Silvertip Mountain mercurial

@Aventus @Astara @Ashlar @Arielle @Ashlar @Apophis @Asperas @Vesta @Surya, set somewhere in the first week of august <3

under cover of night they went;
fading from ursus as merrick had envisioned.
his eldest son ranged ahead, blending with nightfall. merrick walked at their head, the righteousness of their departure burning within him. surely his raven queen had brought with her the sacred bones; he himself carried the skull of evien, eyes blackened hollows, all of the man ivoried.
i will bring you to a new land, he breathed to whatever wisps of spirit might still cling around the sacred object.
he allowed only his son to help him carry the skull, and paused in its burden only to encourage one or another of his youngest along.
and the bear-voice spoke, and it spoke, and it whispered;
and it did not cease.
by day merrick bid ursus lay in the cooler shadows, and all through the blackness he moved them, filled with compulsion and love by how they all seemed to become, for long hours, children of nightfall.
one evening, the wolves of ursus stepped back beneath starlight and the air had changed to that of salt. the sea. he did not know if he had come so far, but surely! he must have,
it was an evening of cool rain during which their bear-blessed band finally came to the place of the first one. merrick set down evien's head and darted into the mouth of the cave immediately, shouting with joy to find the yellowed, ageing bones of the giant bruin, its own skull with teeth bared, heavy upon the floor, as if to threaten those who would enter.
and the cave of crystal! it was pure lust that bolted through merrick now, and he danced back to ursus, delighted and face upturned to the heavens.
"ursus finds its beginning, and in this, its future," the bearwolf told them all with a solemn madness. "but look what the bears have kept for us. lift your heads, ursus."

the cold winds of change wrought over the valley had not left the spiderling untouched. as the pack prepared for their departure, and then finally departed, a new solemnity settled over asperas.
we leave.
the verdict of the bear, echoed in her own muted tones. the passage of time turned nebulous, miles of terrain liquefied to unending dreamscape, the journey from the 'claw shrouded in ruminations obscure even to the bearberry herself. in the endless labyrinthine spirals of her own mind, asperas began to understand something more; something shadow-swirled and shimmering sinister. occultism 101 in the privacy of her thoughts, courtesy of dad the cultist and mom the zealot and all that their early influences had warped their children.
half-present, when merrick flitted ahead with the manic devotion the unchild would one day understand to be his trademark. asperas followed, steps light as if reality only held half a claim to her body.
bones, shimmering; power; threat and promise.
the tenuous hold of here and now crumbled. merrick's thirdborn lingered where he turned away, drifting in place, fixated.
suddenly, asperas was no longer her own god.

it was with sorrow that astara departed from the den in which her legacy had been born -- but she did not look back.

she mourned for @Avicus, who one day might return home and find her family gone. in this thought came great anguish -- but life, as ever, pressed on. she had her remaining children, aventus included, to think of. their future rested on the eaves of their parent's action.

astara left the hipbone of her mother in the center of the now-abandoned den: let it guard this den and guide my daughter, would she ever come home. and solemnly she collected her two children, the tongue of stones pressed to her cheek.

in merrick astara had only faith -- and it was he she would follow to the ends of the earth. fancy be it that the bear -- or her mate (or her god, because truly were they not the same?) would bring them here.

the cave of crystals.

she had been mostly half-absent, much like asperas, this whole trip. but now something new awoke in her and chased away the dredging webs of sickness and poor health.

here? her eyes danced delightedly as they sought the mad glint of merrick's own. here suited ursus, indeed. astara's voice joined that of her kindred, proud and baying as it trickled through the glade.

Aventus was away, having arrived several hours before the rest, his piss marks leading the way to the mountain Merrick had indicated on the horizon before he departed their sleeping bodies once more. The scout had already wound through the pine forests that hugged the lower reaches and scaled midway up the mountain by the time the rest of Ursus arrived, diligently searching for signs of danger and finding none.

Silvertip had not seen the permanent residence of wolves in quite some time, and who could blame them? Even Aventus, who did not hear the bear spirit the way his sire did, whose brand of chaos was more on par with his dam's, could feel something sinister on these grounds.

When the pack began to howl, Aventus lifted his broad muzzle and sang with them, his a voice pitched high and almost cackling. A new era for Ursus! And a new dawn for Aventus, who went higher still, prowling to ensure the mountain's security for the bear pack.

Vesta came, as she always would, staying alert and active for the duration of the move. Her job was Knight, Warrior, Fang.
Teeth used to protect the Bruinkin. 

As Merrick voiced their new home, her song too joined that of the others, loud, proud, booming. 


Ursus will reign here.

he had no great connection to the valley, though he was a little piqued that they departed right as he was getting the lay of the land. still, the journey brought him away from the creek, the maplewood, and all other places that reminded him of a past he'd lost.

no sense dwelling on any of that now. ursus was his present, and hopefully his future. and now, they were on the move.

he stayed alongside the nervous ashlar, as well as the pretty young girl who he thought had another 'a-name.' when they arrived, surya gave the singer a gentle, friendly nudge with his shoulder, ears cupped forward to catch merrick's words.

a new beginning. he howled with the pack, a frisson running down his spine at the glorious racket they created, bouncing off the mountainside. here, they would have a bird's eye view of all they'd left behind—

and closer to the heavens; would he finally find the bear-god here?