Dawnlark Plains 'cause you're my present, my future, my lesson, my teacher

imrathil didn't anticipate the fog that rolled into dawnlark, quickly obscuring landmarks in the distance. as he looked up with a rabbit dangling from his jaws, he saw the scowling skies were heavy with snow -- a sign that gave him pause considering his location. he was well outside of their established territory, and if he got lost he guessed it was his own stupid fault.

he hadn't meant to return here - this place gave him the creeps, the way it looked burned and drowned at once. wraen had told him a pack had been here once, and as the wind shivered through the desolate trees he thought he heart the ghost of a howl following after it, fading into the rattle of winter winds.

imrathil frowned, inspecting the clouds as they rolled past. at least he had managed to catch a meal before the snow started falling.

*big eyes emoji*

despite the hope that her estrus cycle would just sputter out before it began like the sparks of a fire that would not set — she'd been lucky her first year as a mature adult — her hopes were in vain. she knows the moment she goes into heat, feels the shift in her body. smells it on herself. worse yet, she feels the marrow deep instinct to seek out the males of drageda. she ignores it and sticks to the plan she'd constructed when the shift in hormones had first begun: she would isolate herself. head into the taiga — where last she knew it was not very populated — and wait out it's duration.

it starts out fairly good. as she moves towards drageda's southern border she checks over her shoulder periodically to make sure that she wasn't being trailed. by male and female alike. the thought of another woman approaching her during her estrus cycle sparks aggression in her — not exactly an unfamiliar emotion for her — and she's afraid if she's approached by one of her male comrades she might not resist them. worse yet she might entice them. she sends up a short howl to announce that she'll be out of territory on a scouting trip and slips out of the territory.

the snows of dawnlark plains give blodreina the impression that it's barren and she welcomes to drab sight, letting the chill seep through her fur, letting it cool off the physical heat that simmers beneath her pelage. she's been traveling for a few hours and is so focused on the itch seething restlessly beneath her skin and how much she is resenting it that she doesn't notice the sky turning grey and ominous ...nor that she was, driven by primal instinct flooding her brain with pheromones, that she was seeking out the scent of a male she'd caught briefly on the wind. it doesn't register until she spots his shadowy figure in the closing distance through the fog.

skrish. the trigedaselng explicit slips from betwixt her lips and she tries to divert her course, tries to make her legs take her in a different direction but they do not oblige to her will. she is lured helplessly in his direction like a moth to a flame ( likely not how it was supposed to go, but she's never been normal, yolo ). her eyes the color of blue-green sea glass studies him in as she lets out a chuff to announce her presence, haunching her shoulders against a particularly frigid gust of wind. he is tall, dark and handsome ...even covered in the scars. perhaps the scars add to his appeal. it tells blodreina he is a warrior, a fighter; or if he isn't that he's at least a survivor and she appreciates each ragged cicatrix that marks his flesh. and maybe she's just a little jealous that he has more than her.

it's only after she studies him and casts a brief, forlorn glimpse is cast to the darkening sky overhead that she notices her kill. but she isn't hungry. she wants but not in a way she's ever known before ( and it's definitely not food she wants ). she should keep moving, she tells herself. just keep walking. except her steps slow to a cease a few feet away. i didn't realize it looked so ominous. she admits to the stranger. would it have stopped her from trekking through the plains even if she had? probably not. the more distance she could put between her and any male she personally knew the better.

imrathil had been so busy considering his predicament that he hadn't noticed blodreina approach -- it was the crunching sound of paws on snow that yanked his gaze from the darkening skies. his gaze slid to the she-wolf in slight surprise to see she had already come so close; half expecting her to demand his rabbit (there was something about her that seemed the type accustomed to command, and getting what she wants), imrathil's jaws loosened and the rabbit tumbled into the snow.

she had mentioned the very same clouds that had been troubling imrathil -- as he looked up again he saw their edges blotted out -- it was snowing in the distance, and the wind had picked up into a high wail. "it looks bad," he admitted, only belatedly noticing the scent that lingered around her body. ignore, ignore, ignore -- came the klaxon sound in his mind -- he looked away and stiffened.

