Ghastly Woods the roots of rhythm remain

@Kenelm

That torn yearning which sometimes drew her eyes west, sometimes instead it called to her feet, and this evening was one of those days. The west was not only the direction of her previous life, though - it was also where she had come across the charming but broken @Mirren, the wise and healing @Veho, sharp @Yennifer, helpful and patient @Nicolò, the amiable wolves of Grizzly Hollow, @Cinder and @Rook, and perhaps most of all, her darling @Ash and his family. @Athena had not been on the mountain, just as she had suspected from his tone, but she had not been able to summon the strength to venture back down and tell him. Caught up in her own head, with her children and memories and lost opportunities, she had chosen to remain primarily on her sweet mountain. It grounded her, gave her a solid foundation upon which she could rebuild her life.  

But it called to her feet this day, as the sun was making its lazy descent, and she followed it down, knowing which forest lay in its wake. Wispy and dark, almost ominous, where the wind carried whispers from nobody. Bella avoided it, knowing the woods as a thin scar which hugged the mountain, threatening to sweep up and swallow it. She did not know the significance of the place, know that her blood family had once lived there, though if she had, perhaps it would have amplified her distaste.

She had little choice this day, as her feet were called down, and she rationalised that she would not enter the woods, would stop before she crossed that barrier - but the trees came, and with ears held flat, she passed beneath them, unable to stop, pulled by an undeniable force. The incline of the mountain beneath her began to level out, and before she abandoned its comfort all together, finally she found the willpower to pause. Heart beating lightly, beating quickly, she lifted her gaze, staring at the tall, dense trees around her and trying to find the sunset through their closing fingers. The corpse of a huge tree lay before her, fell perhaps years ago by some storm, or rot, or whatever lay waste to such enormous beings. Its trunk still stood proud, dead but proud, as wide around as her body length, and several feet tall. The rest of the severed tree lay further on, pulled down by the slope of the hill and now in its final resting place, where it would no doubt stay until it rotted away completely.

Quietly, reverently Bella approached the fallen tree, pressing her nose against it for a moment to commit its soul to memory. With a deep breath and tensed thighs, she carefully jumped upon the grand log, balancing easily on its wide frame, and slowly walked down its length. She looked at each branch, each snapped protrusion, each knot and twist of the ghostly bark. Coming to the end, where the trunk split into too many branches to walk upon, she hopped down, and headed back to the stump.

Settling her rump down, Bella set her gaze upon the broken remains, and her mind wandered.

His paw steps were heavy, trudging clumsily along through the increasingly thick undergrowth. He wasn't sure where he was wandering anymore. He knew he didn't really care. There was no point to any of it, anyway - he had failed the one duty the fire had left to him, lost the one pack mate it had not destroyed.

Calanthe wasn't here.

He had searched everywhere he could. She wasn't here. If she was, he would have found something to prove it by now. Word of her should have reached him; her scent or some sign of her passing would have reemerged for him. Instead nothing but empty newness had greeted him for his entire journey since leaving that blasted fjord.

He didn't notice how far he had come into the ghostly forest until a breeze brought him the scent of yet another new stranger. By this point he looked up out of necessity; he doubted this one would have anything more helpful than the others. For a moment he seriously considered going on without stopping to talk... but no. If nothing else, he supposed he would need all the news he could receive about these strange lands. Calanthe might be lost, but he still needed to stay sharp if he wanted to survive on his own.

He found the dark woman sitting near the ruin of a large tree, likely felled by some storm or another. It wasn't easy to make out much more than that from this distance, but he had enough information at the moment. He stopped and slipped into a more neutral stance, then addressed the figure softly: "Hello, there. I don't suppose there's room enough in this forest for another wanderer to pass through?"

With ash on the wind, I move forward...

Let's Cause Some Chaos

@Kenelm

Faintly the sound of footsteps made its way to her ears, soft but amplified by the heavy silence which had set about her. Perhaps it was the forest itself and its long mourning for its fallen companion, she mused, not yet bothered by the second presence in the woods - for surely there were hundreds of creatures within a hundred yards, hidden and going about their business, so why concern herself with one more? But then it stopped, and instincts told her to glance in their direction, just to be safe, just to make sure. Feet that soft, but loud enough to be noticed, could be dangerous, she supposed, but it turned out in her favour; a man stood some distance away, watching her, his posture calm and nonthreatening. Briefly she thought of @Mirren and the time he had been watching her in the rain. Perhaps it wasn't safe to slip into her reveries off the mountain, she thought with a small smile.

