The Wall you should have forgotten my name the day you heard it

all welcome to this mess but! squawks 4 @Aningan

This was delicious;
the taste of her own heart was delectable.

It is with parted lips and sweet sighs that she holds herself o'er the heights;
but there is no fear in the doling out of these euphoric eccentrics; not when, for only a few heartbeats, she had held part of an empire in her very fangs; had laved taunts and tongue over it, considered it, and promptly turned from it for she found it wanting and it was not enough for her in both the Lair and eves past. No more would she be pitied by all that she could not hold;
no more would she be defined by those she could not ever be promised to  —  and yet this day she was of a halfwoken mind that is bleak and bleary and does away the dead thing in her breast with smiles too full of teeth and a throat that has caught the chords in myriad and changeling pitch since;
pearlmade claws scythe devious upon crag as Andraste wavers upon stone's edge, fevered and faraway;
and it is only the incense of another so near that draws her from the madness of these flirtations with that dark harvester.

She has dined so much with death;
for the danger was ever so divine.

The earth’s last rumble was weeks ago, not a single sound of anger shaking the ground since. There was a growing sense of comfort that filled him as this dawned on him, encouraging the young leader to investigate further into their surroundings; the plains that surrounded them received his attention already, yet the mountain that shielded them from the north was yet to be explored. He eyed it carefully each day, curious but hesitant—was he capable of hiking across the ridges? His time at the glacier was months ago and, even then, the terrain there was nothing like the crags of the range. But his curiosity continued to grow to the point where it could not so easily be ignored, and he soon found himself searching the mountainside for an access point.

Trekking up the mountain was no easy feat for the male, as he was unaccustomed to doing so. It was a course of trial and error as he worked to figure out how best to climb the rocky paths, although reaching those peaks provided him with nothing short of a heart attack as he spied another as pale as himself at taunting heights; it was danger she danced with, on narrowed paths whose integrity he questioned. His own legs stiffened with each movement she made, eyes wide and staring—

—“ÂnnitailiKattagit!” he called out, voice hardly registering in his head; he didn’t think to speak, the sounds that escaped his lips acting on their own accord. “Don’t fall!” That she might better grasp the dangers of this land, accustomed to the ridges the mountain had to offer, never quite reached him. The image of another wolf in what he perceived to be danger covered every inch of his mind instead, not letting a single other thought come to light.

If you are light enough for it to carry you away ...then I don't know why it does not—
and it is the fragment of mem'ry that clangs bellish within Andraste's head that too brings her from the brink of dallying ridiculous with the dramatic thought of death; but then! through the blustery winter winds is that clear and clicking language of her argent's pearl, and for several bewildered, absent heartbeats the starkindler cannot fathom why-ever Kukutux would fly after her to such heights as these—!
—and a caw of wry laughter wings through this cloud giant's beseechment  (Don't fall!)  and the stricken longs to squawk some other thing of how she should have worshipped such a warning from the moment she left her mother's body.

Staggering;
he is as behemothic as a mountain and just as stout; the fée wonders how well she might float upon the fog of his very frame, or how warm one must be within all that plush hide. She wants to reach and to know for herself if he is as all-enveloping as he looks; to press her snout against his shoulder and feel for her own sanity whether he is truly fact or figment, so caught up in the nimbus with she.

But she only squints and stares and muses if he truly wishes to trifle so with her, that he would disturb her so—!

"And I am supposing that you would catch me?"

Pleasantly and wonderfully so, his calls did not strike her with an ounce of surprise; her footing seemingly remained sound, the upward jolt of her body that he worried about, absent. Unaware of the breath he held in, it came as a brief shock when he relaxed and it was freed from his lungs; the tension in his muscles gradually released, allowing him to move more comfortably over the rough terrain—yet, her comment soon had that same tension taking hold of him all over again.

Freezing mid-step, Aningan struggled to find his voice—“Âtsuk”—no, that wasn’t right. Clenching his jaw, he tried to slow the whirlwind of thoughts rushing through his head, seeking and settling for the language he knew all might understand. “I don’t know if I could,” he admitted. “Wouldn’t it be better to avoid the fall?” Rather than trust in him to catch her—he didn’t know if he could, the thought of missing panic-inducing—would removing herself from danger’s reach not be the simpler of options?

"If only it was so easily avoidable, no?"
Lune guise settled into something faraway, eyeing the drop into the belly of the earth and wondering how many had precisely survived their slip-of-claw into yonder plateau. Wonders if her limping heart would still beat, if she had this frostmade male cleave her breast and let it take to air; wonders if she would step off and plummet after it. Though the well-slept segments of Andraste cannot help but hang head at such theatric thought this daybreak, the unrested remnants of her choose to ignore such self-criticism. And so she does;
halfsights lifting once more to alight now upon this ivory reckoning before her; argents upon the wreathings of breath in these thin and rimeful heights. Eventually, in several heartbeats’ time, the stricken eases towards him; neverminding the great stature of who-ever this is  —  not when the elements held the significance of their very evident insignificance in this world, all its endless thrummings.