as he looked away he realized the blotted clouds had shifted, and the haze that had been in the distance was moving rapidly towards them. there was a wall of shifting white and the distant roar of a snow-squall on the wind. "shit," he said, motioning towards the advancing sheet of white with a look of apprehension.

she looks back at him quickly at the sound of his prize landing in the snow. her ears flutter back to rest at half mast atop her skull, lips parting and breath drawing in to tell him that he's dropped it with a playful smugness that might've even been flirtatious but before she can he responds, bringing the oncoming storm back to her attention. blodreina internally reprimands herself. since when did she get so easily distracted? oh yeah. the moment her body decided to betray her by making her not only fertile but receptive. being distracted was the difference between life and death for a gona; but she couldn't help it. it was decidedly hard to focus on what was going on around her when what was going on inside her was so goddamn pestering and insistent.

she looks determinedly at the rabbit, staring at it until it begins to lose its shape in the crimson splattered snow around it. until it begins to lose its meaning. it's meant to distract her, to keep her from letting her focus draw to him like a sailor to a siren but her gaze lifts as she sneaks peeks in her not-so-determined staring. he wasn't looking at her either, and while under normal circumstances that wouldn't have bothered blodreina she actually feels his aversion to looking at her like a wound.

which was ironic because she'd came out here in the hopes that males would not seek her out ( she admittedly did the unintentional seeking in this scenario ) and that they'd act like she didn't exist if they did.

it plays on old insecurities she hadn't felt in a long time, dredging them up from a grave she thought she'd set a fire too a long time ago. she knew she wasn't as effortlessly pretty as freyja and thyri. she wasn't soft and elegant. she was fierce and wild; their opposites in every way.

shit —

his declaration draws her out of her inner monologue and her gratefulness is short lived as her gaze follows the motion of his muzzle and the wall of white rapidly closing in on them. blodreina hesitates considering that the wall of white would be useful in getting lost in. she could slip away and isolate herself for real; but she looks to the stranger and beneath the hormones of her heat she feels an aching loneliness. she's no stranger to it, but in the wake of heda's death she has realized just how bad it's gotten. he is company. he is company that doesn't know her, doesn't know how even now she still mourns the death of the commander, doesn't know how she fears for the kongeda if atajar cannot be found, if a fos goufa cannot be produced.

if we don't move we're about to be caught in that, blodreina points out the obvious. i don't know about you but i don't want to freeze to death. she declares and then hesitates again not sure if she wants to admit that she doesn't know the territory all that well; a sad by-product of being more or less a homebody. her scouting skills were horribly rusty to so rusty they barely existed. she could go back — try to out run the storm but she doubts she's fast enough even with her small head start and does not want to go back to drageda until her heat is over.

imrathil's attention turned from the wailing blanket of white back to the she-wolf - he noticed she was staring at the hare, only in a way that seemed unreadable to him. as if she was staring through it, or not gazing upon it at all.

she seemed distracted - he was about to offer her the hare, but the pace in the wind had picked up and by now he realized that if they didn't act soon, they would be trapped in a white-out. while snow in of itself was not lethal, he had no idea how long the storm would last or how fierce it was -- if they were blinded and caught out in the open, there was a very real possibility they might freeze to death.

he nodded eagerly at blodreina's suggestion, ready to get packing. scooping up the rabbit (he had almost forgotten it, so urgent was his pressing need to escape the swallowing whiteness) he turned in time for a gust of wind and snow to nearly slap him sideways. "wevef 'ottah go." he blurted, the hare obstructing the clarity of his voice. he didn't wait for her to say yes or no before he turned around and made for the lowland side of the prairie, searching for some sort of dell or enclave in which to seek protection from the storm.

the storm was hot on his heels as he ran; he could feel the chattering of his bones with each icy breath. he was breathless as he finally saw a depression on the far side of a knoll that looked as if it might be a den -- making for it instinctively, imrathil hoped blodreina was behind him and not caught in the whipping whiteout.

blodreina's shoulders haunch as the air, somehow, feels like it's growing colder around them. she dedicates part of her brain to focuses upon it: how it seeps through her course winter pelage as if it is nothing more than tissue paper, how it both numbs and causes pain on her nose. anything to distract her from her biological processes. maybe if she could distract herself from it, it might stop. logically, she knows that it won't work like that but she's trying to be optimistic about it even if she's desperately grasping at straws. the impending doom of potentially being caught in the vicious looking snow squall barreling towards them and the frigid cold offers respite but it is disappointingly brief.

