Blacktail Deer Plateau there's a voice that pulls me stumbling through a symphony

@Rosencrantz & @Lokie. Evening, July 4th, after this.

She seethes as a springtide tempest might, untapped with the remnants of a fury she doesn’t know what to do with.  

It is almost the bewitching hour, and Aurëwen only lies, refracted within her own storms, bleeding upon the cliffside from the ribs. She is agitated and irregular, already having strained her chords  (more suited for songs and sighs)  into raggedness with what’d been the most damnable words to ever leave her scarred lips.

Tears in the form of ruinous salt spilt from an equally-wrathful gaze, winking out and down into the sunsetland void below. Her marred crown felt like deadweight; too exhausted, burdened, to raise, to pull up over thin shoulders; to spare her comrade an ever-thankful glance.

And then, her anchor;
Her children. Their father. 
They needed to find another.

That thought and the promise of that is what makes her rise, a weary moon, and limp tenderly, listlessly back to their little rendezvous.

In her flight to meet her — escaped! she spit — remaker, it hadn’t occurred to her that her children might’ve seen it as a leave-taking of her own. It hadn’t occurred to her that they might’ve very well have come across Vercingetorix. It hadn’t occurred to her that a myriad of events might’ve come about while she’d been engaged in combat that’d been for the means of obliterating their desecrator from the earth.

It hadn’t occurred to her that the rendezvous would be without the voices of her son, her daughter, and Sanguinus. It hadn’t occurred to her that Fear would return, bright, alight within a body so hollowed - or that, if she took a breath, she'd known just who'd made off with them.

“Balaur? Belea?” was in a voice that was hoarse, breathless from snarling, shrieking; eyes unseeing, hooded and bleary, now incrementally tearful. Trying to scent them out from ribs that the botanist within her was too numbed to tend to. ...Either Sanguinus had made off with him from some other danger; or they’d hid from her; or she’d lost them in her previous distress as she’d gone from them.

Lost them, well and truly, and her chords hitched in a cursing, repentant, fright-stricken wail:

“Damnațiune—
Dragomir! Isilmë​!”

Air cooling as the twillight sparkled above, twinkling lights as they danced with the crescent moon while the paladin stood still, stoic, as his breath returned to the slow rhythm as before the rush of adrenalin had came flooding into his veins. He stood waiting... for what? Why? For the woman to come to her senses before he could go off on his own once more, in search of... something. 

Every now and then the drop of liquid honey would blink in the emptyness of his mask, bleeding from his own wounds, one especially on his flank as he waited for a reaction from the woman - it took a while but through the sobs she had finally risen. A thankful blink came his way, but there was more to come.  With panic she cried out for individuals, individuals whom she must have traveled with before the battle for her life, individuals who must have fled long before the paladin had come to assist. 

No one is here. His baritones spoke calmly, but coldly. The knight was not soft in voice and words.

The smell of blood had pulled Loki from his group, as his curiosity, as usual, got the best of him. He couldn't not see where the smell was coming from, especially if it was fresh meat. Tail waving in excitement, he tracked it, and it didn't take him long to find the source. The expression that appeared on his face was no doubt shock as he took in the two wolves before him. He had not thought this was what he would find. 

They were... mauled. Are you two... okay? he asked hesitantly, his eyes going between the two. He was frozen in place, his tail now still by his hocks. He had no idea what to do. Lick their wounds? Find a healer? He wasn't sure if anyone from his group knew medicine, but it wouldn't hurt to ask. For now, he simply stood there.

Words, cool and and level despite his fatigue, rippled from the cavalier behind her, damningly evident. In her aghast manner, Aure might’ve sworn at him— instead, though, she hastened to the setting where she’d left them last. Had been just about to kneel down, scent, when another voice, masculine, tentative, broke the terse silence: ‘Are you two... okay?’

Another phrase of evidence, but an enquiry; one that the silver whirled about at, shivering, eyes still unseeing, “N-no. No. My children have gone—” are gone, for I was harebrained, again! Always again! “A guard, I left them with someone to guard them,” — Ești idiotule! — “when I went to protect them. They must have... they... green eyes, grey eyes, I—“

Aure could feel her descent into a hen’s hysterics in hindsight; a parent’s endless, resentful regret; and it was all she could do to draw in a rattling, steadying breath  (barely so)  and look upon this sorrel newcomer with an uneasy gaze. “You wouldn’t have seen them, by any chance? ...What might your name be?” Her ribs remained untended, unfelt.

I did try to restrain myself from hopping in but..here we are aha

She is not often in the habit of trailing after her recruits - preferring to let them come and go with privacy - but it's the absence of Lokie by Connor that gives her pause as her gaze slides over their small group. Dusk is oncoming and it's rare to see one half of the best-bud duo at anytime, let alone when they're settling in to sleep for the night. 

