Stavanger Bay you are the night-time terror

@Ford ayy boo
Setting  few days before Drageda's infiltrated

In her pursuit to understand these new cosmos, the trek from her settled shoreline to the next had taken her leagues out of this evening. Her eyes are heavens-trained, made for those things that burned, burnished and far-away. She is entranced; nevermind that she'd entirely breached a whole other territory in the half of today. 

Perched upon crags and coral on the shoreline, waves grapple at the slab of bedrock she wavers upon. Her soul has taken ahold of her bright-star eyes, and she is left drifting between that yawning, hateful darkness eons between the constellations. The pallid she-wolf seemed to be in a heady orbit, trembling and obliviously unheeding to every sort of peril that skulked near and far for her. Even though the spirit of her body strained, begging her to be more awares. 

But she did not listen, and remained as she was - eyes dolefully to the universe that lingered in predestined, glimmering eruption, suspended in the dim of heavy indigo. A sun, setting, blazed at the horizon, swathing the ocean with colors befitting a sun's tantrum of giving way to night. Nearly, anyways.

Had the titan taken on more of his mother's mindset, he would have found a peculiar kinship with the night sky. Instead, he was a beast of rational and logical thought, who rarely strayed from the knowledge that he had garnered, or the experience that he had lived. Still, somewhere in his genes, Ford had found a drawing to the sprinkling of lantern lights that glittered across the onyx backdrop. Something about the unknown had sparked an interest in the warhound, and he had found himself trekking across the sanded beaches with his crown pointed skyward in hopes of understanding.

Were it not for the shift in wind, Ford might have missed the pale figure that traipsed through his intended claim. Once his flared nostrils caught the aroma, the great brute snorted and turned his mismatched pair of eyes to the stranger on his shore. With a rigid frame, the titan watched; it seemed that the stars had brought her too. Prowling across the sands as he had been intended, the sea wolf released a chuff to announce his presence before he stood some ten yards from the female and waited for her to meet his cold gaze.

A pronounced ear tilts back, fur as thick as a hare's; it curves towards that chuff, away from her star-numbed brain. The longing of her body tugs at the glimmering strands of her mind, entreating her to look. Blearily, she does.

At first, it's a listless passing of her eyes, blinded by the rapture of her mind that is held in the grasp of those stars. Clambering through a haze of stardust, her lashes flutter like dragonfly wings, and she is left discerning who, of course, towers across from her. Aure has been, rather below, the average height of the common female of her kin for most of her life - she doesn't expect to grow into some willowy, graceful and lovely thing. It is her constant, and something she wonders at in others; something she is still unaccustomed to.

It's becoming apparent to her that Teekon is full of giants alive.

Yet, her heart stumbles when she sees him; nothing but a skull enlivened and grinning reminiscent of a death ode. The searing sunset can do nothing to bring that figure to light, lest he makes himself even more present. For a moment, her non-beliving self thought it might be some deity of the depths; someone made of salt and brine and predator-marrow.

All of this, and she simply said, "Good evening."

A skeleton brought to life was accurate; he was nothing but bones – inside and out. A listless, sea-bound wraith that had been brought to life by the spirits of the water. If she were to closely examine him, she would have seen the emptiness in his black and white gaze. She would have noted the lack of emotion that lingered in the hollowness of his stare. Instead, she was met with a ghostly upturning of his dark lips. With this, the burly limbs moved him forward to close the remaining distance between them.

The stranger's greeting had been soft – non threatening – but she still remained on his beach. It had drawn close to a time in which the titan did not feel comfortable with the unknown wandering through his home. After the attack had happened to Dalia, he felt as though he needed to take an adamant stand against passersby. Their numbers had grown to a decent size; the tides had turned, and he was required to protect those who had sought to follow in his path.

“You've found yourself on my beach,” the warhound remarked in a smoky baritone that lingered in the air like the fresh draw of thunder. His brow furrowed and he cast an expectant look to the albino female. She did not seem troubled that she had found herself smack dab in the middle of the Stormrift hold.

His hallowed, brandishing form came closer, and the dying sun painted the world with a last, golden bleed.

You've found yourself on my beach.

Several beats of silence passed, the cool wind ruffling the mother-of-pearl alabaster of her coat. Her mind came up short and void; like the quiet that follows a nova that's expelled inward on itself. Thoughts became mere specks of stardust, and they grasped at her inwardly as she sought the meaning so stark, yet murky, of his words.

