Bitterroot Valley sundowning

seeking @Sky Eater and @Ezra if wanted <3

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the clearing was quiet when she slipped into it, late light bruising purple along the treeline. the earth is still damp from the rain, smelling of old pine and petrichor.

this part of the valley is peaceful, she learns—like somewhere a body could stop moving for a millenia and never be disturbed.

twitch paused at the center, ears pricked, tail low but swaying once behind her. she knew she had smelt someone here—were they hiding?

at some point, ezra had dozed off. he hadn't meant to, but the moss bed he'd chosen to rest upon after a small hunt and dividing meat into the pack's caches was soft and the sunlight warming his back had been soothing. so soothing it had lulled ezra into an unintended nap.

the footfalls were soft, but ezra had been conditioned to become a light sleeper and he wakes with a start. disorientation is like claws in his mind for a moment, but a few blinks and a few more breaths calms the furious gallop of his heart as he pushes himself to his paws, golden gaze touching upon the woman. did he know her name? hell, what was his name?!

vhat 're you doing here? ezra hears himself ask like an out of body experience, mind moving with a sluggishness that would tell him in a few seconds when awareness dawns on him that he was not as clear of pro-nap disorientation as he'd first thought.

he had been following the bird-limbed woman.

quiet, a pale stalker against the outbreak of dusk. moving between trees and brush, long limbs folding smooth over root and stone.

he doesn't know why he follows her. but he says nothing still, even when he steps out to reveal himself. watching with unfeeling, yellowed eyes as the gold-eyed one stands, dazed and blinking like he’s been dragged out of sleep too fast.

he stands half in shadow, half in the bruised light of evening, tail low and breath shallow, eyes on them both.

the voice made her straighten, ears flicking toward the gold-eyed boy jolting himself awake like he’d been yanked from a bad dream.

”nice nap?” she asked, tone light as to settle him while her eyes took him in. gray fur and red. golden eyes. she committed it to memory. “sega said i should meet you.” she stepped forward only a little, just enough that he could smell her properly—wet earth and moss, the faint undercurrent of sega’s own scent clinging to her.

“i’m twitch,” she offered, simple, as if the word explained everything.

a prickle at her spine told her to turn, and only then does she realize she was being followed. the second boy stood nearby, bone-pale, silent and cautious. a brow cocks, a half-amused smile curving on her face. “and you must be the other one.”

mmphf — ezra manages — more noncommittal noise than an actual response. he gave a small shake of his head when he comes back to terms with being awake.

a yawn and a sheepish blink follow.

uh...., sure, replies ezra, apology hanging unsaid but upon the soft expression of his golden gaze. ezra. he offers, tucking the name 'twitch' away before turning his gaze to face the other man as twitch did.

you must be the other one.

those unfeeling yellow eyes move from the woman and to the other male standing before her. and part of sky eater bristles with a wariness, an uncertainty that seeps into the bones and lights his guts up from the inside out.

twisting. gnarling. the roots of a tree.

i, he voices suddenly with the melting pot of a baritone monotonic, kuxa̱taqsa. ears airplane then in silence as he moves closer, step after step, and his tail slinks amongst his hocks.

he is lanzadoii, reared by muradoii milk. and something else entirely he does not yet know the gravitas of. but those go unspoken, unnecessary. his secrets to harbor, to keep close.

he is stiff, and still. but those yellowed eyes center, hone, in on twitch and watch with an eerie fascination.

the girl caught ezra’s sheepish blink and huffed a soft laugh, the kind that didn’t quite make it past her throat. the darker one—gray and ginger— is ezra, softer in appearance.

the other was a tad more unsettling, in truth. she decides as much when she notices how hard those yellow eyes are fixed on her. his name is longer, much harder for her to pronounce—kuxa̱taqsa. it is heavy and old, somehow feeling too big for someone still so young.

she tries not to cringe from his eyes—an effort to maintain a semblance of calm. instead, she tips her head, studying him right back before her eyes pull away. “s' nice to meet you both,” she breathed. “either of you hungry?”

though ezra himself has offered little in the way of conversation himself, his gaze cuts to the other man, noting the way the quiet wraps 'round him like a cloak. hanging back. ezra had gone through several phases of aggressive isolation and he cannot help but wonder if his aura was ever as unsettling.

ear twitches, gaze trailing back to twitch at her question. was he hungry? not particularly. a small yawn splits his jowls, teeth clicking together when they snap back shut. maybe a hunt was just what he needed to shake off the lingering and stubborn vestiges of sleep.

i'm not hungry but i vill hunt with you. he offers.