Hushed Willows I can sense you there, like a friend I've always known.

For @Teya.

Permission was granted to Sundance so that he may roam through the Hushed Willows freely, and in exchange he vowed to commit himself to its court. There was some discomfort in doing so, naturally. He'd only ever known this territory to be the sacred land where the wolves of Elysium made its home, so to pledge himself as a faerie seemed... wrong. It was far from an insult to his family that strangers had taken the weeping forest as their own for his mothers' haven welcomed all, yet Sundance couldn't quite shake the weight of his uncertainty.

He did not make his way at once to the area of his family's whelping burrow to think on more peaceful, easy times. He did not trail through the trees in search of Olive's beloved garden, nor did he look for the place where Ariel and Lily sacrificed their own lives in exchange for those of their pack-mates. Instead, the druid sought a more private place among the caves where he and his brothers had played as cubs - where he might find a space of his own to meditate for a while.

He remembered the sound of running water there, how it always aided in soothing his more troubled mind. It drew the silver close like a moth to flame and, as he crossed the threshold into the damp, dark caves at the base of the guardian spear, Sundance breathed deep the scents of his past. A platinum lobe twitched at the echo of his own claws that clacked against slick rock beneath his feet and, deep within the cavern, he settled by the crystal pools where he could allow himself an opportunity to ease his wearied thoughts.

teya slunk about, exploring the edges of the claim. eventually she would need to return to the empire, but the court of faes appealed to her, with its deep, rich shadows, and hallowed loan.
silently, the girl made her way to the stone networking, exploring gingerly the myriad scents circulating in the area. all courtiers, and herself.
out of place as usual.
a little frown knit her rust-orange brow as she ducked her head beneath the lip of one such, wandering down a corridor as the light dimmed behind her. with the world outside fading into a brief awareness, teya directed her attention toward the silverwhite glow of another, and ducked breathlessly behind an outcropping in a desperate bid not to be seen.

He breathed in deep, exhaled heavily. Listened quietly to the distant rush of a waterfall deep within the caverns, the nearby trickle of crystal fluid as it filtered through stone. Sundance let his muscles slacken and he canted his alabaster muzzle upward to better free his airway. Pale eyes fluttered closed, allowing him to submerge himself fully into a search for peace.

Stop, said the whispered voice against the tufted fur at the base of his ear, which twitched at the breath of a frosted breeze that swept through the hollow from behind. Sundance blinked over a slim shoulder, searched the darkness with his frosted stare as the natural discomfort of being watched took residence among his already frayed nerves. You are not alone.

"You don't have to hide," the druid called out softly, confident that danger would not come for him so soon following his return to Elysium's sacred land. If his stalker meant him any harm, surely she'd have done so with his back presented.

a voice. gentle. compelling. teya peeked 'round the edge of the rock, widewater eyes taking in the sight of the man who had half-turned. he reminded her of lumiya a great deal; they both wore lovely robes, though his glowed with a collected light.
shyly teya stole from her hiding-place, creeping closer on small, hesitant paws. quietly she looked toward the pool of moonwater, shifting carefully to its edge, and not too near the stranger.
she was not sure how yet to feel about men: teya glanced between the surface of the illuminated well and then back toward the fine proud muzzle of the flaxen faery.

He watched, waited with utmost patience, and his smile bloomed as the stranger revealed herself. She was a lovely thing: fawn-like with wide eyes, and a pelage made of rusted shades. Sundance welcomed her closer with an inviting sweep of his snow-capped tail.

She moved, careful on dainty paws, and in an effort to encourage her comfort around him, Sundance turned his face away. Powder blue eyes settled on the still surface of the faerie pool before him, inched a paw forward just enough to cause a ripple at its edge with his toe. Gaze swept over each shift, each tiny wave, and he sighed.

"My brothers and I loved coming here," he told his silent shadow, a heather lobe canted smoothly in her direction should she wish to respond, "when we were little. Our parents never really approved." Fearful of losing their small children in the network beneath the mountains, undoubtedly. Sundance remembered his mother's gentle warning, exhaled softly, and how he and his siblings had chose to disregard it. "But we were drawn to the magic here. Can you feel it?"

he was speaking to her, teya realized with a start. the movement of the water had held her attention; enthralled, the voicestruck girl was hard-pressed to pull herself away. but he was talking, there were words formed in his mouth, and teya listened, bringing her sunset-grey muzzle upward to regard the silvermade man.
brothers. parents. magick. 
teya peered upward at the dome of the cavern, at how the light from outside did not reach her, and yet it was not dark. there was a peace around the ivory denizen of the court. how she wished it for her own, though even teya could be relied upon for less nonsense these days.
"magick," she repeated, remembering the gloss of power that had appeared to follow lumiya. "yes." the blue of her stillstream gaze flickered toward the snowmoon, then back toward the pool.

