Herbalists' Cache i'll pull the curtains and blinds to let the light in.
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Ooc — Stevie
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#1
All Welcome 
He was so weak. His once pristine, white pelt hung from his thin frame, yellowing and dirty from weeks of travel on his own. His limbs trembled as he walked, nearly dragging himself forward for each step. He was so tired, so hungry, and so miserable when he looked back at the unfortunate series of events that had lead him down this road.

Frost shut his eyes, pausing on the terrain to give himself a moment. He thought of his foolishness and his fear, letting the guilt and remorse wash over him for a few minutes. It was what he deserved for getting himself lost and separated from his family in the first place. He relived his recklessness in wandering away from his pack. He relived the moment the bear's roar shook his soul from his bones. He relived the chase, the river, the fall. The terror that had blinded him. The moment he'd awoken on an unfamiliar shore to look upon an unfamiliar forest, and all the unfamiliar lands he'd stumbled through since trying to find his way back home.

When he opened his eyes again, they were wet with tears. None fell--he'd lost too many over the past few weeks. Each time he thought himself numb to it, he paused to let the memories reopen the wound. Frost was not fool enough to think that to grow cold with his reality was an appropriate coping mechanism. He let the pain keep him alive, keep him going. He knew he'd hurt his family by getting himself lost. He wouldn't hurt them further by dying.

The boy was tired always, so he thought nothing of it when his legs gave out beneath him and he fell in a resigned heap on the forest floor. He blinked with dull golden eyes ahead at the winter trees, the pine needles blurring together into a mess of green, brown, and darker green before he shut them and let the world go dark.
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#2
The thin, dirty figure stretched across the ground catches her attention, a shocking and slightly nauseating sight; she'd scented another here, the fresh trail of a young wolf, but she hadn't expected to find the youth in this state. She changes course to approach him, picking carefully through the pine needles, concern coloring her expression. He's in a bad way, she can see that now, and younger than she'd initially thought. Not a small child — but not an adult, either. Certainly not old enough to be on his own, in her opinion. Hey, She calls softly, halting a few feet off in case the boy startles. You look like you could use some help. Her tone is gentle, an attempt at appealing to the boy before she takes a more assertive approach. A willing patient is always easier to deal with.

Common || Scottish Gaelic
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#3
Frost wasn't sure how long he'd been out when a soft voice roused him. His eyelids were reluctant to part, but he coaxed them open with determination and settled his gaze upon a... something. His heartbeat quickened for a moment when the form was still blurred enough to potentially be that of an enemy predator, though he made no move to save his own skin. He was simply too tired, and the moment had been fleeting as it--she came into more focus. A wolf. One with concern in its eyes.

He had no words with which to answer her. He wasn't even certain what she'd said, though one word had managed to slip into his consciousness. Help. Frost didn't lift his head, but let a frail, pitiful whimper slip through his throat.
an omnipotent society of youth
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Astraeus hears the quailing whimper through the trees. Of a child.
It would take him more than few paces to reach them, but he had the hour to himself. A gruff snort towards the sound's direction as he strode through the brush. Coming upon a quivering boy and red-cloaked mistress — the scene is all too familiar. A snarl; he steps over to the thistledown'd little one and hisses to red riding hood.


“He will not need your help, witch.”
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#5
The boy only whines in response, and Antha prepares to set off in search of something small to feed him. Unfortunately, she's interrupted — by another child of all things, this one snarling and throwing hostile words. Witch — the word startles her, her secret title passed from mother to daughter turned against her as an insult. But there's no way he could know that, so the feeling fades, and she steps forward to face him with her own hackles bristling. Leave, She commands, voice rising, thorny now. He is in a dire state, and if he does not receive care, he will die. I won't allow you to interfere.

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A shadow stepped over him. Frost felt his hackles rise instinctively, but the only thing that moved were his eyes, trailing to the strong legs that caged him up to a dark, furry chest. There was venom in the words the newcomer spoke to the other, but the boy was too tired to follow the conversation that ensued. He settled, though, in spite of the threat in the tones of the other wolves. The stranger standing over him brought some small bit of warmth in the cold, and he was content to soak it in for now as he tried to further rouse himself.
devour the stars
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Ooc — Gina
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#7
Like a ghost, he whisped forward from the shadows and the trees, pulling alongside the woman to bare teeth at the male. His course had been plotted here early this morning, before dawn had broken the chill of night, only to pick up the scent of the woman on the way here, her memory fresh in his mind. Lips pulled back, ears flat against his skull, he drove forward now to clash with the one that threatened his own, jaws agape so that he might score upon that flesh.
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The hen's egg issues for him to leave, her timbre briary;
her dress is burgundy and laced with puce, her coat of arms of calamity. 

