in life, in death
we'll be together   Dusk falls over the jagged peaks of Ayr. The wolf of night silently stalks the crags with keen eyes well-adjusted to the dim lighting. They scan her surroundings, searching for something that might make a fine addition to the altar she keeps higher up in the cliffs. Night by night, it has been slowly coming together — she has crystals and herbs and flowers and wine and fruit but there is something missing...
A momentary pause at a short ledge, beneath a pine and over a slope of cobbled rocks. A steady grey gaze stares out into the distance, making out the winds of the rivers and the planes of the grassy meadows down below. Even at this relatively low elevation she still has such a magnificent view and she allows herself the opportunity to watch the sun sink into the horizon. In its absence, the sky is painted in shades of pink and violet, the palette of twilight. She is so taken by the view that she forgets where she is and what she is doing, until a sharp caw snaps her out of her stupor. Her head jerks up for her to see a jet-black crow take flight from the tree beside her — it feels like it beckons her to follow and so she does just that. Nyx hops from the ledge and traverses down the slope, eyes following the crow's trajectory. But her focus should have stayed on the path, and with one misstep she stumbles over a spur and sends herself tumbling down an incline. Large paws grip at the rocks for purchase. They find it and she's pulling herself back up to her feet. The tall wolf shakes the dust out of her midnight pelt and simply brushes off the fall. The crow lets out another cry as it circles in the air before it makes its descent. Nyx makes her steady approach as the crow perches on top of what she quickly realizes is the skull of a wolf. When she comes too close, the bird flutters away. She watches it for only a moment before her attention is drawn back to the skull lying amongst the gravel. A paw delicately traces the arch of the cheekbone as she contemplates what she has found, left with so many questions which could never be answered. |
  in life, in death
we'll be together   Imagine being forgotten and lost to time. It's a thought sobering like no other. The fallen prince wonders who this wolf was in life — was he noble or wicked, a warrior or a poet, or was he even a 'he' at all? So many possibilities, a story she will never know... It's a pity, knowing this wolf was never honored with a proper burial, instead cast aside like trash and left for the crows. This wolf will be disgraced no longer; these remains will serve a higher purpose now.
The tall woman begins to lean down to pick it up but pauses before she even parts her jaws, stricken with the sense that she is being watched. Pointed ears flicker at the sound of approaching footsteps. Her head turns, silver gaze falling upon a lissome woman with fur like earth after a spring rain, notable for the lack of any distinct patterns to draw the eye. Nyx returns that up and down look, her lips pulled into a smirk. At a glance, this stranger appears a bit plain but she does have rather nice legs and carries herself with grace. Not bad at all. "You could say so," replies the wolf of night. Her attention lowers back down to the skull at her paws. "However this friend is not very talkative. I'm just dying to know what happened to him or her..." Still smirking, she tilts up the chin with a paw and gazes into those hollow sockets, as if the answer lies therein. "But I suppose it doesn't matter now. I have great use for this." |
  in life, in death
we'll be together   The sylphlike stranger suggests a quick fall may have been what had done this specimen in, an idea which Nyx briefly toys with. "That is one possibility, yes, but isn't that the most uninspired assumption to make? Could his death not be by a lion's claws, or by swallowing koneion, or perhaps it could even be a punishment by his state?" the ebon prince offers a few other ideas, and decides merely to brush off the implication that the woman had seen her stumble. To that, she simply comments, "The Gods have made our kind surprisingly resilient; those of my blood especially so."
The Orpheides held a divine legacy after all. As the stranger makes her bold approach, Nyx finds herself setting a paw overtop the skull's dusty cranium. The woman suggests there is a way to determine the sex of the long-deceased wolf, a curious notion which prompts the dark wolf to arch a brow and smirk crookedly. "Is that so? How, if may I ask? By the strength of the jaw, the size of the fangs, the length from nose to crest? If all that was left of me were bones, one would easily think me male," says Nyx. Wolves are not deer or sheep or birds. The differences between sexes are not so immediately obvious — size is the only real tell and even then there is so much room for error. But she's curious what ideas the stranger might have, just as the stranger seems curious of her plans for this skull. Obsidian claws rap at bone as a sharp grin spreads across a swarthy maw. "Who wishes to know?" "koneion" - hemlock |