Blackbeak Bluff when every thursday

I would like to put this towards his Naturalist trade! All welcome! :D

He was away from home that night. The air had cooled back down that day and the sky had cleared enough for him to capture the stars through it. Here upon the bluff the sky seemed endless, as if the earth ended here and it was nothing but stars forever. He thought of the tales that Erzulie told him. Tales of a house of sun and the tricky Anansi with his neverending deals.

He wondered if he could figure out the tales himself. See how the stars laid about and how they might make a story. Or if perhaps they hinted at anything like a compass of sorts. If one might lead him back home.

The switch to turn is emotions off had appeared suddenly and Merlin had not yet mastered to control it. For the time being he felt nothing and it simply meant one less thing for him to worry about. It was as if for the first time in months he had been able to sort out some of the messy table-top his mind by dumping a pile of documents in a shredder and not looking back. This welcome change was liberating the longer time he spent with it. It made him wonder, if the other aspects of his broken mind were also just as easy to control. He had been able to shut down the buzz of thoughts by ignoring them, but then they would well up somewhere else and flood him as a tsunami at the least appropriate moment. Leading to headaches making him miss a day or two. 

But it was an idea worth experimenting with and wasn't it best to do it in solitude, away from people? He therefore slunk away from Sappique to enjoy grass and ground beneath his feet. He was not a sea-wolf at heart. Plains were a chess-board he felt most comfortable treading at. There in the vast open space it was easy to let all thoughts come through his mind and then be taken away by the winds, until he could stand there with his eyes closed and feel as light and careless as the green grass-stalks there. One day he would become grass too. Had someone told him this before? Because this thought had a voice and it had not been his own.

Merlin did not allow himself to dwell on it too much though. He broke out of the trance and continued his nightly walk, until he found tracks of a packmate and soon saw the person itself perched on a cliff's edge in the distance and looking up at the stars or somewhere in the distance. It was hard to tell from, where he was standing. He ventured closer driven by slight curiousity, but more because of a years-old reflex, a bond that ties packmates together. He dipped his head politley in a silent greeting to the stranger and then sat down a little distance away to follow the other's gaze with his own teal eyes in order to see, what was so interesting up there.

Eadwulf had not once turned away a packmate during his time among Sapphique's people. They had all been good to him and this strange male seemed to fit the bill as well.

Silent, polite. Seated himself a respectful distance away.

It soothed any worry or frustrations he might have had otherwise. So, in a deep hum, he indulged the man's presence with words.

What do you see? Only curiosity, no judgement present in his low voice. He could spill stories from Erzulie's teaching depending on how the man answered.

"Not sure - I was trying to make sense of, what you were seeing," Merlin said with a hint of humour in his voice, even if it was a little awkward. "But..." he turned away from his packmate and back to the point in the distance he had been staring at previously. He had been asked to describe things, not give them meaning, so this should be easy. "There's a lot of stars there and a moon. And that round, shiny thingy around the moon," he pointed out to the halo encircling the celestial object. 

"What were you looking at?" he asked in return.

The same as you saw, He answered with a ghost of a smile as he turned his head to look upon the ginger man. Only for a moment before he looked back out.

I have been told that some of the stars can lead you home. Others, He tried to find one of those collection of stars that Erzulie had shown him and pointed it out now. have stories. Some silence followed to allow this man a chance to process, to respond.

Lead you home... Where was that exactly? 

Before entering this indifferent state of mind he was currently in, Merlin had been searching for the figurative home, where he would fit in and no one would ask questions of, where he came from. Lucky for him most people weren't interested in hearing long-winding origin stories, they were fine with the vague version of very little details. In the wolf world, if you went off the map, the likelihood of meeting somoene, who knew people you had known previously, was slim. Still... every time he recited his version of events with slight changes every time (depending on, which pieces of mosaic his mind pushed around and arranged differently) he had sensed that something was missing. Everyone he had met up until now had spoken of home with a warm glint of happiness and longing in their eyes and at those particular times Merlin was painfully aware that his "home" was a shell with nothing meaningful inside. He sensed the familiar feeling now, but it did not seem to matter as much as it had before. 

"What stories?" he asked, wondering, if stars too had to lie to prove a point that their existance was real and valid.

It was an easy question for him to answer, the stories fresh enough in his own mind that he could rattle them off.

Anansi, He started with slowly. He sits and weaves and if you ask him what it is he makes, he tells you he will let you know when the sun dies. A faint smile still hovered on his features. Fondness for the slyness of the story. But the sun never dies and so he never tells. He protects his secret that way.

"Is Anansi a spider?" Merlin asked, knowing no other creature alive, who would be able to weave. Immediately an image of a gigantic spider up against that starry bowl of sky came to his mind. And his long thin legs picking up at stars and dust and creating... something that he would never tell. There were less cryptic ways of saying that I don't want to say it. And then he thought that, if and when that day came, when the sun died, then... what was the point of finding out that answer?

So many puzzling thoughts at the same time and he heard a distinct buzzing at the back of his head, meaning that he had to slow down a little. "What other stories are there?" he asked, because surely with millions and millions of stars above Anansi couldn't be the only celestial inhabitant up there.

He was not certain if that had ever been clarified. But...why couldn't he be? If it helped the story, if it painted a clearer picture.

Yes, He breathed in response, calm with a nod. An answer that worked for both questions it seemed.

I was told of a...a maman Paya. Lived in the sun's house and took care of it. Apparently mothers would come to birth their children in the sun's house so that they might have that blessing. He was certain he was wording it different than Erzulie had, but it felt along the lines of what she had said. When she passed, the sun gave a piece of himself to her. Now she is...a bright star. Guides the children to be born, so I've heard.

It was more than he had spoke in some time, but the story felt good falling from his lips as he looked to all the bright stars in the sky.

Merlin listened to Eadwulf's story in a wide-eyed wonder. For a moment there he was completely lost to the real world and was up there with the Spider god and the one wolf that had become a star. The idea of this kind of afterlife felt very soothing and enjoyable to him and, though he rarely contemplated death as such, he noted to himself that if he were to have a say in the matter, star he would become.

Little did he know then that in a couple of weeks his wish would be granted, but for now and days to come, whenever he would be on his own, he would spend time in this dream-like fantasy, where he would be able to walk the starlit realm alongside Anansi.