her body seems to have taken a page out of blodreina's own philosophy book: be loud enough and demanding enough and you'll be paid attention.

her head swings back to face him as he speaks around the rabbit he's scooped up. she could barely make out the words he speaks — in part because of the howling wind baring down on them and because his words are muddled by the obstruction hanging from betwixt his jaws. blodreina gets the message soon enough as he turns and heads away from her and the storming squall.

hey! wait! don't leave me out here! she huffs as she races after him ( not really expecting nor wanting him to listen ) because she's not overly familiar with any territory that isn't dragoncrest cliffs and because her survival instinct appears to trump out her resolution that she should be isolated. having a companion ...a male companion at that wasn't precisely the isolation she'd meant; but she couldn't really give a rabbit's ass at the moment.

she follows behind him, hesitating visibly with a cringe as she watches him dive into a knoll. she feels claustrophobic just looking at it. it is a second's hesitation before she's diving in the den after him before the storm can swallow her whole. in the end, she'd rather suffer through her claustrophobia before freezing to death. one, she knew she could survive at least. maybe. spirits of the commander, it was large enough for the two of them to fit comfortably but she is acutely aware of his physical presence so close to him. it makes her shiver.

she looks at him sheepishly, swallowing thickly, trying to tell herself the thundering of her heart is strictly because of running from impending doom and nothing to do with his suddenly close and overwhelming proximity.

hey, wait! imrathil paused just long enough for blodreina's form to materialize from the blur of white, before he turned back and desperately burrowed. overhead the storm snarled with furious whips of wind, scouring the mound of earth they huddled under with bitterly raking claws.

he looked up and was suddenly aware of how close they were -- two relative strangers at the mercy of the gale above. there was some room in the den they had burrowed into, but the foot of the entrance was narrow and with a few grunts he shifted awkwardly, finding the floor tilted naturally down to a shallow groove in the hardened earth. he could still feel the warmth of blodreina's body, but shyly he wriggled towards the edge of the cave.

remembering the rabbit held stupidly in his mouth, imrathil dropped it and with an uncertain smile, gingerly pushed it towards her. he had misinterpreted her glance from earlier to mean she was hungry -- given they were bedded down while the storm howled outside, he may as well be polite in her company.

i'm so sorry for the wait on this!

blodreina tries to tell herself that her claustrophobia is easily dealt with — she has a better chance of surviving it than she had trying not to freeze to death in the snow squall. she knows that the walls of the earth are not closing in on her and that facing her fears head on is the best way of defeating them. still, there's a moment where her breath is a struggled gasp and her ears buzz, a tight feeling in her head as she tries to shake it off. she takes a deep breath and then another, making an effort to be discreet. trying to calm herself works. she focuses on his silhouette as he wiggles towards the edge of the cave.

she shifts against the jagged rock pressed against her side, as if the pierce of the earthstone pressing against her flesh might somehow stifle the heat beneath her pelage and all that comes with her estrus cycle. it works for but a small second. there was nothing she fears that's going to distract her from what her body wants, what her body tells her it's time for. it is almost aggressive as if either siphoning the worst of blodreina's personality or trying to make up for the lack of a estrus cycle last year. either way, it's not so convenient as to have an off switch. she watches as he drops the rabbit he'd been holding and pushes it towards her.

for a moment, so caught up in her internal war with herself, she is surprised by the gesture and then her surprise deepens. they are strangers and the fact that he's willing to share with her is touching. this feeling doesn't last long though as something akin to embarrassment washes over her at the thought of having to explain why she had been so fiercely staring at the rabbit. her ears splay back against her skull as she mulls over the words. blodreina's never been shy and so the sudden reluctance she feels to be transparent is new. and startling to her. i'm not actually all that hungry, she admits. but thanks. she adds not wanting him to think she didn't appreciate the offer.

she studies him again in the shadows of the caves and wonders if he'd be insulted if she told him that she thought his scars were beautiful. she doesn't know him and doesn't know the circumstances of how they came to be; but to her scars are a mark of a warrior and as many scars as he has? she assumes he is a great warrior. a legendary one, perhaps. and she suspects it is a large part of why she's drawn to him. i'm blodreina. she offers as she realizes that they had yet to exchange names.

