The Heartwood Call me Mr. Rattlebone

@Rhaenys - forward dated a couple of days probably if that's okay with you

Crows took flight overhead, fluttering through the boughs of the trees like omens of death sent from the heavens. The wind brushed through the wild wood and stirred it to life. In the heart of it, there loomed a massive beast. His figure staggered through the forestry on unsteady limbs. Blood caked the back of his skull and caused his coat to stand rigidly along his neck and shoulders. His shoulders...

Ford could feel the damage that had been inflicted on his frame and he shuddered against it. Each step was a torturous event – each movement caused pain to erupt through his spine and skull. It was more excruciating than anything he'd endured. In truth, the titan should not have been moving. The crack to his head should have killed him. The further damage should have turned him to nothing but a shadow of what he had been before; a shell without soul. Some might have claimed that fortune was with him, but it was not fortune that had saved the warhound.

A crow perched over his head and peered down with dark beady eyes. Ford drew his crown upward and felt the spinning sensation that followed. It was there that the titan stumbled and crumpled forward. He skidded against the earth with a grunt, sucking in the taste of his own blood in his mouth. The sea wolf did not know where he was or why he had wandered to it. Around him, he saw the forest of Donnelaith in its full glory. On the wind, he could even taste the hint of his mother's aroma.

Perhaps it was best if he rested.

Setting this after she meets Aurewen. 

The stench of blood was ever-present in the air. It was what had lured her so far out, like a victim of unsuspecting prey, the girl pressed on. It was toxic and ever so delicious. Her stomach snarled its approval, urging her on when her legs began to grow weary. For the promise of food, she mused - Rhaenys couldn't help but feel as though some primal instinct was beginning to grasp at every which way of her. She had eaten, yes, especially after meeting her, prior to entering this valley, non-existent cousin. Rhaesuial; she would never truly escape from its grasps. 

Despite not entering their ranks impulsively, she knew that her lingering around there - some sort of base - would be the best option. But here she was, almost back to where she started. What a turn of events, her thoughts invaded her mind like bees to honey; they rang true.

A loud 'caw!' was the sound that had managed to pull her from the web of her mind and, looking up, she realized that she probably wasn't the only predator around. Fur raising along her back instinctively, she huffed back at them. A few took off but more than those who did were those who remained stock still, perched on a branch, staring at her with those emotionless beady black eyes. Ripping her gaze away, Rhaenys soon came upon her answer as to what, exactly, had died and stirred up the commotion and, ultimately, pulled her into its grasp. But this was not food.

But he very well might've been.

The northern girl position remained quiet and still as she examined what looked like a murder right in front of her face. Her muzzle crinkled with uncertainty, suddenly very aware of the dangers that could be lurking in the shadows. Not just anyone could bring down a beast this size but, if he had managed to fend them off just as they did to him, she might have found herself in some sort of dilemma. "Oh for fuck's sake," She muttered under her breath, unable to tear her eyes away from the gruesome scene. Squinting, she noted that he was for sure breathing - the subtle rise and fall of his sides gave that away as clear as day.  

She couldn't just leave him here.

Cautiously, she looked from left to right. Nothing. Ears perked - it was quiet. Before finally moving to stand before him. "Not sure if you can hear me, but if you can, I need to find some way to get you to help." If he strained to hear, he could probably even pick up on 'why does this shit always happen to me' under her breath.

The trees whispered to him and seemed to tell him stories from his childhood. They sounded like his mother, and the longer that he listened to them, the closer he came to losing his consciousness. It was not until the sound of another voice - foreign to him in every way – sounded through the wood. A single dark ear swiveled atop his head toward where she stood. The titan did not stir from his place in the dirt. Instead, he breathed outward and gritted his teeth together. All that his mind could register was pity on this foreigner's voice; pity and the tone of someone who felt as though they had stumbled on a scenario they did not wish to take part in.

“Once we stood beside the shore...”

His voice seemed to drawl from the back of his throat, bubbling against the blood that had pooled in his mouth. The words did not make sense in the context they were given, not even to him. The titan did not know himself or where he had come from. He did not know the woman who stood in the woods with him. Everything was foreign and it filled him with such rage that he could scarcely fathom how he had not erupted in eternal flame.

Then, his head lifted from the ground and turned slowly toward her. There was a lifelessness to his mismatched gaze. Ford latched his sights on her own and did not pull them away. It was as though he was looking into the eye of a swelling storm. For a moment, it seemed as though lightning flashed in his gaze. Above, there were no clouds to fill the blue of the sky. Even the crows had abandoned the wood in favor of better haunts. All would have been right in the world were it not for the savage creature of war that had wandered into the wild forest.

