf noted the sheer size of the muscular wolf before her—and even more, the strange markings that adorned him. She inhaled sharply, her memory prying at her time under Saul in the Tribal pack—the paint they would adorn themselves with to ensure their trust and worth.

But this did not seem to be paint, and a velvet ear flicked back, her exotic features tipping in a small nod. “Well met,” she offered, her unused voice smokier than usual. She found little reason to not begin their conversation with neutrality. “I hope I’m not lingering too close to your lands?” She was certain she wasn’t on claimed land—but that didn’t mean one couldn’t be near.
stormblessed
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The paler wolf regarded him with a single ear turned wayward. The titan was firm in keeping his distance; he knew that some had boundaries that were best not crossed, and it would not have shone a kind light on him to have been so forward with everyone he met. When the female finally spoke, it was in a smoky voice that seemed to come from a faraway place. The warhound was intrigued by it, but did little to express such an interest. Instead, he waited for her to finish speaking before he allowed a careful smile to curl his dark lips and crinkle near his eyes. The mismatched gaze of the sea wolf remained hollow and unchanging in the light that shone down on his features, but his posture and movements were friendly enough.

“Greetings to you,” he offered in a baritone that lingered in the chambers of his chest. The smokiness of his voice seemed to compliment the sheer size and shape of him. “You needn't worry; my claim is further back and through the wood,” Ford then offered her. He swung his muzzle around to gesture in the direction of the bay before he fixed his sights on her once more. There, he was able to take in her appearance with more ease. The lightness of her coat reminded him of many from Warsaw, but her features were different to him. Her lithe frame reminded him of his sister, for a moment, before the sharpness of her green gaze seemed to pull him away from that thought.

“What brings you to the edge of the world?”
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@Ford I am the worst. We can fade if you'd rather not continue an older thread, or even bump closer to current date. Am very flexible.

She studied him with quiet intrigue—it was more than the sheer size of the wolf that demanded attention, and so she gave it to him, though her wolfish brows would lift coquettishly to his question and her eyes would break away from his form to linger in the direction of the sea waters.
 
The edge of the world, he had called it. It seemed fitting. “I’ve never seen the ocean before,” she complied, finding little reason to withhold her travels from the stranger. She had not encroached on his land, and thus far, he remained respectable. Tilting her gaze toward him, she tipped her slender muzzle slightly, ignoring the cooler breeze of the salt wind as it swept over her pale fur. “I wanted to see what the fuss was about.”
stormblessed
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#6
no it's alright!

The stranger’s eyes were sharp and piercing as they studied his features. The titan’s expression did not seem to budge from its neutral state. Still, he did not entirely appear as though he was an immediate threat to her, and he did what he could to appear calm against the presence of one that he knew nothing about. Still, that was the beauty of getting to know someone; there was always a chance for the unknown to ambush you. To Ford, that was an opportunity to broaden his craft, and he welcomed anything that the ivory woman would say to him.
 
When she spoke, it was to admit that she had never been to the ocean. He thought that a great pity but did not share it with her and did not show it on his face. She said that she had wished to see what the draw was to the great stretch of endless blue-grey. The titan peered at her with a curious frown and a knitting of his wolfish brows. His hollow gaze did not betray his thoughts. “And what do you think of it so far?” Ford inquired to her in a soft voice that sounded like distant thunder.
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The man before her was silent in many ways—his broad muzzle following the direction of her eyes across the endless sea. His question drew an arching of her brows, her consideration given primarily to the taste of salt she could sense upon his own fur. A wolf did not become one with the ocean unless they enjoyed it, and the regal stance indicated to her he was certainly here by his own accord.

Ketzia, however, held revealing the truth to heart, and her slender shoulders rolled back in a light acknowledgement. “Beautiful, yet terrifyingly dangerous.”

She paused, an ear flicking before she cast her exotic features toward him once more. “You’re a wolf of the sea, then?”
stormblessed
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The beast could not help but to smile at her remark. The expression did not reach his gaze, but he held the smirk for a short while before issuing a chuckle. The pale stranger was not entirely wrong. The ocean was a powerful thing, terrifying in all that it was capable of. Still, Ford was certain that he had never truly been afraid of the dark depths. For a moment, he was forced to understand why that might have been. When he found his answer, he shared it with her in a way that he hoped would not offend. “She needs only respect,” his smoky voice offered. It was true, for all intents and purposes. The waters were not dangerous to those who treated them the way they were intended.
 
“I am of the ocean, yes. I could not belong to anything else,” he then answered her query with a confident tone. It was a blessing to know where he was meant to be, but he had known the taste of wanderlust and had often thought of pursuing such inclinations. In the end, Ford was always returned to the gentle lapping of the sea water. It was the blood of the Cairn, he knew; they could never venture far from where they were intended to be.
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There was no question the wolf before her was a wolf of the sea. She could not claim that he spoke of the ocean with fondness—it seemed to surpass that, and bore from a great understanding. Solemnly, she took his words, her gaze idly darting back to the mass of blue water before she felt an empty sense of what could only be described as sadness and jealousy. Never had she been part of something or from somewhere that she could speak so confidently about.
 
