Redtail Rise lines on ale

smoke fills her nose.

she's not aware of this place's past, but the charred ground and empty trees signifies something serious. her eyes lift, looking at the barren branches. the grass beneath the snow is blackened. barren. still.

she calls for @Ashlar, wondering if he can make sense of the hollow.

begins to dig, as if she can find the epicenter of this tragedy, paws sending snow flying. pacing, agitated, her ruddy pelt vivid against the dark, dead trunks and white ice.

she feels panic in this place and her body is electric.

He'd been working on a new song when she called him. It was a ballad, one whose ending might shift and change as time went, but that he thought maybe was finished enough now. He was softly singing it through a second time, shifting through withered plant stalks, when he stopped to respond with a call of his own. Coming. He could leave these here for now.


Ashlar arrived as soon as he could to find her digging. The forest was wrong, but he picked up on her mood first. His tail tucked a bit nervously but he came forward, trying to catch a glimpse in the hole she'd begun. What's wrong?

This place held fire. Ashlar only knew it because his parents had shown him once. He'd never seen it work but he'd seen the aftermath.

she whips around to face him, chest spattered in dirt, forelegs liberally covered. wha' happen here, healer? she asks. it smells different, like death. not the iron-tang blood-scent to which she's accustomed, but a deeper, earthier demise.

Avicus lifts her eyes to blackened trees, their branches covered in snow; all trees are now leafless, save for the conifers, but this is different. this isn't right.

a curse? an omen? there must be some natural explanation, and Ashlar is much more in tune with the gentler parts of nature than she is.

Ashlar sniffed the ground, then went and inspected a few of the long-weathered trees. It looked similar but it also looked older. And the smells were the same. He wanted to be sure before he told her.

It was fire. Storms can start it, but I've never seen it. I've just seen it like this, after. Ashlar tried to remember what they'd said. When it comes, it's deadly. But it doesn't stay. It dies after it eats the forest. His ears turned back as he looked at the still-scarred growth. It must have been horrible to have been here.

I don't think it can hurt us. It didn't return, or make a home.

fire, she mouths, and can sense its destructive power as well as if she'd been in the thick of it. one only needed to glance over the charred ruins, then think of a normal patch of green, to understand how devastating it must have been.

goodh, Avicus replies to his remark, then gives a full-body shimmy, trying to shake the ice and mud and ash from her pelt. they don't need more enemies; Nyra and her tagalongs will be enemy enough.

once relatively tidy again, she strides over to Ashlar, a question in her eyes. dh'you have any fire hh—hshhongs? once he'd sang for the bear, and she worried it would summon the beast.

but if the fire is, truly, dead. . .

He circled around a bit more as she shook off the sensation of the place. It wasn't eerie to him so much as sad, the scent of distilled death that hung over this place. He could see it already trying to grow back, if he looked closely enough, but the scars were so big.

He was caught up in it when she asked, and he shook his head slowly. I can make one. It would be sad, maybe, if it was about after like this. During would be harder since he'd never seen it. He imagined it to be giant, a monster that grabbed entire portions of trees and left very little in it's wake. It would probably grab up wolves too, pretty easily, along with. A song about the emptiness and the quiet of after would be peaceful and better, he thought, since it wouldn't invite thinking about how it might come back.

I made one already, but it's about something else. It's the bear and the raven. He quieted a bit, suddenly unsure of how well she'd like that. He had been a part of Ursus, but he had never belonged there. There was a time that the bear king had liked his songs, but what would he think now?

she nods, satisfied. she'd like that. his song could perhaps explain the nature of this phenomenon better, since it has already come to pass and gone, leaving only destruction behind.

but there is new growth—

. . .it's about the bear and the raven."

she swallows hard the unexpected grief that surges up her throat like bile. 'raven;' she thinks she remembers her father referring to Astara in that way. she sees her now, as if she stands before them—glossy black, like those great birds' feathers. deep eyes of gloaming.

how d-dhoes ih' go? Avicus asks, stumbling over the emotion rather than the words themselves.

It was supposed to be about them, but it kind of.... uh. Ashlar didn't usually feel self conscious, but he didn't expect the emotion she showed. He hoped that it was in a good and not a bad way. It changed. She would hear.

