Northstar Vale & prayer-pale stars that pass the drowsing-incensed hymns

@Panther!
Dated for 8/23

In the humming place with frogsong and their lotuses, beneath the gloaming’s gouache moon and cotton clouds and gold-hot stars, the strider sought to forage through the ferns. It seemed that no matter where she settle, Aurëwen was wont to avoid society as she did mirrors — more than ever, she could not help to be away— yet she could not elude her mourning familiar.

So, as was his wont, he had winged after her, and settled into the plush hollow between spire shoulders; the silver had remained patient with the pinpricking of Aegelius along her fine, fair back whenever she’d halted or knelt to study. But as her steps meld into the summer waters, her dove parts from her to favor the deepening eve as she murmurs her way through pads, through fronds.

Something tells her no, but it seems a silly protestation, and so her step becomes more sure. She did not fear another encounter with the acclaimed wanheda; and knew that the grey warden had flown steadfastly into the riverland’s ranks. There was no fear, here: only a weightless, heady lucidity within her. She has let herself list within the labyrinth of her mind.

Like a hundred hesitant lovers, trendils whisper phantom down that fine, fair back and over waxen, narrow hips. The druid remained there, wanting them all, as these waters mouthed at scarred ribs and at the cinching within her belly; cradled her up to her elbows, lingering just as she.

The witching hour is left aghast by her presence, but she is here; and from her throat issues an airy beckoning; a siren’s sigh, for whoever may arrive at her haunt, come to drown within her.

the witching hour settles upon the velvet shadows of night, dotted with winking starlight and sweet moonbeams and panther feels a dull thrum in his skull. a buzzing ...of something locked away so tight and struggling so very hard to claw it's way free. he is restless. taken from the creek's claim without a backward glimpse. he should feel bad ...but there is no guilt to be found within chest nor head. only the feeling that he is seeking something without any clue of what it is he seeks. it feels like the sort of treasure hunt that would always leave the seeker empty-pawed.

a call, like that of a siren's song rises through the air; and like a man helpless to the myth he rises from his haunches and seeks out the source of the song, plunging into the darkened depths of the vale's woods. he keeps going, letting restless paws carry him deeper, deeper, deeper ...until at last he found her. a moonbeam given corporeal form.

something in his mind tugs, clawing at him with the same restlessness as before; alas to the same result. so, as etiquette demands of him he offers her a low chuff to announce his presence as his steps slow to a cease a few feet from her.

She'd dreamt of him;
intermittently and in the moons she'd been forsaken of another, mothering those who remained. For though she hadn’t truly loved all those moons and might never know what true love was, his face had been a shifting shadow; met her as a sapphire specter, and the memory of the wry wit and weight of him against her own and upon her had still yet to be lost from her. As the moons and her melancholy and her tethers to those who grounded her had waned, airgetlám could only find solace — nevermind suspsense — in her dreams.

And now she waded towards that enlivened dream through the pondwaters, materialized from the gloaming before her very half-sight.

Aurëwen neared without qualm, yet with all hushed languidity; wanted to kiss the marring she’s never seen before from his brow; and a thought flit about within her absent head how there seemed to be some routine of her longing for males with riddled throats. But it left her adoring mind in the same half-beat it took to sigh; to pass her crown delicately against that persian’s breast; to bed her scarred cheek upon the gnarl of blue shoulder. The silver's fangs are a preening phantasm through the plush tufts found there.

Breath a private, murmured wisp of a name he'd once proferred to her, dreaded and delicious: "Wintersbane."  A gleaming, boreal smile lune'd beneath the blemishes, and when she wound her fair throat up his dark chest, bliss and humming, it was not only with longing, not simply a search for sensuality.

Though she had oft yenned for him in her slumbering reveries, she had dearly missed her devillish gallant. 

the pale siren draws nearer and nearer, her gaze lingering on the scars that mar his face, his neck but does not show fear. if anything she exhibits something very akin to recognition. she breathes a name wintersbane upon the velveteen night and panther gives a small, bird-like cant of his head. wintersbane. he gets the distinct feeling that he's meant to respond to it, to respond to her but all he can do it stand statue-esque as she comes nearer still and preens him. definitely not the touch of strangers. to ruin this moment that is not entirely unwelcome to panther seems terribly cruel ...and he shrouds himself in silence, weighing whether it is more cruel to allow her to believe he is this wintersbane or to rip away that façade?

and then he speaks, smokey tones rasping and gravel lined, you have the wrong man. better to speak the truth now then take advantage, he thinks, then to allow her the illusion of wintersbane when he, panther, is not the one she seeks.

have Not Slept yet please forgive this rambly thing

“I have already had ze wrong male. You were not him.”
And never again would she allow such a poor, past, personal choice define each hour of the hurt in her heart; of a litter and her first which she should have never given. Not ever again.

Wintersbane’s — she, insufferably adamant as ever — admonishment only seemed to provoke the silver, and she turned to presse her scarred cheek into that shoulder, looking over her own and up to him. Half-sight glinted into the glacial face more rented than her own,  “You called me ‘kunnhehku,’ then,”  a vulpine’s mischief curls at tissuey lips as she turned from him, now,  “and you pleaded for me.”   Airgetlám meanders past, pressing her pondsodden ribs to the blue shoulder ... before she nips at the root of plumey tail meeting the hold of twilit hips with elfin deviltry. 

“I would think you would remember my own name, too. Alas, I ...”  humming, now, to his other side; simpering as a chesire queen might.  “I am afraid that I wouldn’t know what to plead in yours, this time.”