Astraeus lets the boy take in his warmth. The eggshell porcelain of his coat, it reminds him of someone. Swallowing and matching the vixen's firm rebuke,
“I won't. I won't let him alone. The woman is willowy, a likeness to reedstalks — much like the haint that wings beside her. Esurient flames and insidious brimstone. He'd almost let the sylph do what she may while he watched, but the man solidified his belief all strangers had ebony hearts.
The male-specimen reminds him to starkly of the golden laced man who'd smashed the already fractured webs of glass that was Sagtannet, he almost wanted reach and rend, reach and rend;
instead he rolly-pollies around the winterstrike as he takes the blow to his shoulder. He soberly wishes for Mahler in the whelms of corporeal agony and mental anguish.
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An ally appears at Antha's side, the tall gold-cloaked figure she'd met under the willows. Grateful, confidence renewed, she follows the man's attack with her own. She lunges for a vicious assault on the boy's rear end, meant to drive him off more than to maim — but that doesn't mean she's holding back. There is a clear difference, in her mind, between this child and the one on the ground. One smells of pack and health, downright reeks of youthful stubbornness — and the other, her patient, is no more than a helpless victim of circumstance. The urge to protect him is what drives her forward, more than anything.

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Frost's eyes were closed when the third stranger joined them, but they snapped open when he heard the snarl and the rush of air that warned of incoming violence. The spark of adrenaline that came with his fight or flight instinct was enough to send him scrambling out of the way with a yelp. Straight ahead was the woman, and above--everywhere--were the two males. Frost's frantic eyes seized on an opening between the bodies and he darted away to escape getting tangled in the altercation that had begun.

He didn't get far. He was too weak for that. He perhaps made it only a few yards before a whim seized him. In the next moment, he felt the sting of pine needles and branches snapping against his fur as he drove into the lower branches of one of the forest's pines. He struggled into the tree's embrace until he was tucked against its trunk, brown and green arms canopied all around him. He huddled there, shivering and trying to settle his fear and bewilderment, ears trained to listen to what was happening just outside.
devour the stars
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Ooc — Gina
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Permission granted to shove Astra and say he fainted given <3

His snarl was thunder of a roiling, rolling storm, his teeth the lightning that struck, fast and wicked. The strike connected with flesh and fur but rather than tear, he only bit, a pressure applied as he would force the male back from the woman clad in reds and rouges, back from the babe he towered over (the babe that ran). His bite would retract then, instead driving into the male with solid weight and muscle to shove.

A familiar sight, a fall, a strike of skull against stone or wood. He didn't see which. Just the crumpled form of a wolf that yet breathed. Dark eyes watched as the chest of the other rose and fell, confirming his grasp on Midgardr. Go, He would command the familiar woman without looking at her. See to sa litli. This one will check on strákurinn. Mouth set in a stern line, wary of a ruse he ventured forward then, closer to the fallen wolf to make sure that he would survive the blow to his head.[/ooc][/ooc]
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#12
left behind (♩) In a dream concerning birth, death and mother figures.

Fire and brimstone often references the fate of the unfaithful;
an idiomatic expression found in holy writ. Astraeus, clay-hewn himself neither formed nor fired. His sense seem to slip through his fingers, and darkness pass thru him like an apparition — and erst he may meet Achlys with a greeting air that their meetings were primeval, figment memoirs are coaxed from the fracturing of his psyche:


Edenic; gloaming, two red-caked hands and amethyst flowers; 
a scene far too quiescent for the tragedy that was featuring in him,
back when he'd realized the passive power of sorrow and shock, goose-pimpled.


He wore the brandy-colored man's death like an albatross around his neck for many a month. And furthermore, was the day he became the word of his mother's body. He'd hung on her treacly smells and how he pushed against her breast needy for hours. But she was a living ghost who had left him bereft of validation in his existence. And that ghost wisps her silver reply in his ear, what a homely duckling.

He doesn't know what, but the twinge in his heart senses love is dead. Sighing in tenebris; laid crumpled with only his care for the world dead.
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#13
hope no one minds if I go ahead and wrap this up? :)

Frost thought himself spent as he laid trembling beneath the pine. The sound of the fighting wolves was a dull throb in his ears. He tried to listen to it so he would know when it was safe to emerge, but it slipped too easily from his grasp. He closed his eyes, expecting to once again drift into unconsciousness, but she appeared again. 

He didn't know what she said. There was encouragement and warmth in her tone, enough to rouse him and bid him to follow. He leaned on her, drew whatever strength he could from hers. He didn't know where she was taking him, but he was past caring. Instinct, or something like it, bid him to carry on, to follow. So he did, to whatever end awaited him.