“I drowned him in the ocean and watched his body float to sea,” his smoky voice rasped coldly.

Time eats away at memories, distorts them. Sometimes we only remember the good... sometimes only the bad. It seemed as though he could remember some things, but none of them were good. There was nothing left but a pit of darkness where his soul had once been.

For a moment there was only silence and then, at last, the baritone voice of the victim broke through. Her brows furrowed, the slightest bit of a frown beginning to take place on her darkened lips. The more he spoke the more she began to believe that he was telling her what happened but, in this state, he could be just be saying things that had no meaning at all. She also knew that she needed to keep him talking. Her father had been a healer and the brother to one of the best, thus, she had picked up on a few things just by speaking with him. But he was a long forgotten memory; Rhaenys was glad she held onto this one.

“I drowned him in the ocean and watched his body float to sea,”

 As he stared at her, she too did not pull her gaze away, instead, Rhaenys intensified it by narrowing her titian eyes at him. Yet, she found herself admiring the complexity despite the dire moment; one eye as dark as the rest of him, the other as light as the external and internal skeleton that had been forced upon him by relentless genetics. Perhaps once upon a time he would have been something to admire up close, but now he was nothing more than flesh reanimated; the countless scars upon his body told stories that his fumbled mind could not stir up.

Strangely enough, the northern girl found herself intrigued by him. A feat accomplished by so little of individuals that she had to squint and make sure that he wasn't doing anything other than tossing out meaningless phrases and staring at her. Finally, she moved, the air being forced out of her nose as she took a few steps closer. "Can you stand?" 

'Can you stand?'

The titan huffed, lip curling. The cold glance of his eyes toward her was like a flicker of lightning against a dark backdrop. In that breath, his spine had cracked and seemed to settle. The burning in the back of his skull had not subsided since he had woken up on the shore. He did not know why he had been there; it was not the Warsaw that he remembered. The scents had been different. The further inland he had gone, the more he had started to realize that he was not in his birth home. The terrain had changed far too drastically to belong to the seaside islands of his birth.

“If I could, I would not be lying in the dirt,” the skeletal figure spat. His tone was no longer distant, but very much in the conversation that was taking place. Ford did not stir from his position. He did not believe that he had the strength to lift himself back to his legs and move on. This left him with a creeping sense of hopelessness and shame – feelings that he never had felt before. It was curdling like sour milk in his mind.

She noted the lip curl and held herself from snarling back at him; barely. Her snout crinkled in retaliation at his, the fur along her back shifting from a relaxed position to half way to aggressive. “Maybe in the dirt is where you belong, sir.”  Her ears were forward now, awaiting for any sort of response. She could be a sarcastic prick too.

Huffing, she walked a few paces forward. 

“Do you want help or not?” Titian eyes narrowed as the titan let her voice soften slightly. If he couldn’t walk, she would at least lick his wounds to cease the chance of infection. It would hurt like a bitch, and truthfully - for her own amusement- she wondered if he would cry. He seemed like the man-baby type. Somewhere deep inside she knew that it was purely her annoyance talking, but she couldn’t help the small smile that crept upon her lips at the thought.

The dirt was not where he belonged. The thought rang through his head like bells from a church on the hill. No, Ford was not a beast of the earth at all… he was a titan of the water. There would never be a place on earth that would hold him back the way that the sea did. It calmed him – it soothed the rattled mind of the savage hound. The further that he traveled inland, the worse his madness seemed to get. If he could not hear the sound of the sea against the shores, the cruel ticks of anger started to grow.
 
The woman asked him if he wanted her help. He scoffed, blowing dirt and a few small pebbles forward. He would not allow her to assist him. If he could not lift himself from the ground, then he deserved to die there. There was a quiet groan that turned into a pained snarl as the warhound adjusted his legs so that they were beneath him, quivering from only the lightest touch of his weight against them.
 
He would not make a fool of himself in front of anyone. His head throbbed with such excruciating pain, his vision had started to fade to blackness. Ford gritted his teeth and exhaled sharply, doing everything that he could to keep himself steady. Every ounce of his strength was used in his thrust of effort. He managed to shakily lift his torso from the ground and sit on his hind legs with a hiss of pain. The titan drew his gaze to hers and lowered his muzzle in a small nod.