Kintla Flatlands The stars laughing at our mortal foils

Using this for naturalist!

The stars were sought after to reveal the future. She had seen the practice in nearly every religion she had encountered in her days, even in the Dark Brotherhood.

Their rivals, the worshippers of the Nine Divines, the Aedra, saw the stars as holes where many gods escaped as the world was created and they began losing their divinity, the sun being that of Magnus. But the Dark Brotherhood had a more practical explanation. The stars were the souls, or eyes, of targets who had escaped a Dark Brother or Sister during a mission. They stay up their, in their heavens, and eternally mock the assassins from their paradise. The moon was said to be the soul of the first Wolf-King in the Old Lands where the Aedric and Daedric worshippers originated, who lived through a Dark Brotherhood attack and was set in the sky to gloat over his victory. But Sithis sent his shroud monthly to cover the boasting King, allowing his followers to work without the gloating light.

Regardless of the mythos, the Dark Priests still divined meanings from the stars, as Mephala always slipped them in somewhere in the world around them. It was their job to find and analyze it. Meldresi sat on a hill, high in the Flatlands, and gazed at the stars. She needed explanations, meanings from the bright lights above. More than that, she wanted to renew her knowledge of the practice to pass onto her daughter, Potema, since she knew the white princess would be the next priestess of the Dark Brotherhood. So the black woman kept her head tilted upwards, her indigo eyes fixated on the cold, unfeeling, mocking stars above.

Incidentally, I need some naturalist threads myself... ;)

Snaking through the greening grasses of the plains, Echelon did not have her attentions fixed on the night sky above. Instead she was out, perhaps plotting something far more nefarious than just enjoying the crisp air of the eve. In truth, she had really come out there to hunt alone, still miffed over the strange behavior that had taken hold of her aokkatti. She was coming around to what the idea was and what it was that she was seeking and in turn, Tonravik's own heat was enough to drive Echelon away for some time. Regardless of the outcome of it, she would merely be content once it had passed.

And this time in her hunt, she was not looking to bring back some quarry to share with her superior. Yet she was deterred from this readily, for the sensation that she was not alone came to her quickly in the stillness of the night. Perched upon a hillock that seemed nearly random in placement, she could spy out the faintest of silhouettes. A pointed muzzle had been turn towards the sky and only then did Echelon draw her thoughts to it. It was a clear night, the reason for the coolness that had come skittering across the low rising flatlands. She tested the air with uncertainty, though found nothing that screeched danger to her. They were alone, though she was much more wild than her stargazing counterpart.

With interest settling across her countenance, Echelon forfeited her hunt and approached.

Meldresi's ears twitched backwards towards the faint sound. She did not dare turn towards the sound, but instead kept her eyes trained on the sound. The creature approaching did not do so with stealth, leading Meldresi to believe that she was not in any danger. Nonetheless, she kept ready. One never knew. Assassins did not have to stalk you before they attacked.

As the foreign wolf grew closer, Meldresi spoke, her voice calm in the gentle breeze. "And how fairs you this lovely evening?" She called out to the mysterious creature.

Her footfalls came to an easy stop in the bent grass, her attention reattaching itself to the night sky that was not at all that different from the one her perching counterpart had been gazing at. Though she heard her question, Echelon was silent at length as she contemplated what the stars were doing, what their alignment was. There were some familiar shapes to be seen and they were telling of the season, though their description of the season was not necessary. Spring was all around them, even on the crisp night.

"The bears are out," she said instead, blue eyes tracing over the familiar shape of the ursine creatures of the night sky.

Instead of responding to her greeting, the wolf instead jumped straight into the topic of the stars. Her eyes darted to the familiar shapes of the big and small bears, Ursa Major and Minor as some called them. "As are the dragons." She said, referring to Draco and Hydra, the serpentine creatures that slithered across the night. "How much do you know of the stars?" She said as she looked for more familiar faces...the crab, Cancer, the lion Leo. There were many more that came in the other seasons, she knew, as the stars moved just like the sun and moon, though their movement was much slower.

In truth, while Echelon did know a fair amount about the night sky, she was more geared towards the weathery side of things. She understood what subtle changes in regards to temperatures and humidity meant, what they would bring or wouldn't bring. It was hard to gauge so far what the coming season would bring them, though it had become much warmer than she had expected already.

"Enough," she stated, her one word answer no doubt more of a difficult hurtle than anything. Her gaze tore away from the sky to regard the once again skyward profile of her companion, as though to imply she was curious of what the darkly coated she-wolf would know.

"A woman of few words, I see." She murmured, more towards herself than her star-gazing companion. Meldresi sensed her gaze on her pelt, and met her gaze for a brief moment. The priestess gave a friendly smile to her, despite her icy silence. "There's a halo around the moon too, have you noticed?" She said, gesturing to the hanging circle in the sky. " 'A ring around the moon means rain soon.' " She quoted, wondering what the other female would say, if anything at all.

I'm sorry for the massive delay here. This is a hard month for me to get through sometimes. :C

If there was supposed to be something maternal about the tone she was hearing, Echelon missed it entirely. Much like part of the murmur that she heard, it made her inclined to think she was being spoken to like a child, which for all intensive purposes, she may have been to the older female in question. She was a young thing, often locked into a childish mindset like a miniature Nepoleon who would one day find herself on her own Elba. But this time, Echelon did not take the talk in a negative way, only nodded in agreement with the astute observation that her counterpart offered.

"Perhaps not soon enough. Sometimes the halo is misleading. The air feels cool, but not damp." She did not taste the rain on her tongue, though part of her longed for the scent of petrichor after it was all said and done. "Maybe it will snow." Though the days had begun to warm significant, Echelon did not betray the fact that the weather was liable to shift suddenly. Perhaps tomorrow they would find themselves shivering in that air, rather than pondering what would fall from the sky.

"I do not believe there will be rain tonight. Few clouds now."

Meldresi wondered if this younger female was a greater naturalist than she. The Night Queen was not a creature of great pride; she in fact loved to learn and did not mind who she learned from. But the disdain and lack of interest in the female's tone was unnerving her slightly. But she pushed that aside; perhaps it was just how she was. "I would not be surprised by a last snow storm before spring fully arrives. These seasons have been strange as of late." That she could say as a woman of experience and age with great certainty. "If not snow or rain, then a frost may be eminent."

She called the seasons strange and Echelon may have laughed if she possessed a normal sense of humor.  To her, all of this was strange.  She hailed from a world where cold was always prevalent, where seasons changed but did not seemed to do so.  This concept of seasons was new to her, far too new.  The way the earth had warmed and hell, the way even the sun had warmed was a newer experience.  But one she had almost come full circle on truthfully; she didn't know how long she had been around.  The coming of winter had been pleasant to her, while others had scurried around looking for ways to keep the nightmarish rumors at bay of how bad could it be.

"I would expect frost before the others," she murmured, though hardly intentional.

"The mornings should grow damp and stay damp for a while."  This time, she had lost the murmur.  But the words came out clipped and stilted like always.  While she was more verbose than Tonravik, Echelon did not consider herself a fan of using words.  Using a common tongue more prevalent here than it was to her homeland, to the north.  But even fewer understood such talk here and for a change, she did not feel like playing tricks.

She lingered for a moment more, then opted to venture out further into the grassland.