The Heartwood forget you, and you, and you

The figure in the distance turned, spoke, and at once he knew that the glimmer of a ghost he saw was not his sister. Disappointment should have struck him, but he found that an emptiness welled within instead; there was little comfort in the revelation to follow. The features of him to be her were all wrong, and the emergence of a stark white figure soon detracted from it. Against the ravaged land here, she was a beacon.

He loosened from his vantage point with a roll of his shoulders, his body moving into action to close in the distance minutely. With all that went on and perhaps would yet occur, he too had a certain standoffishness to him. Even here, Dirge could not guarantee the safety found in the familiarity of the woodland, and there was no telling in who was who and where their morals aligned.

The scent of evergreens tickled at his nose however, and at least he felt one of them could be trustworthy. But the other? His gaze shifted to and from the she-wolf to the gold wolf, but he offered a thin smile in good faith.

"Seen any grouse loitering this far out?"