"If you doubt yourself from ze very beginning,"  the fée wisps, eyes empty and entreating,  "then there is no use in mastering a fear that you cannot bring yourself to face. Should we not test your theory?" 

He certainly seemed nimble enough;
but perhaps it was another mere trick of the famine.

Aningan could do little more than watch her move, steps taken towards him that made him wonder: what did she intend to do? And, in the same breath: what would his father do? The woman pointed out his doubt—doubt that he would gladly swallow whole, should he ever possess the ability to do so. But as things were, he could not so easily rid himself of that doubt; it kept him grounded, prevented him from making any risky mistakes there on the mountain—a mistake that could easily result in death, should he not exercise caution.

A question—

“Auka, auka, auka,” he insisted, eyes widening and heart threatening to cease its beating. A foolish boy, seeking only to help—Aningan’s body lurched forward, nails digging deep grooves into the mountain’s face as he pushed himself further up, closer to the phantom, eager to reach her before the test could begin.

Falling must not be so different, she thinks,never-bleary, from drowning;
there is the initial descent, and whether the thrashing is of your figure’s own desperate machinations or the elements’ tousling is of no true concern, at that point; and if air and water have glut themselves within your lungs, then surely it has done away with one’s chords; thus, no screams to be had, and no breath to be taken. Your mind leaves you, then, within a dark that ushers all of yourself from yourself before your body hits the earth that is the root of the mountain or the chamber of the loch.

And here  —  where it is so very high to her heavens, as it had been in the haven of her foremothers, Andraste cannot resist the lull of longing, lashes veiling  —  rocked fathomless to near slumber that had so eluded her for hours past;

Snowshoe paws; void winter air;
stupid and spent and sleepless—!

The shore, a glacier, the plains—to reach her would have been done with ease, familiarity ingrained in each step taken. But the mountains were a new realm, untravelled and uneasy; even the most heedful of wolves could have their legs swiftly swiped from beneath them, overturned by preciously placed pieces of earth. By this, he was slowed, physically, but reflexes set ablaze; burning with overwhelming intensity, a hyper-focus wave struck him, senses locked onto his target—

—moving, slipping, falling.

Driven by forces he could not place—call it instincts, perhaps—the bear turned sideways and braced himself where he felt most sure-footed. And as the pallid wisp sought to steal past him, Aningan struck forth with parted jaws, akin to a cobra, and plucked her from her descent; a bear saving a bird, taking hold of her scruff and leaning back, stiffened legs held out before him to prevent himself from being yanked down.

But even settling her back on solid ground, he could not free her from his grasp; adrenaline coursed through his veins, the thrumming of his own heart the only thing he could hear. Trembling—be it relief or fear, he could not tell—he was lost to the moment, there but absent, replaying the event in his head; he feared letting her go, feared that doing so would cast them back to moments ago, her fall on repeat in his head.

"O—"
Startled from insomnolence when she had slipped through the very sunlight; heart of fluttering things that elbowed deep the bone of her breast. But now again, sat upon solid stone with her ruff remained in the stronghold of her salvager, her own chords are weak, and worn; withered and whittled and weighed by tissued lips heavy and dumb with the half-hypnagogic impression of it all. Perhaps, hours from this, would the script of this day come to lie heavy upon her meandering mind. For now:
"... You came."

To know now she meant more than dust—
lashes lie lethargic amber upon cold cheeks; he is warm, and not at all figment, and the salt of her selfish sorrows pressed into pale breast; so thus the fairylight is gladdened to be here, with this cloud giant, at this viaduct of all things heavenward.

Silence broken by a voice, snapping him back to reality and reminding him where he was—who he was with, what he was doing. Assuring her paws be firmly planted to the ground, Aningan eased up on his hold and then released her entirely, freeing the woman from his jaws, after which he nervously drew his tongue across his lips. “Âha…” he uttered in breathless tones. It was hard to believe what just happened, even though her being there before him now confirmed that it was not a dream; she fell and he caught her, something he doubted could ever be recreated, at least not without error and several missed bodies.

“You are—” he croaked, falling silent thereafter. The Inuk drew in a deep breath, releasing it slowly and carefully, attempting to calm his nerves. “Are you alright?” Basic words for an advanced occurrence, a sudden inability to create anything more insightful overcoming him; he could be content with the barest of questions, dependant on her response. All he needed to hear was that she was alright.