Finally: her fine head rose, slim brow flicking up as her lashes flurried like flakes. She had chanced onto the crest of an alpha's creation, all of her own, thoughtless, cosm-enraptured accord.  "O-- " Giving a soft, small huff, her ears drew themselves against her own skull, and she made to turn, but - she came up again, deftly, "Please, may I request something of you? Only one." The inquiry left her with a trill, her tone more wondering than entirely polite.

From here, perched as she was on stone, he cut an even more commanding figure up close; effectively keeping her rooted there, both reserved and tapped into her eccentrics. A titan, against her minute, petite form.

Although the wild abandon of her physique's soul was drawn to that almost-familiar agrarianness of him... she knew that by not taking her leave meant more than thinly-veiled pleasantries. More, and less than this guise of 'pleasant.' She continued, foreign chords attempting to hook with reason, "And then I will away -- forever, if it would suit you."

Even with the words that he had spoken, the alabaster stranger did not seem as though she was entirely ruffled. The warhound felt his chest swell with a heavy breath that was released into the air like a great stormcloud. It was then that she opened her mouth to request something of him. The pride of the Cairn burned like a fire in his belly and forced the hairs along his neck and back to rise like jagged peaks of an indomitable mountain. How could she find the gall to ask anything of him when she stood on his shore like a lost degenerate? The titan did not understand how strangers could have grown so bold.

A quick snort was released from his flared nostrils. The wraith stiffened himself and looked down the length of his muzzle at her features. Though there was nothing there to suggest malice, Ford did not trust the likes of her. As he had grown closer, the brute had picked up on the scent of other wolves that lingered in her cloak. The scent was familiar, and he was reminded of the woman who had been searching for Saarthal. For a moment, he imagined that the albino stranger's request would be to help her find the missing wolf. He would have denied her, if it was.

“I am not foolish enough to agree to such terms without knowing what it is that you want,” the warhound uttered in a guttural tone. Then, he crafted an expectant look that was cast to her without pause. The mismatched colors of his eyes bore into her features like empty fires; there was nothing there but a hollow beast of war. It was nearly an unfortunate thing that he had found the intelligence he had. It had crafted him into a dangerous weapon, capable of devastation.

In the time it took the titan before her to process and react to her inquiry, Aure couldn't help the impish squint in her eyes, nor the blithe curl in her lips. It was not her intention charm the colossus into allowing her to linger, heavens-forbid. Any other traveler might have vanished the moment they'd seen him; but she wasn't any other traveler, foolish as this situation might be.

As her own fey gaze bore right back into his, she continued, "Ever since I arrived to these Wilds, these stars have caused me nothing but woe. Turned me north when I've meant to go south, and, then, thrown me to ze seas without so much as letting me know their formations." Her voice had become a bit wistful, now, if not resentful at her own tirade with the cosmos. 

She took in the mussed hackles, the flare of his death-and-life gaze, but kept herself rooted as he drew himself to full. He was right to have become so riled towards her. Nonetheless, there was a twitch in her own muzzle, in some amusement, at how so many continued to defer her with their hulking height. Not that she was foolish enough to say this to him, of course. Even she herself was surprised at her sudden nerve.

Where his eyes seemed hollow of anything but ire and fury, her own blazed with longing. Not the longing of the body, but that of the mind and all of its endless crevasses, "What I want is to learn these constellations," the pallid she-wolf's voice was edged with a vivaciousness. "Not all of them, of course. Only a few names."

She toed closer to him on that crag she perched on, something primal in her - (and the distance, the brisk ferocity of him) - ruffling the fur on her shoulders as well; her eyes keen and wary, but wondering and fascinated. "You could, of course, let the sea have me, too." Her lips twitched, with all the intent to jest, not goad, "Drown me in an inch of salt-water, at that."

It was more than peculiar that the woman would blame the stars on her troubles, let alone her lack of coordination whilst traveling. There was a portion of her speech that reminded the brute of his mother. Deirdre had always felt a strange connection with the world around them. The warhound never understood when she spoke of spirits, or talked as though the trees had a soul of their very own. He had tried as a young boy to listen carefully to the towering things, but he had never heard a sound from them. There seemed to be a moment in which he wondered what it must have been like to listen to the glittering constellations that were dusted over their heads.