*daedric laugh @ the idea of ingram being a great warrior*

the space is tight, but imrathil wasn't nervous. he could hear the wild keen of the wind outside and somehow, knew he was safer here. he felt something akin to empathy for blodreina though -- even in the poor light the cave affords, he could see (or sense, maybe) that she was uncomfortable.

with him, possibly -- or maybe the cave was like a yawning, tightening mouth.

he shifted closer to the wall, watching as she politely refused the hare. he took it back carefully, but didn't eat it. with how the wind was snarling outside, he wondered if it might be better to conserve his meals, even if he was hungry.

the sound of her name filled the cavern, and to imrathil, who remembered nothing of his past life, the name sounded triumphant. exotic, maybe, but strong -- it carried a note of willfulness to it, and somewhere in his foggy memory he thought of reigning - perhaps blodreina was the name of a queen. "i'm imrathil." he almost said ingram - the name chusi had pulled from the depths of his past life -- but he didn't. somehow, he didn't think he was an ingram. it seemed like the name of a stranger to him.

once or twice now he had noticed the scent that cloyingly exuded from her. it didn't make him uncomfortable, but it did make him feel something he was not sure he had experienced before. possessive? it made him instinctively wish to be closer, but he quelled the urge to close the gap between them. instead, imrathil opted for small talk. "sorry about the tight quarters. best i could do, given the circumstances. are you from around here?"

slight pp. let me know if you'd like me to change it! <3

imrathil. to her, his name strikes her as foreign sounding, as exotic as her own sounds to him. imrathil. she repeats, trying it out for the sake of it. she liked it. she wonders if it's from his culture, like blodreina is from her's ...like eske was from her mother's or if it just came about in that way that names sometimes do. she admittedly isn't sure the naming protocol that parents following — was there even one? or was it something a mother or father just knew when they laid eyes on their child for the first time? ( though blodreina doesn't know it yet, in about nine weeks' time she'll find out, heh )

it's ok. she assures him. i'm not really a fan of tight spaces or caves, it was the whole reason she didn't bed down with the rest of the drageda wolves. but truth be told i'd much rather be in here than out there. she could deal with tight quarters. she tells herself again that she'd rather face her claustrophobia than freeze to death. at least when the storm outside ended, she'd come out of this space alive. coming out of the storm alive? unlikely. admitting her fears — a weakness, at that — had been surprisingly easy, especially given her want to always appear like an unshakable monolith that was never vulnerable. her weaknesses could be used against her and from a tacticians point of view it didn't seem very smart.

she regards him quietly for a few moments before deigning to answer. i'm from drageda, on the northern stretch of the coast. she isn't sure if he'll know it. she isn't much of a traveller, having always been more of a homebody and isn't sure how far their reputation reaches anymore. the last time she'd left the cliffs had been to fight alongside heda in a war with one of the other branches. it felt like a different lifetime ago now. how about you? where're you from? she asks figuring it didn't hurt to return the favor. there was no telling how long they'd be trapped here together. it's a rare occurrence but blodreina is suddenly glad she's not stuck here by herself. though imrathil does not offer her distraction from her estrus ( he probably makes it worse, rip ) he offers distraction from her claustrophobia at least and she's grateful.

though they'd thus been protected by the worst of the chill the screaming wind shifts and blodreina feels the blast of frigid air. she recoils instinctively, seeking to protect herself from the chill; but instead of retreating further into the cave like she'd intended she ends up instinctively seeking the nearest source of warmth which happened to be imrathil. her body brushes up against his and her skin is set on fire again and she shivers though the response no longer has anything to do with the cold. she should apologize, she thinks. she should move away, give him his space. he'd been keeping a careful distance from her for a reason, no doubt and she'd appreciated it. you're warm. she offers apologetically.

imrathil understood; caves were dark, small, and not the world befit of canine predators. they proudly stalked the earth, they did not burrow it. he supposed that for beasts made for such endeavors, a cave must be a welcoming place -- for him it was another hole to survive in, and just that.

drageda should have meant something to imrathil -- it certainly meant something to ingram -- but bereft of memory, imrathil thought it just another name he had never heard before. to him, it sounded draconian, fierce and as proud as the name she wielded.