The silence between them did not persist; gently he spoke, his words all politeness, and the light in her face grew as she watched him. "By all means," she called back, ears pressing towards him in curiosity as she watched for his next action. A strange thing to ask of another loner, but then perhaps he thought there was some pack nearby to impede his travel. Or perhaps he was merely initiating conversation, which, she decided, would be a welcome distraction. "This woodland is owned only by itself, don't let me stop you."

Kenelm's ears pricked at the woman's voice. Good; there was no pack here, after all. Only this one lone female - and fortunately, she didn't seem any readier to fight than he was. With a tired, somewhat forced smile, he decided it was safe to close some of the remaining distance between them and padded forward, stopping only when he could begin to make out more details of the woman's face. From twenty feet off, she had been just a bit too fuzzy to see clearly; now, at a more personable seven feet or so, Kenelm could see the color of her bright golden eyes and could perceive that her color was more a patchwork of dark and light browns, rather than a two-tone pelt in cream and rust.

"I apologize if I'm intruding," he told the woman in spite of her earlier comment. "I really am only passing through. Although," he added as he sat down and took a quick glance around at the trees, "I may turn back the way I've come."

He dipped his head and said, "I should introduce myself. My name is Kenelm Ashfoot." He had distributed his own name before, alongside Calanthe's. By now it was a routine, a habit to fall back on to keep himself grounded. He ignored the part of his mind that whispered that Calanthe might hear his name passed between wolves wherever she was and come looking for him. That was an impossibility, now.

"May I ask for your name?" he asked the woman. If nothing else, three years as a scout - and several unfortunate confrontations - had pounded manners into the young man the hard way. He wouldn't abandon them now, least of all around a woman who had thus far proven friendly enough.

With ash on the wind, I move forward...

Let's Cause Some Chaos

For a moment Bella was unsure whether he would pursue company or use her 'permission' to pass on through, as he called it. Neither would have bothered her, for his business was his own, and she held no burning desire to find it out. Indeed, though, he did approach her, closing the distance between them, bringing himself into easier view. His creamy tones reminded her so of her daughter, though they were located in all the wrong places, and though she could see the softness of his eyes, the shadows cast by the trees meant that she missed their subtle difference in colour. He seemed weary, or perhaps lost, which might have explained his initial question.

A needless apology slipped through his lips, and she smiled and shook her head, dismissing it. An ear pricked towards him as he spoke, his indecision only reinforcing her theory that he was lost, or perhaps just aimless. His politeness endured over all; introducing himself, and asking for her to do the same, she smiled further, shifting her body so that she was sat facing him.

"Bella," she said, finding that different circumstances of meeting called for different levels of propriety; sometimes throwing out her whole family name sometimes felt like overkill. They were just two strangers happening upon each other in a shaded, lonely place; there was no need for high civility, only basic kindness. "Do you not know where you are going?"

"Bella." He pressed the name to his memory, although chances were probably slim that he would ever need to remember it in the future. On the other hand, the future was a dark, uncertain thing for now. Anything might happen - and, once again, his training and past failures to adhere to it dictated that he remember for memory's sake, if nothing else.

Bella's question caught him a little off guard; he had thought he wasn't quite so obvious, but then again... well. Clearly he had thought wrong, this time. "I... don't really have a plan anymore," he admitted quietly. "I only know I don't want to go too much farther into the east." There was nothing for him back the way he had come, after all. It was better to leave the dead to their rest.

Some stubborn part of him nagged at him to ask this woman if she had heard or seen anything of a pale she-wolf. Anything at all, he would take - even strange paw prints. Even a clump of pale fur snagged on a thorn branch... But could he stand hearing yet another negative? Could he bear having his hopes crushed one more time? If - if - Calanthe was still alive, allowing himself to be lost to despair might doom her. If she was... not, then he needed to live on and keep her memory alive along with the memory of the rest of their pack.

In the end he chose the coward's route - for the moment, he soothed himself. "And you? Do you call these woods your home, or are you simply passing through?"

(This post was last modified: Sep 08, 2015, 11:39 AM by Kenelm.)

With ash on the wind, I move forward...