Even more, the titan was entirely thrown by her bold expressions and lack of self-regard. She peered at him with pale eyes, and he furrowed his brow tightly across his own mismatched gaze. The expression did not change; his features were cold and unfavorable. The scars that adorned the stranger's features were peculiar and distinct. Ford did what he could to memorize them, should anything go wrong in his meeting with the ghost. While she may have expressed amusement in their conversation, there was nothing betrayed on his face. The eyes of the skeleton brute were as hollow as the sky itself. To search for meaning there was just as wise as to search for it within the stars.

“Why the stars?”

The question rumbled from his lips swiftly, directly, and without a hint of regret. The wild witchdoctors of Warsaw were firm believers in star-paths. Once, Ford had attempted to learn what he could from them. Though he may not have believed in what the stranger was searching for, he was capable of offering his own knowledge to her. He wanted a reason; he wanted to know what it was that drew her to scout across land and sea in search of meaning in twinkling lights against a dismal backdrop.

“You are right, that I could. But the sea is too good for you, as I know you now,” he agreed with her final statement with a quick and slight curling of his dark lips. The ghost of a smile did not reach his eyes, and did not shift the furrowing of his brow. It was cruel humor; in part, he did not intend it as a joke at all. After all, Ford was a titan of the water, and he did not intend to desecrate his hallowed home with the body of a stranger so bold, she sat on his shore and begged for his mind.

'The sea is too good for you.' Her gaze softened, and the smile that tiptoed at her lips now spread itself along her maw in full. Leaning in only a tad closer, boring into that emptiness of him, her voice was suddenly low, rasping, "And ze heavens, comoara mea, are too good for you." Drawing back from him, the Brana's chin lifted as if something like approval glittered therein. 

O, gods - (if there were any) - she wanted to chart him. Him, and the constellations of that prideful mind and his righteous anger. His abysmal, almost-unending stoicness. He continues to broil; to become impatient and terse, as stars do when they thrash in death throes within. Her spirit bends in aureate abandon to that vehemence of him; drawn to him and his likeness, perhaps, to the stars they bickered under – drawn to him like the threads between constellations. It is the reason she lingers, and has not made a better thought for herself at this very moment.

But she leans in, ears cupped forward to cradle that gaseous, smoldering baritone of his next words. 'Why the stars?'

"Dearest earth-shaker, why not?" She pulled away, studying him for some few moments, before reclining back on her haunches. The crag bit into her as she hugged a faintly-sodden, feathery tail to her. Although it might cost her her throat, becoming so terribly vulnerable, she did so nonetheless; lashes fluttered closed, lips demurely parting as she breathed in deep. And then she was exhaling into the stars, and after a time, her silvered gaze opened for them.

"Twice, I died under them." Already, she had fallen far from herself; but she told him.

At least, she did not tell him of her first death. Not yet. But she told him of the second: how, when on the harrowing trek to the Wilds: she could still hear her brothers’ wail in her ears, as sharp and bleak as the taiga had been, without truly hearing. She could still see him, without really seeing: tumbling tumbling tumbling into that deathly, icy crevasse, one that had surely taken him thrashing into the bowels of the world itself. She’d lost him. And herself. Had lost him from the moment she turned a cheek, hesitantly faithful, to his worries— and had lost herself to the instant where she had been so ruined to reach him in time. And all she knew was that she was breaking and fracturing and there was nothing but this agony agony agony--

"They are my constant. They are what will lead my to finding my hanar. He who is the only one in this world who keeps me eternally grounded. I will take ze entirety of ze world and all of its wonders between my jaws, if only to see him again. I will make ze sun my guide; I will make mountains kneel. Although I am star-born, I would become a storm -- for him." By now, her once-lovely face had slid into an expression that was almost as void as the depths of the titan's eyes seemed to be. "I am most certainly mad for thinking he survived, of course. I suppose I've left my mind, back when it all happened."

And it was with that very same look that she turned back to him, neither defensive or terrified of judgment. Simply... wilting, but open. Allowing.

Earth-shaker...

The warhound stiffened at the sound of such a calling. Never, in all of his life, had he been associated with the ground that they were doomed to travel upon. The Cairn wolves were not creatures of the earth, but of the sea. Although he shared a great deal of his blood with the Mayfair wolves of the wilds, he had not adopted their same love for the growing forests or the towering stone monuments. In time, he imagined that they would branch their claim to the forest that had been his mother's home. Until then, Ford was tied to the swell. The more he had thought of it, the more he realized that Velen or Rannveig would have better suited the sentinels. When that time arrived, he would discuss it with both of them.