In a featherlight voice, she repeated the word - magick. Sundance felt an excited stirring in his chest at her acknowledgement of the energy that surrounded them within that illuminated cavern, a contentment to know that he was not alone in his perception.

The druid lifted his crown, turned it again to point his muzzle curiously toward the sunset femme. Sundance watched for a quiet moment as she gazed downward toward the fading rippling of water at his alabaster paws, and offered a thin smile. "I'm Sundance," he offered in introduction, platinum lobes keen to hear her own.

sundance. two words, both she knew, though initially her mind shied away from their connection. sun, and she saw the glimmer of him again in the stone house, as if he had carried the light down to warm them both.
dance. fluid movements, kind eyes of pale cornflower. teya fidgeted a moment. all she had met had been very kind, but her impediments bumped the girl up against walls that were gentle and insurmountable.
her throat bobbed again. "teya." no frenzied tacking-on of a surname she did not even understand. "sundance."

She seemed anxious still, and for all of Sundance's efforts to soothe any uncertainty, he felt his own begin to pool in the pit of his abdomen. It remained there, threatening to spread through his bloodstream like a sickness, but the druid was swift to remind himself of his purpose there within the caverns.

He had come here to seek peace, to muse over times that were kinder to him. Attempt to connect with spirits of those who'd loved him most.

Another day, perhaps.

Sundance twitched a whisker in thought as the sunset fae shared with him her own calling - Teya. A simple moniker, he felt, but pretty. He did not know if it held any grand meaning in another tongue, but it suited her face. He smiled in quiet encouragement, and nodded as she repeated his own name.

"Are you new among the faeries here, Teya?"

"not faery," teya answered. she had finally quelled the edges of the fear that threatened to clutch at her always, battened down the sensation of it. and in that moment she had lifted herself, stolen closer to sundance as he asked after her origins.
settled alongside the soft-robed man at the edge of the moonpools, teya looked down into the surface. "from empire." had she ever spoken so much? "reiko land, large. beautiful." the reneian wolves also, haughty, lovely creatures, all unlike the shrinking violet that was teya.
"want to stay here," the girl murmured suddenly, eyes lifting back to the cloudblue of sundance's gaze. did he think it possible? would he continue to be gentle with her hesitance? and why, when others had not?

Teya declared herself as a creature from someplace beyond the court, which was a curious thing. Outsiders among the willows was not unusual during his time as a princeling of Elysium, which played it's part in the Teekon as a sanctuary to all who needed it. Sundance, unphased in the manner expected of his species, felt only an interest to learn more of the empire from which the wolfess hailed.

The silver Shakti averted his soft eyes as Teya did, lowered them to linger on the moon pool before him. His ear pricked in surprise at what the sunset fae told him: instead of returning to her home, she wanted to stay. Sundance looked for the reflection of her cornflower stare, wondered quietly why she wished to uproot herself, but dared not ask. Her reasons were her own, and he did not wish to further heighten her anxiety by questioning such decisions.

"This land has a way of captivating us," a breath of a laugh then, and a smile as he regarded his own pale face on the water's surface. "I have seen none other quite like it in my lifetime."

"in lumiya," teya remarked. "she is this land." that glissade would not be forgotten; how could she change the glitter in her breast at the memory of the soft-eyed faery queen. and her claim was rich, expansive beneath the stand of willows. it engendered a feeling of safety in the sprite's chest. 
as did sundance, somehow. the words gummed in teya's mouth, but her gaze was clearer now, steady with interest. "you long live here?" where had he come from, and was the territory as grand as the empire?

Wanna fade here?  :)

She spoke fondly if Lumiya, shared how the magic of their forest extended to her as well, and Sundance felt inclined to agree. Though he knew very little of their Faerie Queen, she had shown him nothing but kindness on his arrival and he believed her soul to be pure. She belonged to their willow grove much in the same way he did.

"I've been gone a while," the druid shared, sadness in his heart to reflect on the way in which he'd been torn from the land and his family who called it home. His mind wandered briefly to absent Dorea, how she took with her some irreplaceable part of him, but he cast the image of her lovely face from his thoughts. Now was not the time to dwell on the pain she'd left in her absence. "But I am here to stay for as long as the forest will have me."

yiss <3

there was some seed of acceptance in sundance's manner that compelled peace in teya. she listened raptly as he spoke, though her eyes had turned back to the moon-pool before them. such an odd and ethereal place. 
"i stay too," she declared, in a tone that lacked true firmness but hung between she and the starlight man all the same.
with sundance she would remain until he stirred and moved from the cavern, lulled by the quietude of the place and the calm of himself.