Northstar Vale Wandering Child

@Andraste

It felt like she'd been running for moons; her ice-cracked paws screamed for relief upon the stone and snow, her lungs heaved and huffed and hammered against her ribs with such force that she feared they might escape.

But here she was.

Prophecy didn't know why she was in such a place, nor how she got here, all she knew is that the tangle of desperation that'd ensnared her chest since she'd fled Star's Summit had thankfully released her from its tendrils as she approached, quickly replaced by a cool wave of relief. She was meant to be here, something inside her said, and for a wolf raised on words that served nothing but confusion and conflict, her own instinct was the one thing the female thought to trust.

As her hyperventilated breaths began to smooth back into a soft, rhythmic pattern, Prophecy's ears pricked forward as she brought her muzzle upwards, three of her five senses awakening to perfect alertness as she scanned her surroundings.
Wolves.
Many, many wolves.
She could smell them; old scents, new ones, on the stone beneath her paws and on the bushes that bordered the vale before her. So, she was trespassing into another pack's territory, she thought, but why? Why had she felt the need to come here, to this foreign land, to a foreign pack with foreign wolves? Prophecy was lonely by nature, so she didn't suppose she sought them out for companionship.
...Or did she?
Perhaps that was the answer; she was meant to be here. The chocolate she-wolf was still confused, unsure of her rattled beliefs on things such as destiny, but the part of her that was so intrinsically her mother whispered in the curves of her ear - "here you are."

The next thing she knew, her muzzle was facing the sky with a soft, melodic howl. 

Here, Andraste could make this walk in her sleep —
(not that there had been any of it, this day)
— or rather, strives to coax this vale into revealing more of its own self to her and its new settlers; knows that she would like to know it like the back of her paw: each lazy elbowing of a spire-cold river, crisscrossing the southern foothills, each curve of hillock and valley. She wishes to knows the peeking clutches of pines that stand like muted sentinels in the frostbound earth; the stars that splay across the mouthless celestium at night, guiding with unending gazes. 

The earth has opened for this Court; light streams out through montane jaws; 
and when there is a summons Undómiel so attends, pearlmade claws scouring deep into thaw and loam and with a small prance, she strides from the place of her musings at a steadied lope;
eventually finds this female of amber gossamer, winter-withered lungs a tad breathless; but draws forth with cautionary calm, shorn brow canting in greeting nonetheless. Lips part:
"Wind guide you, wanderer,"  wisping, halfsight both distant and kindly.  "What has brought you to ze realm of this Court?"

It was of much astonishment to Prophecy when her call so soon brought forth a pelt of snow and moonshine from the depths of the vale. Her breath was enraptured for but a moment; that beautiful fur, whiter than the whitest snow that cascaded in sleek strands, and those eyes... Silver that outshone the moon itself.

Just how mother had described her sire...

For a moment, the soft-coated female inhaled a breath of hope that perhaps this could be why she was lead here, but it was not to be - this was a she-wolf, like herself.

The light wolf's question came on a hushed breath, calm as her own.
"Wind guide you, wanderer, what has brought you to ze realm of this Court?"

"I do not understand that which has brought me here," Prophecy answered truthfully, her voice in the quaint monotone she's so known for; "Reasoning unknown, I am meant to be. Weary paws and a wayward soul sought you out, and here I am."

She cannot help but remember the words of Eros;
that fate is a figment of mere nonexistence; that their initial meet was entirely coincidental. The stricken still cannot say if she favors either one of those ideas — though she has been one prone to think that there are some things that happen for a reason, as much as she thinks also that free will should not be ensnared to some unending force. But she listens to the pilgrim's words all the same; and wonders already what post she might hold within this realm ... should its lone star allow her passage.

"We offer purpose through ze strength of ze mind,"  the silver intones, argents roving the stardusted figure as, perhaps, a painter assessing how they might first daub brush to canvas.  "And with winter now come, we must offer protection through ze brawn of our own band. Pray tell, then: what is it that you are looking for? Longing to become?"

Judging by that which the cocoa presented next, Undómiel would take her very thoughts into Consideration. For now, though, she remains quieted once more; patient, the chill aside.

Strength of the mind...
Then perhaps that is why her heart had led her here. A mind conflicted, torn and tugged by two branches adjoined to different trees was not hard of will. Confusion and uncertainty still drip, drip, dripped into every crevice of her conscious thought; her mother right, her mother wrong - the question of whether everything ever thought to know from her moment of birth was fable or reality.

The values of this land could serve the lack her own, certainly, she thought.

"To become is what I seek, surely. A mind will be yours to carve, for I am lost within woods of conflict and deceit."

Her tone, displaying not a single emotion, danced on a soft gust of snow-touched wind that brought speckles of white and cold upon her pelt, dappling her darkened face in the stars themselves, to little reaction. Prophecy stood solid, awaiting the light-wolf's instruction, though she pondered, perhaps, she desired an introduction; that is how one greets an acquaintance, correct?
In display of untuned social experience, without proper segue the she-wolf opened her maw and spoke:

"I cannot give you a means of address, for I am unnamed. A pack beyond summoned this wolf as "prophecy," you are permissed to do also, if desired." 

 

"Prophecy,"
the word made moniker; one that brings a gentled humor to the stricken's hewn mouth; as if such had spun the female from the skies of this very eve and had spoken vessel through the silvered mantle of this wanderer. Again again again she reminisces of her own duet with the wandering cherub; of such words as fate and of gods and the nonbelief of either. Perhaps in time, then, this she-wolf would coin a new calling and cast off the old; or not, for she knew well what lie within such an endeavor; a sacrificial thing. But, now—

"I am Undómiel of this realm,"  she lent, then, thinking it evident now to finally state her station 'ere,  "and ze carving of your mind is entirely your own. Yet ... perhaps in these hinters you will find ze solace from all that has swept you from where-ever you once came."  With this, the fée rose; invited this oracle made flesh to her pallid side; and sought to indulge in each sliver of information that the Court's newest saw fit to bestow upon her readied ears.

"I am beholden to your graciousness" Prophecy replied, her voice but a hush. Undómiel; a word that had never touched her ears before this eave. Their leader, she supposed, one who carried excessively superior poise and care to that of her old Star-speaker, whom she had believed she had been born to serve. Incorrectly, the she-wolf thought with a prick of sorrow, for she was now so far from her summit that it'd be impossible to write whatever destiny her mother had written into her now.
"This mind is mine for carving..."
Only one other wolf had said similar, and the bafflement had not left the cream-and-white female - if she were not who her mother moulded her to be, then what?
For once she had danced with the idea of breaking from her rose-thorned cage;
And then the moon dyed red.

With a delicate dip of her head, Prophecy finally stepped from the vigil in which she had stood since her arrival, her soft- silent paws disturbing not a rock nor pebble as she followed behind the moon-coated she-wolf at a distant pace. Her viper-green eyes drew themselves to the sky, blinking with such lightness as flakes of snow tickled her obsidian lashes. A new moon with new snow...

A new Prophecy.