Let's Cause Some Chaos

There are several fresh rabbit tracks in the mud. Hunt Opportunity

She watched him, liking the sound of her name in his voice, liking the implied acceptance in his repeating it. There was surprise in his tone when he realised she'd guessed of his state of limbo, but again she just smiled, not wanting him to misunderstand her question for malevolence. "I... don't really have a plan anymore," he confessed, and her heart ached quietly for him as she recognised some measure of that aimlessness.

A moment passed, and she opened her mouth to reply but hesitated because she saw hesitation in his face too, and wondered what he was holding back. The moment was broken when he turned the question back on her, but was that to divert away from his situation, away from what he had been wanting to say? Or was she misreading him? Deciding that she would run with his change in topic, at least initially, she replied, turning her head to indicate her lofty home to the east: "I'm only a visitor here. I belong to the mountain."

This time she hesitated, but not long enough for him to take hold of the new thread of conversation, wanting to find out what was ailing this Kenelm Ashfoot. To be lost, of foot and soul, in the Ghastly Woods was a deeply unpleasant prospect, and not one she would wish on anyone. "What is in the east?" she asked quietly, gently, hoping she wasn't overstepping her rights to ask such a thing, one stranger to another.

(This post was last modified: Sep 08, 2015, 11:26 AM by Belladonna.)

"I'm only a visitor here. I belong to the mountain." Ah. That ghastly thing had been one landmark that Calanthe - and thus Kenelm himself - had thankfully skirted. Kenelm had never seen mountains up close, and passing so near the base of this one had been daunting the first time. This second time wasn't much better, but he supposed he would survive.

One tufted ear twitched at the mountain woman's next question, though it was soft and rang more with genuine concern than double-edged interest. That... well. At least it was an easier question than what he had been looking for when he came to these wild lands. "Little but ashes and ghosts, I'm afraid." His voice softened as well, took on again a ghost of the rasp he had all but left behind now that his throat and lungs were nearly healed. "Certainly nothing I could call home."

Keen to deflect the conversation away from any follow-up questions his explanation might stem, Kenelm pricked his ears again in interest and said, "Although I'm afraid I don't know quite where I've wandered to, although I sense these lands - this wood, and the lands surrounding it - all have a name other than 'the wild'. It sounds silly, but... where exactly am I?"

It nipped at him a bit to have to ask the question so bluntly - but it hadn't come up in conversations before, not that he could remember. Surely knowing where he was could only be a good thing; it really wouldn't do to keep wandering about with no purpose, no sense of where he was or where he ought to go next. Surely Bella could at least offer some advice.

With ash on the wind, I move forward...

Let's Cause Some Chaos

The question, delicately-meant, was met with appropriate understanding. Bella was relieved for that. Ashes and ghosts, he said, and she felt the weight behind it, sensing significance in the very fact that he chose to speak so little of it. What had he left out there, and how far had he come to escape it? Ashes and ghosts, he had said, and she was reminded of the pack which had once resided in the Sacred Grove, the pack which had perished in a fire so many years ago. Was his story similar?

 Nothing I could call home. That struck a chord with her, if only because of how strong a concept home was to the woman, and she wondered even harder just what he was running to leave behind. They were, however, both of them fighting for control of the steering wheel of the conversation, her trying to turn it towards what haunted him, and he twisting it the other way. Considering that they were not her demons, and she could not begin to understand how strong they were, she respected his attempts and let him veer them away, drawing the topic back to the present.

The topic was an easy one, and she brightened as she realised just how lost Kenelm must be. To not even have learned of the land he was wandering it, even its name! She was almost honoured to be able the one to tell him. "This is Relic Lore," she said, an unmistakable pride, a love in her tone. "It stretches from the lowlands to the north, down to the fireweed hills in the south, and from the cedarwood forest in the west to the red hills of the east. That is Serpent's Pass," she said, indicating the mountainous and rocky expanse which cut straight through the middle of the Lore, as far as you could see from here. She looked to the mountain's peak, then slightly to the south of it, and then further south still, introducing them as though they were friends: "the Mountain of Dire, the Lost Lake, and Riddle Heights, and all the secrets hidden between. This side of the Pass," she said, turning back to Kenelm, "is Eden. We're to the north, and this place is called the Ghastly Woods. I've... always found it to be an appropriate name." Today, though, the eerie-toned woodland had not given her whispers, but pleasant company. Watching him, she wondered if his question had been sufficiently answered, or whether he had gotten far more than he bargained for. As a means to explain, she said, "I was born here," and hoped he would understand her enthusiasm.