The warhound did not slip away from her features as she poured her soul to him. His brows remained furrowed above his mismatched gaze, and his dark lips remained in a thin-lipped expression. Though her words were poetic, in their own way, they did very little to phase the distant features of his skeletal face. It seemed odd to him that she would spill herself so willingly to the likes of him – a stranger on an unfamiliar beach.

“Mmm,” he mused softly, allowing a ghostly smile to turn the corners of his lips upward just slightly. “You have found yourself in the place for becoming a storm.” With that, Ford cast his attention to the wandering waves and the chilling beating of their strength against the shore. While he may not have been the type to believe in spirits, he knew that there were powers beyond his understanding. The grit of the world was not all in black and white. And though it was not in his nature to nurture those who had lost loved ones, he had seen far more impressive feats of strength from strangers before.

“He could have survived the turmoil. Tell me, why did you pledge yourself to a pack if you are keen on finding him again?”

The question was direct and callous in its delivery. He pulled his sights from the ocean waters and cast them back to the pale woman with a stare that would have burned holes in a lesser creature. Ford might not have understood the same pull as she felt to her blood kin, but he would have sought the earth twice over if it meant that he could return them to his side. This was not an emotional connection that he felt – no – but the mindset that had been beat against him since he had been a young boy. The Mayfair-Cairns had his loyalty, and that would never change.

written lame on mobile, srysry!

Her ears curled towards him at the leniency of both statements, and when faced with another inquiry of his, her pale face was buoyed from the depths of her memories and into a considering, contemplative look. “It is true that I have, in part, coalesced myself into a pack. It is also true that I am learning my position. Sometimes, there is nothing more I’d want to do than to stay; to do my part, and repay their generosity with what labor I may do, and more. However...”

Her own lips pressed together as if truly weighing his words this time, and case her own gaze to the waves. “I never intended to join a pack. Not when I had just lost him. Yet... although I have not pledged myself, it is more for sanctuary in numbers than loyalty.” A faint grimace worked its way into her velvety maw, recalling Rakk and his... his... Somewhere between her lungs and throat, a low, rather hefty snarl laced her next words. “As with Easthollow, after I’d sought solace from... one with inclinations of our flesh, so do I seek ze sea’s sanctuary. So, when it comes to pledging myself—no, not truly. Until I provide ze sustenance that comes with my trade, I doubt that they would heed any hail of mine. I have always been a drifter... and even when I have only just arrived, I could as easily fade and become forgotten.”

For the first time, a soft exhale wracked her delicate, thin shoulders. “Ze only reason I made for ze shores is because my brother has wanted to see it—as have I. But it was simply an epiphany borne on a flicker of hope. A chance; a risk, too I suppose.” And for the first time, too, she couldn’t bring herself to look back into those spiritless eyes that watched her. The last thing she wanted to impress upon another is that she was reeling back on the waves of some kind of self-pity. So she said: “Since we were birthed, we have only thought about another. And as for myself... I have rarely thought for my own rhyme or reason.”

She gave a light shake of her head, a bit ridiculed as to how naive that sounded. “If I sound...” The words came out halting, tinged with uncertainty; and she ended up holding her tongue, unable to find the right word to express herself. What was wrong with her? Why did she suddenly care for what this depths-behemoth thought of her? What anyone felt or thought of her? Sometimes, she almost wondered how it might be better if she were forgotten altogether. She had never felt twinges of apology before.

“It seems an awfully unfulfilling life to lead.”

The comment was direct, and was offered to her only because he did not see it wise to exist in a world where the labor of one's actions would simply be forgotten. What purpose was living if there was nothing to show for it, after all? In that, perhaps, pride was the warhound's greatest downfall. While emotion played very little in his life, he had always found a steel resolve in the blood that flowed through his veins. In this, Ford had amounted to one of the best of his kind. But he was not so foolish as to believe that his siblings had not risen alongside him. They carried their own strengths against the jagged hairs of their spine. Together, they were unstoppable... and perhaps that was where he was able to see her longing for her brother.

“He may still find his way. The sea has a means of claiming what it wants,” the titan then remarked with a small shrug of his broad shoulders. For those who were destined to prowl in the depths, he knew that the waters would sing them back home. If her brother longed for the vast stretch of water as much as she had claimed he did, it was likely that the man would wind up there – one way or another. In spite of this, it was not Ford's task to act as a shepherd for the lost lambs of the world. He had found his purpose without failure, and he expected that others would do the same.

