Blacktail Deer Plateau I'm not actually sure what a movie is anymore

43°, currently it is snowing ash and set during the day. Located in Kintla Flatlands, blacktail deer plateau | tagging: @Reyes

It took time for him to acclimate to the new "home". Even before Aristos he had never seen himself joining a pack, ever being able to feel comfortable or welcomed - and yet here he is, in a new pack after a few months of wandering around alone yet again. His timing couldn't have been any better either. The tremblings have caused the prey to scatter. Individuals getting injured or killed - he felt as if it was wise to be in a pack now with all the happenings. His chances of survival had multiplied. 

Staring out into the distance over the plateau, he wondered at the sight as he laid still on a stone. Fur tousling in the breeze as his one good eye admiring the scene while ears remained alert as they moved to any sound they caught behind and to each side of him.

The days felt longer here than at the seaside, but that made little sense as the hours were shortening in preparation for winter. It would be Reyes' first, and he had zero understanding of the changes that the world faced in the meantime. He did not know that the chilling of the air would soon freeze rain in to ice, or that the high winds that usually blustered the coastal territories were busy sweeping together dangerous clouds.

There hadn't been sun for days. Or if there had been, those clouds had blotted it out to a greyness that matched his mood. The clouds of dust had started almost as soon as they'd arrived to the plateau, making him pine for the shelter of the cove or the hollow where Scarab kept his most prized possessions — and in turn, this soured the boy's mood further, as Reyes thought about his splintered family.

He was sulking and lurking in tandem with the drifting specks, listening for rain against the sparsely wooded glen (when there was barely any sound), or watching as the plateau's more exposed sections faded with ash underfoot. Things were hazy; paler, monochromatic, and in a way more haunting, although he only saw what his gloom-tinted glasses allowed. Shuddering trees fighting the wind and a slick dark mountainside gathering ruin.

Beyond the ledge he had rooted himself, drifting within the almost-snow, there was a large white wolf he had never seen before. He watched them next, but said nothing.

Watching the ash fall over the horizon was haunting. It almost reminded him of winter, of the snow, but it lacked that familiar chill he was fond of. It gently floated down in a dance so calm, it was eerie. He knew such an event would do the land harm in the long run and yearned for it to end. He even hated how it felt on his fur, on his skin as it sunk between the hairs and dusted his flesh. 

The feeling of being watched overtook him as he turned only his head to meet the gaze of a fiery young lad who had his attention on the paladin. No words were exchanged as he stared back, unsure of what to say, should he even speak. It had been a long time since he had spent any time with children before, and even within that span his time with them was short. 

So instead of trying to figure something out, perhaps how to talk to the kid, entertain him, or maybe even get to know him. Rosencrantz chose to just stare back silently, his eye having nothing other than a bland expression as it lacked anything of substance behind its glow.

The stranger was going about his business, probably doing a patrol of the empty territory. Reyes wondered about who he was, where he'd come from — and most importantly, how he kept himself fed and healthy. If he was a new addition to their collective, who the hell thought that was a good idea? The guy was huge; he could eat them out of house and home if he put his mind to it, especially considering the disadvantages the food shortage was presenting. The rest of them were accustomed to fish-heavy diets and could subsist well enough on less than what the average wolf consumed, but then there was this guy, muscle-bound and clearly not designed for the coast.

Reyes continued to study the way they moved, looking utterly bored until the stranger's attention drifted to the trees, and then to him. They locked eyes for a moment or two; a thin aura of disdain began to seep from Reyes, the corners of his mouth curling slightly as he frowned, though there was no malice in the expression. Just an intense lethargy, a disinterest, and then he said the first thing that popped in to his head: Who the fuck are you? The emphasis wasn't in his words, though. Almost as if there were an undercurrent within them that said, as if I should care.

Well, it seemed his first interaction with the boy would not go all that smoothly. Shocker. The way the boy studied him was offputting. The boy was strange and the frown that followed their gazes meeting just made the man sigh. Rosencrantz Mortensen. The way the name sluggishly rolled off his tongue spoke levels of how eagerly he wanted to introduce himself to such a vulgar brat. 

With a frown, he continued to watch the boy, but his gaze morphed into a glare. His eye was cold and distant as he eyed the kid from the distance between them. Who are you? He turned the question onto the boy, unimpressed and clearly hoping the kid would lose interest soon and leave him be. Perhaps this is why he would never wind up with children of his own. Not because he lacked a woman who he would trust as a mate, or willing to take his seed - but because children were such a headache to deal with.

The name he'd collected from the man meant little to him. It was long and heavy-winded, as he'd anticipate from someone esteemed maybe or, perhaps a figure in a fantastical story. It didn't sound real. But then Reyes had no use for surnames and did not understand their use; it was gregarious and unneccesary in his opinion to have such a long name. But, he was scrutinizing more than usual. He was bitter, he was hurting.

When the question was turned back on him he feigned indifference, looking away from where the man stood as if he hadn't heard him. Instead of introducing himself he stated something else, his voice carrying over the rock-hewn grove to where the white wolf stood below him. Whoever said you could join us wasn't thinking. You shouldn't be here, you're not one of us.