Concern was prevalent, though she reminded herself that Lokie was a man grown and had likely only wandered away to explore or something of the like. Still, she mills restlessly on the fringes until at last she must concede to this matronly instinct and slip away with a discreet excuse - no need to rally a search party if her worries were truly unfounded. 

Twilight would find her tracking east, a shadow amongst shadows in the gloom of the darkening forests. The corvid couldn't be sure how much time had passed before she pulled herself over the Plateau's terrace but the scent had grown strong - he was here, somewhere. 

Hesitantly, but with squared shoulders as if to defy the nerves that sparked her, the shadow loped through the forest - drawn by the sounds of voices and cries as a new flame of apprehension flickered to life in her heart. 

The sight that met her was a confusing one at best - made most perplexing by the fact that she recognized everyone present but had never actually imagined them all gathered together into such a trio. It's a distraught Aurë that draws the dark nymph from the trees, fresh concern pooling in her gaze. 

She sensed that the woman was distraught as she halted nearby, on top of being injured she was hysterical, in tears. 

Rhælla's gaze slid from Lokie - brow rumpling worriedly as he could be a bit zealous in his friendliness and she wasn't sure how well that would go over right now - to Rosencrantz whom she eyed with an unreadable expression, somewhere between confusion and agitation. 

At last, her gaze flitted to the broken swan she had once mentored. "Aurë?"

Smoothly his gaze swept to the familiar face that joined. A face he had seen following the princess, in that group that he would come and go in as of late, uncertain of his position or desire to stay and familiarize himself. He had no name to the face, just recognition. Expressionless, he remained still as only his one eye returned to the frantic woman who cried out for what she had clarified, to be her children. 

Within the knight, his heart pulsated, to think that a mother was away from her children after such an ordeal, unsure of their location, the presence they were in and what their fate may be. But her panic would not do anyone any good. He needed her to calm down, to exhaust herself before he would speak out with any type of logic he could muster. 

While she questioned the other male, another familiar face came trotting in. The dark woman that had previously come into thought. She must have followed the grey male, curious of his whereabouts. In a sigh, he figured this would take a while. Fatigued, slowly he lowered himself to the ground, careful with his flank wound to ensure that it was facing skyward rather than mingling with the dirt. Lazily stretched out on the ground, he clearly got himself comfortable.

They'll figure a plan out, he'll just wait.

The female was frantic, looking for her pups, it turned out, who were left with a guard. Lokie hadn't scented anyone else nearby, but then again, the scent of blood was so strong, he could have missed it. Where did you leave them? he asked, thinking he could go and check. My name is Lokie, he added. He was unusually calm, but he understood that the situation did not call for his overeagerness. It would only make thing worse.

Rhaella showed up, and he gave a short wag of his tail to her, thankful there was someone else here to help. It turned out that she knew the female. Lokie would wait in silence for some direction as to what he should do. Motion from the male had his eyes going to him. The male didn't seem too concerned with the conversation, but Lokie figured he might be in too much pain to care. He simply laid down, seemingly okay with the strangers in the area. He must have understood that Lokie and Rhaella weren't here to do them more harm.

if this campus tomorrow doesn’t have free wifi, just assume that this is my last post.. so i’ll allow minor pp of healing/resting
(sorry for this being anticlimactic)

As her ivory comrade chose then and there to take respite, her eyes were drawn to the male named Lokie, “I left them o’er yonder,” the herbalist started, canting her chin further in the hintersbound direction she’d been hastening towards. “They... they must have ran off, while...” And in the pause that followed, therein appeared the star-flecked Rhælla; a once-mentor, but an appeasing sight to her blood-tinted nerves all the same.

In the end, her figure quivered with more fatigue than she could manage, and Aurëwen soon let herself be at the mercy of Lokie’s attentions to her harms ...but not before she directed him to seeing to Rosencrantz, first. It was only fair in her mind, seeing as she’d practically dragged his self — all of them — into all of this. 

Before they nested for the night, she’d tell them of her family, her travels... with a fearless, exhausted care, before that same fatigue eventually pulled her asunder into its depthless, dark embrace.

The situation soon unfolded itself, the imagery of lost pups enough to pluck her womanly heartstrings with a panicked chord. Other concerns pressed, however, in particular the state of the two pallid wolves before her. 

Rhælla would pass forward, silently embedding herself in the scene with the determination of a assistant that would not be turned away. A gentle nudge turned Lokie back towards Aurë and a soft whisper assured him that she would tend to the icebear. 

Gathering a portion of her recruit's medical supplies, the nightchild drifted to Rosencrantz - unable to completely meet his gaze as she scattered her things in neat disarray and began to gently clean his wounds as he had once done for her.