Her rubied crown has come to reat upon the plush breadth that the brinewolf's chest has to offer; hearing his heart beating beneath her mouth and letting such stability soothe her. Mothwing ears tucked away into disheveled ruff; and when he enquires after her wellness, the rumbling tones threaten to lull her to slumber, nevermind at these very heights. ... But Andraste wills her shorn lips to move; if only to keep herself from swaying from him; if only to lie any of his murmuring doubts to some rest:  "Would you rather I lie to you, also?"

She does not know how she means them  —  or how their recipient will find them. Her despondent features are presented to him, however; heavy-lashed and sights more than likely a tad too unfocused for his own peace of mind. Without another word at the present, Andraste sighs into the nearness of who-ever her savior is dubbed and veils her fatigued eyes.

A new degree of warmth radiated from where her head was placed, the touch stilling him to his very core; he could recall none being as near to him as the woman was, not even those he dared to consider family. Uncertainty stiffened his muscles, gaze downcast and seeking to settle on her frame; there was little to be seen from her current position, tucked against him so close. Gradually, he relaxed—although but a stranger, he could not tear himself away after her exposure to such a frightful event.

She spoke—a question of her own, quieted by the breeze. And Aningan answered: “No.”

A lie, however small, was a lie all the same; he could not in good conscious request that of her, especially not when doing so might lead them down another path of unwritten chaos. “Rest, then,” he offered, relief flooding over into a sigh that tumbled out with her own. A stranger, true to the word in every form, yet he remained; body looming over, providing a barrier between the wintry winds and her own.

And rest she did;
letting the frostmade furs of them meld in the quieted lulls whenever the blustery winds diminished enough for the fée to feel the beat of the crestwolf's heart beneath shorn cheek; and had they not been wavering in such a manner amongst the top of the world  (or, halfway, at least)  the musiker's Mondmädchen might have simply crescented into the looming stature of the male before her; might have kept herself against the warmth of him and surrendered to some unending slumber;
as it were, however, Andraste remained mute, and so settled with the soft scything of fangs throughout the plush thatch of ivory-laden breast; a healing and humming thing; a half-absent and heavy-lidded thing; a hopeless and hesitant thing.

For now, she is content to remain such a stranger  —  as oft she prefers. Nameless, mouthless, eyeless and without such things as trivial as rank and circumstance to burden all that she would like to feel and to know.

Teeth grazed through the fur of his chest, welcoming a chill that then raced down his spine; he was unsure what she was doing and attempted to steal a glance, although that provided not a single answer. He did not know this woman that rested against him, this woman that he took a chance and plucked from the sky—she was an unknown entity, a phantom of the mountain with a touch just as chilling. He stiffened beneath her touch as uncertainty crawled through his body, settling, then, within the forefront of his mind. What more was he to do, for a phantom brought to life?

“Who are you?” he murmured, curiosity gnawing at him. “Do you have a home?” Was there anyone out there searching for her, wondering how high she may have climbed?

"Yes,"  the stricken murmurs, arching from the behemoth of a male to peer into the frostspun features with their brown, rabbitsoft eyes.  "But it is not homeward that I wish to go."  Home had been two that she did not wish to mull over; to fester within regret and the reality that would not ever be; the lie of her heart, and all that she had believed it beat for. No  -  this willowswisp did not wish to go home, did not wish to return to those very places where snide remark had turned to ash and to salt upon her tongue and within her lung:  "I wish to go to a mountain, where thunder meets its peak. There is a cave; a world beneath our own."  It does not occur to her that she has not once given her own name. Still:  "Would you walk me there? Please?"

Broke-heart; she no longer trusted herself to be without company.

A name was not given, only the confirmation of a home in possession. And yet, it was not home that she wished to go, speaking instead of a peak he wondered if even safe to climb; not only with her, nearly having taken flight once already, but with the sky allegedly booming over the heights she wished to visit. “I don’t know…” he said, uncertain. “Is it safe for us to go there?” He could not endanger himself, nor could he allow her to endanger herself once more. If there was a place that she called home, then surely within it there were those that wished she may return to them.

“I don’t know the place you want me to walk you to,” he added, brows knitted together. A potentially dangerous place with a woman unsure of her footing, in a direction that he knew naught of. To him, it seemed a risky decision to make.

— it seemed she must, though;
no matter the sweet uncertainty of this moment's worth that the wavewarden held her in; could not help the smiling, the simpering into the porcelain breadth of him; cloudy, cottony and warm, warm, warm. Beneath the tones of his tip-toeing words is the taste of a name that neither would ever  (so she thinks)  would come to know. The salt of him, ever muted by earthsmusk, loamfell; whoever this fée is, she traces listless the stout breast, the column of throat and though she would not ever be able to reach her nose to his:
"Rest well, Rusalkan,"
whisks herself from his arms, fairylight; impling; away, away, ever awaying from the warmth of male in favor for the remnants of green green green.