A thoughtful creasing of his brow seemed to narrow his features. The sharp glint of his mismatched gaze did not budge from her face as he cast a stern expression toward her. The warhound had nothing to hide from the stranger on the beach – it was his claim, after all. For all of the poetic words that she had shared with him, there was something that he still did not understand.

“How have you placed yourself under the pledge of a pack if you still search for him? If your heart longs for him the way that you say it does? Surely, you should not stop until you have been reunited,” Ford inquired in a rumbling voice. The pale woman had painted a lovely picture of familial bonds, but he was not as firm of a believer in words as he was in action. If she intended to be found at the side of the lost man, it made little sense that she would align herself with a group she knew little about. Was it not almost as though she had given up on the entire premise of it? Or was it simply her emotion overplaying her cards?

She, flickering with so much emotion, couldn’t have been cast in a greater contrast with the looming male behind her. Where he had found purpose in his life and steadfastly attended to it, she had been left adrift, unseeing, within the sea of stars she’d found so much solace within. If she was being more honest than she already was, there were times where some part of her knew that whether she found Vonnaruil or not... wouldn’t complete her.

Yes, their souls would be joined once more—that eternally-grounding tether that kept her earthly body rooted to ground. But it was more of something she strived to surmount; not neccessarily the thing that made her rise as the stars and sun did, or what made her peer into the pultritude of all those little curiosities to uncover evermore.

The salt-king’s talk of swell and heave and claim gave her cause, at least, to eye back at him. She wondered at what made him so partial the ocean, but then settled on the thought that perhaps, what drove him, was similar to the way she felt to the Celestium. But as she’d never been to the shores until so recently, it was... jarring for her, becoming so accustomed to it. There was an inkling that truly envied those, so at bliss with shell and brine; the only feral savagery she’d known was her unending, farther-than-farthern North and it’s own wilds. It was truly all she’d known.

But why would the waves yearn for her brother, despite Vonnaruil’s longing?

It was the last statement that made her turn again, chewing into her cheek. Sometimes, she wondered the same of herself—how could she wander if she were beholden to Drageda? “I suppose if I am able to come into a position for much wandering, half of ze find would be rather done,” her answer so plain and without thought of philosophy; but stark as a star and with a wry, wan edge of soft humor.

Aure rose, bending herself about to finally face him one more and with a rare curl of her lips that was equal parts whimsical and ghostly. She began to step down from her perch, and once within the sands again looked up at him. Unsurprisingly, her brow only came up to just below his great slab of stone that was a shoulder.

Purpose had found him.
 
Or, rather, it had been thrust upon him at a very young age. There was a tradeoff to the lives that were led by the light and dark creatures who stood beside each other on the shore. For the darker had found a sense of drive in his actions and pursuits; he had worked to build his empire because that was what he had been told to do all his life. There were no other options for the likes of Ford. His path had been etched in the stars on the day that he had entered the world. Destiny had grabbed hold of him and would never let go. In that life, there was a great deal of certainty… but it was not the perfect existence.
 
For the lighter of the two, it seemed as though she had yet been touched by the hand of fate. Though she had foolishly pledged herself to a pack that she had passed along her way, it seemed as though she had been free to make that choice. She may have longed for the day that she would reunite with her brother, but she was still free… she could do anything that she wished in the days in between. With that, she was faced with her own trials that she was required to overcome.
 
Purpose was not everything, and it did not have the same appeal to all.
 
Then there was a quip about how if she had found herself in a place where she could wander, half of her journey would have been complete. The great titan did not refrain from snorting at such a thing, for he had never heard something quite so foolish in his life.
 
“You’re wrong in that… no matter where you find yourself, there is no halfway to the task you have before you. He will be found when you find him, and no amount of hmming and hawing in between will get you closer. It’s black and white; you are, or you are not. He is found,” the brute swept his mismatched gaze to the pale woman with a fierce furrowing of his brows. He regarded her in that way for a heartbeat of time.
 
“Or he is not.”
 
It was then that he decided that he was done speaking to the likes of dreamers. For all of their flowery words, they were not very good at taking action. At least, that was what he had found. So, the warhound stirred from his place and turned his attention back down the coast to the bay and the wolves who were waiting for him to return. Ford knew that he needn’t waste any more time with the pale woman. Her life was her own to live. So, he turned and departed from that place and did not opt to think of her again along his journey home.