Reyes couldn't back up his statement at all and he knew it, but that didn't prevent him from spewing his two cents. He turned his yellow eyes back upon the stranger and finally noticed that the man's face was burned on one side, missing an eye. So not only was he massive and in need of more supplies than they could handle, but he was broken too. The boy sneers from where he's settled on his belly, adding in haste: Did the quakes wreck your face?

The boy chose not to answer. The half-faced man only grew more and more impatient with the kid the longer he spent time with him. He wasn't certain if he should blame the child's parents for such a poor upbringing - or if the child was just rotten from the inside out and had no chances of becoming an adult intellectually.

Though Rose could not speak for himself as a child - in fact, he was an unruly child himself, challenging, desiring nothing more than to climb the ranks as soon as possible and be the fearsome animal just as his father was. But he was not like this. A helion with a tongue only worthy of snatching out of his mouth with a quick tug. He could only imagine that satisfying snap it would make, the beautiful silence that would follow. He could almost smile at the thought. 

The boy's toxic words were empty, they didn't sting or matter enough for him to log them away into memory. It didn't matter why the child was so venomous, Rosencrantz didn't bother to try and figure out why the boy was so sour to someone he didn't even know. Because it didn't matter. And because of that, he himself chose not to respond to such a thing. No reaction, no words. He just stared. 

Another question came his way, and this one too, Rosencrantz chose not to answer. Not because he was ashamed of the answer; but because he would not be played the fool by a bastard such as this child. What is your name. He repeated.

He insulted the man's presence, his looks — and nothing. That told the boy that the wound was likely old, or he presumed as such. Maybe that the man wasn't as vain as some others; less inclined to incite violence or anger when confronted with an obvious truth such as his injury and ugliness. Reyes did not get much of a response at all from the man. He was like a drifting chunk of ice surrounded by the eddies of false snow.

What is your name, the man repeats, firm, focused. Not entirely desirous of the answer judging by the edge to his eyes, but alas, Reyes didn't care one way or the other. He wasn't going to give him what he wanted (for no clear reason either, as Reyes was not often this barbed in his associations). He snorts softly and pointedly ignores the question.

Hm. If not the quakes, something else. He mused to himself while watching the dancing dust; it fell like rain but never in a straight line, falling in the haphazard way that a feather might, or a leaf, too light to stay the course. I used to watch these giant seals down at the beach. Bigger than you by far, and loud too, always barking at the sun as it rose. They're probably all dead now though. He imagined their bloated bodies bobbing along the coast; how many would wash up along the Sound in the coming days, and all that fetid meat left to waste in the sand. You ever see one of those?

What was the point of this conversation? He didn't really have one in mind; he was passing the time, waiting for the world to end — at least, that's how it felt right now. His family was splintering apart and he had said goodbye to home, so what was left for him but this frail moments, these amusements?

Seemed the two had reached an impasse. The boy was too stubborn to answer anything that Rosencrantz asked, no matter how simple; and Rosencrantz himself was too resolute to let a child get the better of him, to bow to the whim of a whelp who barely just weaned off of the milk of his mother's tit. 

If not the quakes then something else - the boy continued on. It was evident the boy had not seen the damage a fire could do to living flesh, the scars it left, the void it created in his face as it melted his eye with the sheer heat of it against his profile. How it took beauty away in a matter of seconds and no amount of healing would bring it back. The boy was too young, too inexperienced to ever guess and would never come to a conclusion without someone telling him... 

And that is why he withheld his answer to the pirate child. 

The boy began on a different conversation, prattling on about some kind of animal that Rosencrantz had seen before. On Wheeling Gull Isle. The fat creatures parked their carcasses on their beach - territorial as he remembered clashing with one on the beach. It took more than himself to take down the beast for sure, but he was more aware of their power than this whelp ever would.

And with that knowledge, the boy held no power over his intrigue. Instead, as the boy was talking complete drivel, Rose was already on the move. Turning his back on the boy to continue on his patrol and leave the boy to talk to himself.

Again he tried to get a rise out of the stranger, and again he was denied. That was fine. It wasn't really, but there was little that Reyes could do beyond watch as the beast turned to leave him to his chattering. He'd prefer not to be alone again even if his current company was a brooding mess of melted skin and stoicism.

When the stranger turned to leave him be, he let the man walk a few feet before he rose to his own paws. His strides were fluid; he was accustomed to hiking across loose sand and so, while the terrain was hard on his soft paw pads, his speed was not diminished at all. Reyes had spent the first few days after the family's arrival upon the plateau sulking with Nieve, tracing the paths and orienting himself; so he had that going for him to. A sense of awareness. So he slipped along after the ghostly bear of a man.

He was not quiet for long though. As soon as he was on the man's obvious trail he was prattering on again, filling the void of silence and dust. There was this one time, before the world went to shit and everything got all shakey... When I was down on the beach and the ground started to sprout little rocks. They weren't, y'know, super small or nothin', more like scallop sized --- y'know what a scallop is? Partway through the story he realized the man might've had brain damage to match the facial scar, which might have accounted for the silence and the brooding. His question was followed up without pause by a continuation.

Anyway, these scallop-sized rocks started comin' out of the sand and running to the water. Rocks can't run, right, so it probably sounds like bullshit. Turns out they were these little lizard-fish-things. Chompin' them was like chewing on a crab shell or something, softer, with more fishy meat. Weirdest afternoon of my life. Was he annoying the man yet? Well, besides the... world endin'.