"i'd like to see the coast someday." he responded, his voice almost forlorn. something had always pulled him back, unbeknownst to him, to his very roots -- but life had found a way to obstruct his subconscious' goals, and imrathil was as hopelessly shored to the mainland as a shipwreck. "i guess.. you could say i'm from around here." he didn't want to share his life-story with blodreina, sad as it was. not because he didn't want to talk to her, but because he somehow felt ashamed of it -- and maybe she would, too.

"there's a small band of wolves i stay with," he further explained, realizing he may have sounded cryptic when it had not been his intention. it was then the roar of the wind snarled its way into the cave, chilling him to the bone. he instinctively shut his eyes and braced against the windchill, only to open them and see (and feel) blodreina's pelt pressed up against him. it set his blood coursing, and a scarlet hue rose to his cheeks, obscured by his blackened pelt. "it-- it is cold." he fumbled, feeling none of his usual suave charm - not with her so close, and not with her.. well... you know. he didn't want to think of it, because he was afraid he might give in -- somehow to him it felt inappropriate, and he did not want to make her uncomfortable. faking a smile that was way more secure than he felt, imrathil added: "we could probably go down a little further, but it seems like it gets smaller. maybe this was a fox cave, or something.." he realized he didn't necessarily want small talk -- he wanted to be next to her; tentatively he shifted so that their flanks were touching, the adolescent boy in him trilling inwardly with overwhelming excitement.

blodreina draws in a deep breath, heavier than she intended. i think maybe i'd like to get away from the coast, but her perception of it is colored largely by what it means to her now. it is on the coast where she lost kendra and it is on the coast where she lost heda. it is loss, though the extent of her loss, unbeknownst to her, has yet to come full circle. i don't have very many pleasant memories of it. she admits without actually admitting anything. she doesn't want to reveal how vulnerable and weak drageda's become since the commander's death even though she doesn't think imrathil would do anything with the information.

he begins to tell her about a small band of wolves he's staying when the wind sweeps through their small enclosure interrupting him. blodreina blanches a bit at the idea of heading deeper if only because he used the word smaller. she can imagine how the walls of a tighter quarters might really press down on her. she'd only just gotten to the point where this was ok — there wasn't a buzzing in her ears anymore, nor did she feel like she was going to pass out anymore which was also good.

maybe we could stay here for now and retreat further in if it gets worse. she suggests. so far, the walls of their little shelter appear to be buffering the worst of the winds though the chill still creeps in from it's entrance all the same. he shifts closer to her and she keenly feels the press of his flank against her's, the warmth he eludes and the solid muscle beneath his dark pelage. she isn't sure what surprises her more: that she finds his physical presence to be pleasant or the fact that she does not recoil from the touch but instead shifts closer to it, welcoming it.

the coast, it seemed, was not all imrathil had it cracked up to be. he shared a sympathetic glance as blodreina mentioned she wished to get away. the manner in which she phrased it made him think there was something serious driving her to do so -- and also something not necessarily his business to ask for more information.

he was not discouraged, though he felt sorry for whatever hardship it was she was going through. someday he would see the coast, he was sure of it.

they were pressed close now, packed like two sardines in a can. imrathil couldn't say he hated it - it made his heart stir, and he hadn't felt this way ever, that he remembered. it was so strange being so close to another living, breathing thing -- and there was something exhilarating about being up close with someone as fierce as blodreina.

he smiled apologetically at the suggestion, realizing it was probably best not to mention how tight their quarters were. "that's fine," imrathil murmured, tearing his gaze reluctantly from blodreina to inspect the tunnel's mouth. snow had begun to pack in, and the frosty fringe was slowly creeping down the corridor. "hopefully it won't get worse. i guess... there's nothing to do but wait out the storm.." he sighed - happy at least that he had company in such miserable weather. "will you tell me what the beach is like?" imrathil's gaze, briefly imploring, passed over her features as he laid his head on his paws, content to listen to the quiet reverberation of her voice, and paint in vivid imagery the scenes in which she spoke of in his mind.