He breathed out, then began. The song was slow and measured, a ballad that lilted with a slight haunting quality to fit the nature of the subject.

The silent queen of the Raven woods
Met the king of the bears one fine night
He doused the stars one by one in the sky
And in darkness they danced side by side

The queen, painted in hues of shade
The king in crimson and flame
They carried their world with the promise of war
And in fear, all whispered their name

In the vale of the bear they laid down their claim
And a fortress strong arose
Carried forth by the princess and prince of the bear
Cunning and sharp, sometimes foes

The prince, he remained, laid down roots strong and thick
But the princess 'pon raven wings rose
Flying off to a throne she could claim as her own
A right that none dared oppose

As the Raven looks on, and the bear sits in wait
The hunter seeks prey of her own
Strong and swift, her justice will strike
To christen the mountain a home

He closed it out softly, then let the silence hang. He hadn't meant to make it about she and her brother, but the lines had come to him, and he'd felt good about them. He had not been sure where it would end, but she'd said with the finding of her mother's killer, she would begin a new start. It seemed the right spot to start some new song and let this one close.

the world Avicus had been born into was physical. her parents' relationship had felt savage, visceral, rooted to the earth. never before had she considered any beauty in it.

and yet. . .

there had been poetry in the ballad of Merrick and Astara, and Ashlar brought it life.

she holds his gaze for a while, and then turns it away, and sinks low upon the earth, letting the final verses of the song whistle through her ears heedless of her closed eyes.

it's beautiful. too beautiful. and it only makes the cruelty of her mother's death that much more painful.

'hhey rippedh'er aparhh', she whispers, staring at the snow. bohh' of 'em. ma foughh'. . .buhh' couln't. . .

she presses her muzzle down, her nose submerged in the ice, tears running freely down the length of her snout. i wann'ed. . .i couln't. . .get 'hhere in 'hhime.

Avicus looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes, the red and purple together like some distant nebula. you know Nyra muhh' die. righh'? 

her teeth clench hard together. Nyra kill'edh 'hhe Raven.

As the singer sang, he was too caught in the song to notice her reaction until he had stopped and, after a moment of silence, finally looked. He'd hoped the song would make her feel glad, but he'd never expected it to get the reaction that he saw. It was good for music to strike strong, but it was hard to see that he'd brought this about. He couldn't help regretting it.

Sorry, he said softly. Avicus didn't seem upset with him but that didn't mean he had the right to speak of her family the way he had.

He hadn't understood, but she was trying to make him. That's what he took her words to be. She blamed herself for the Raven, but it was others who had done it. And even though Ashlar knew what he knew of them, of both of her parents, and even of her, he felt a powerful and sudden flicker of anger on her behalf. He'd never seen her like this and he didn't like it. He didn't like that they'd done this.

There was evil in the world. Maybe Ursus had been part of it. But maybe these other wolves were part of it too.

I know, he said, taking a hesitant step forward. If she let him, he'd clear the tracks the tears had made. It wasn't you. It was them. For the first time, he isn't only dodging thoughts of the outcome. He understands.

she shakes her head, casting off his apology. he hadn't meant to upset her. and she isn't upset, really—not with him. it's the weight of it all; the gaping hole left in her heart with Astara's absence. no other being she has loved so much, nor will so again.

but he understands. it wahh 'hhem, she agrees, and rises to her paws.

wanders, a bit, before placing one of said paws upon a long-dead tree trunk, still not broken by the elements.

blagck, like her, Avicus remarks, and glanced back toward Ashlar. her eyes hold his for a moment before lifting her forelimb and observing the sooty bits left behind.

Raven Hollow, she intones.

her mother is in this place. this broken, blackened, beautiful place.

Ashlar was glad that she knew and was also glad, still, that he'd said it. He wondered if this anger that he felt made her as sad as it made him, or if it had made her parents feel this way. Even knowing, and understanding, he could find no satisfaction in the answer. He just wished it wasn't necessary.

If it was him, he wouldn't. She was stronger.

When she held his eyes, that's when he could tell that the song had meant something. Avicus did not do such things lightly, and he let the glow of a friend's gratitude warm him. Raven Hollow. He repeated it quietly and felt that it suited the place perfectly. Quiet, somber, and dark as pitch.

seems like a good place to end <3