He was a man of little words, and Ketzia could accept such—but it didn’t stop the pale sparrow from tilting her exotic muzzle in his direction, her gaze studying the man, albeit with a neutrality that would not meet his gaze full on. “Can you tell me more of it?”
stormblessed
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The woman was peculiar to him; it was almost as though he knew that she was from a place that was far away from where they were. This did not bother him, though; he thought her to be reverent enough that he was not put off by her queries. It was only natural to have a curiosity toward the ocean, he thought. There was something sheer and savage about it, but he knew it well enough that he did not fear for himself when he was within the swell. He hoped that the others who sought to join him had felt similarly.

“Are you a believer in magic?” the looming warhound inquired with a curious tilt of his head. There was a ghostly sort of smile that lingered on the dark line of his lips. His mother had shared enough of the world of magic with him that he could have told stories for years before running dry. Even Skellige had believed in something more that lurked beneath the waves. Ford thought that would have been enticing enough to share with the woman.
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He humored her—accepting her curious companionship, and in turn, allowing the woman’s muscles to relax slightly, her bejeweled eyes glittering as they moved from him to scan the endless ocean. The scent was stronger than anything she had ever imagined, the brine and sand almost burning her nose upon the first intrusion, but she was slowly becoming accustomed to it. She imagined that a wolf such as the towering beast before her would miss such a smell should he drift too far from it.

She would have questioned what they sustained themselves upon—did the herds migrate close enough to the undrinkable ocean water that they could pluck away at them? Or did the crustaceans and fish provide enough of a meal to feed a pack of wolves?

Her ignorance of the man’s home was painfully obvious even to herself, and so she chose not to speak on it. Instead, she wished to learn.

But she didn’t expect the question proposed to her, and he gained her rapt attention once more, her gaze swiveling back to study him with open thoughtfulness. And, perhaps a lingering wistfulness that flickered in her gaze, before disappearing just as quickly. “I never used to. But… I’ve seen too many things to brush the possibility away.”
stormblessed
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#12
please excuse how grossly carried away i got with this

The pale woman's inner thoughts were not far from the truth. The further that he roamed away from his seaside comfort, the more savage he became. It was as though the very fibers of his sane mind were attached by thin threads to the lapping ocean waters. If he should stray too far from them, he felt more than just the claws of homesickness. Instead, the fearsome titan felt as though the very substance of his mind was unraveling in a spool of thin-stringed seaweed and pale foam. It might have been for the best that she refrained from mentioning her inward pondering. Surely, he would have painted himself as a madman before her. Not that it mattered how he appeared to strangers... he tried well to convince himself of this.

The stranger fed into the idea that magic was present in the world, no matter how much her rational mind fought against it. In that, perhaps there was a similarity between the woman and the man. She may have moved past him, though. For all the times that he had faced the idea that something existed beyond his logical scope of understanding, Ford had denied it and pushed it away. She had at least come to terms with the idea that there could be something beyond their knowledge. It helped him to press on with his tales of the dark waters.

“My mother and father spoke of different magics when I was young. My mother was close to the spirits of the woodland. She knew the spells that were cast by the forest and could tell you tale after tale of her experience with the deeply rooted conjuring of the trees and earth,” he explained to his companion in a softer tone. When he spoke of Deirdre, there was a reverence to his voice that had not been there before. However, when he turned to the pale woman to speak again – this time, in reference to his father – he became much wilder. The fur along his neck and shoulders rose to stand like jagged quills, or deathly stones that jutted from the dark water.

“My father knew nothing of the magics that existed inland. Instead, he told me and my siblings of the occult creatures of the water.”

The woods were always comprised of tales of goodness that left one feeling wholesome and inspired. The stories that were told of the sea and what existed beneath the surface were intended to cast fear into the hearts of those who could not withstand it. The swell was no place for those who did not believe that they were capable of combating whatever lived in the deepest darkest corners of the underwater world.

“There are living things beneath the water that are larger and more fearsome than a pack of bears. Beasts that could swallow chunks of the earth in a single bite, and even those that could turn the water around them to fire as they reached the surface. The ocean is like another world with entirely different lifeforms that reside within it,” he offered her, turning his mismatched gaze to the lapping waters. “There are some like us, who are fortunate enough to see both worlds, but our time with the sea is so limited in comparison to our time on land. Perhaps because we are incapable of standing against the leviathans of the depths.”

There, he felt as though he had ventured too far in his unraveling of the oceanic wonderland. Ford wondered if he had offered too much to the pale woman. In an attempt to regain his footing in their conversation, he fixed his sights on her slender features and exhaled slowly. “There is so much to learn about the world beneath our own, though. You should visit our bay sometime to discover for yourself,” the titan decided to offer.
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#13
@Ford so sorry for the wait. You write Ford so beautifully. <3

While Ketzia was always intrigued by others and their history, the man before her weaved a tale that fell into a realm of surreality. The pale dove held no doubt of the truths behind his words—the captivating description of a mother who sounded doting and beautiful. The hardened tone of his voice as he spoke of his father drew her eyes to the subtlest bristle of his fur, and she refrained the urge to simper closer and offer a shoulder of silent comfort.

“You were born of earth and water,” she murmured, her muzzle canting only slightly as her tail flowed gently behind her in consideration. “Your world sounds both enchanting and terrifying. With the beasts of the ocean, why did you seek to settle on its shores, instead of the forests?”

His offer to visit was not unnoticed, and the ivory sylph gave a tip of her muzzle in quiet gratitude—an offer she would certainly like to explore further. But to say his knowledge of the sea and the monsters that lurked within it was more than sobering when she considered the possibilities of her future home.