Blackbeak Bluff Names get carved in the red oak tree

Tenebris stood upon the edge of the world.

Clouds moved overhead, blown with the wind that rode along the water’s surface. Gulls cried intermittently, swooping against the push of the cold and then rising to fly away. The man on the cliffside followed their path with his gaze until they had faded. Noisy things, he thought with a frown.

Tenebris turned away from the edge and padded along the length of it. He could not tell if he had heard thunder or merely the waves beating against the stone.

she would uphold the promise she had made to @Erzulie on her travels. she snaked along the coastline as she prepared to head back into the taiga.

mireille! mireille! she called in a singsong voice, a beckons to the wayward child. admittedly jorunn was...uncertain to if the girl would answer even if she was nearby. they did not know each other! the nomadic woman merely did this as a favor to a distressed mother.

ah! she blurted as she saw a figure. this was not a wayward daughter. this was a man, large and handsome. she might have been compelled to flirt with him was she not here on a mission now.

you! she barked towards him, a summon for his attention.

Someone was testing the strength of their voice, it seemed.

Tenebris drew his dark ears to a point and frowned, searching the terrain until he landed on the figure who was calling into the wind. They had barked to him, like he was some servant. The wanderer snorted sharply into the air, drawing his chin upward and staring down the length of his nose at her. Tenebris did not move from his position, though he did appear tense and distrustful.

You’re making far too much noise, the man growled, frowning still.

Impatience bubbled up from within him. The knight swallowed it, biding the time he had until he would turn and leave all company behind.

Why do you shriek into the wind like a banshee?

you are bitter man. she scolded with a soft hiss of her own.

i am looking for a missing child, have you no heart? she knew he could not have known that was why she called into the winds, but he could have shown concern or curiosity! not scold her and call her a banshee.

men, she thought, would never know the ache of a mother's heart or the helpfulness of sisters.

The woman scolded him, called him bitter.

Tenebris laughed – it was a bitter noise, after all.

Perhaps, he agreed with a small shrug of his shoulders. What did it matter to her if he carried bitterness upon his heart?

When the woman spoke again, it was to say that she searched for a missing child. That must have been her reason for calling so loudly. The knight regarded her with a quiet stare, uncertain. He had not seen or scented any children. There had only been signs of eaten fish on the shoreline to the east. It was so easy for kids to be taken by the waters.

I have seen no children. The waters may have taken it.

Tenebris frowned and shrugged again.

she hissed, sour and low, an unusual sort of sound from the nomadic woman.

forbannet mann. she had half a mind to tangle with him, and not in the way she often tangled with others. there was a harsh streak that pumped through her on behalf of erzulie, of saphhique.

you do not say such things into the air. superstitious? perhaps, but she believed it fully.

The woman hissed at him and spoke a foreign tongue.

Tenebris regarded her with a frown and a steady stare. He did not know the curse she uttered, and he would not have cared. The opinion of a stranger did not matter to him.

Her next words were rather humorous. Though, the wayfarer did not laugh at them. The man’s golden gaze drifted around them, looking to the skies and then to her face. Tenebris was solemn.

Speak it or not, my words have no power of that kind. If the sea took it, then it did. If it did not, I wish you find it swiftly.

The man shrugged. Children were trouble and they had ways of finding themselves in horrible situations. It was not so far-fetched to believe the child she sought had met an untimely end.

it.

the cursed man had no soul about him, jorunn was certain of that. he was no father, he had never seen a mother weep for her child, he had never seen the suffering of loss. she felt certain of these things no matter what she might come to learn of him — although she did not wish to learn more of him.

awful, horrible man.

you are no help. i will find her without your curses and stone ways. her nerves frayed with anger as her accented voice quivered.

if he did not wish to spew more vile wishes into the wind, she would depart from him as prickly as a porcupine.

The woman said that he was of no help to her.

Tenebris shrugged, drawing his tongue along his chops with an indifferent roll of his eyes. The man had not been trying to be helpful. He had not offered to assist her in her foolish search. The sooner he was rid of her, the better it would be.

The wandering knight swished his tail. There was little reason for him to continue talking to the banshee woman. With the light of the sun sinking behind stormy clouds and snowflakes flurrying down in the distance, Tenebris turned from their meeting place and began to prowl west.

Thank you for being so nice and writing with Mr. Sourpatch. I think it might be fun to write one of my other characters with Jorunn! Aerandir is softer. I'll keep an eye out for any potential AW threads you might make. ^^