Pastel Highlands cold welcome

taking advantage of this re for hopefully some extra points -- "The stars are unusually bright tonight. Maybe because it's also unusually cold.. brr."

His meeting with @Malien having provided company and a much-needed break from loneliness, Arty had felt more enthused than he had for a while to venture on after that. He’d crossed the trails of others, here or there, but none that he had been particularly keen on following.

North, he’d headed, away from the mountains and into the forest. For a while, he’d trailed one of the rivers, but after that’d done a reverse loop and then switched directions to head west, he had continued on without it.

Far enough that the forest had begun to thin out, but not so far as to leave behind the shelter of the trees completely. Tonight the sky was clear, the air crisp and cold. The stars were bright in the sky above, but another kind of light danced with them, too.

An aurora. He’d heard of it but never seen it, and he could help but be captivated by it, paused in a small clearing with his head tipped upward. It set a rather nice scene. A peaceful but cold welcome to this new area of Relic Lore - and he half wished he had someone else there to possibly cozy up and enjoy it with.

Clouse found himself admiring the same stars and their ever-moving ribbons of color. He'd hunkered down beneath the lowest boughs of an old pine on his back, naught but his face extending past their thorny green fingers to gaze up at the celestial expanse overhead. All had been quiet and still for a long time before Artyom graced the scene.

Faintly, he heard heavy steps breaking through snow, and he shifted to see what or who was coming. Upside down and surrounded by uneven snow, Clouse wasn't able to make out much. With a sigh, he chose to listen to the more practical half of his brain and flipped round back onto his paws. Last thing he needed was to be caught off guard by the wrong creature.

Wriggling out from under the branches, each movement was carried up through the branches and caused snow to shift and fall. He popped up onto one of the drifted banks covered in the thin powder, silver eyes bright as they continued the search.

"Hello?"

When he first heard the noise, the crunching of snow and the disturbance of the branches of a nearby pine, he thought perhaps he’d scared some poor unfortunate prey animal. The sound drew his attention away from the sky, and Arty quickly advanced, not wanting to risk passing up the opportunity to snag himself an easy meal. Instead, though, a smaller, dark figure coated in snow emerged from beneath the tree just a few lengths away. One of his own.

Given how long it’d been since the last time he’d met anyone, Arty hadn’t really been expecting company all the way out here. Least of all under a tree, although, that did look cozy. And smart. And those eyes, were they silver?

Not wanting his close proximity to possibly scare or elicit a defensive reaction from the other fellow off guard though, Artyom shuffled back a couple of quick steps. A smile and a friendly wave of his tail would hopefully indicate he’d meant no harm. ”Hello - apologies for creeping up on you. Wasn’t expecting to find another one of us out here.”

His head panned with his gaze as he scoped out the world around him, putting the other briefly in a blindspot. When his head turned and the stranger was there, he was right there in comparison to the nothing Clouse had first perceived. His eyes widened and his dark ears tipped back, surprised and unsure if he should be taken aback. He thought he'd seen something slinking in that very first second of recognition, but now he was clearly met with a sunny smile that matched sky-blue eyes. He couldn't help but first wonder after his vision, most of his own blue-eyed family virtually blinded.

Then he felt rude, and looked away briefly while internally scolding himself. Wasn't really his business, was it? Especially when the man seemed perfectly healthy and able regardless without carrying the scent of 'pack.'

The stranger's choice of words pulled him away from that train of thought. Us was a delightfully ambiguous word, wasn't it? His inky tail wagged and a wry smile began to blossom across his dappled muzzle.

"Does that make me a windfall or a disappointment?" he asked with a playful lilt in his voice, descending that slight slope of drifted snow to put himself on more even ground.

By the grace of the gloriously beautiful lights and heavens above, the other man didn’t appear to be frightened, defensive, or otherwise irritated by suddenly having a stranger invading his personal space. The reciprocated smile and tail wag were both good signs, even better was when the dark male crept out of his hiding place and posed a question.

One that sounded decidedly playful.

Arty tipped his head silently, feigning as though the question were a difficult one to answer, but his grin betrayed that. ”Well, provided you’re not gonna try to bite me, eat my face off, or something like that, I’d say a windfall.” It’d been far too many days since he’d left Malien, so to meet another friendly stranger was very welcome. It certainly helped to ease the sense of loneliness that’d been creeping its way back into his heart and soul.

”Name’s Artyom. Or Arty, Art. Whatever you’d like to use.” It was always good to get that whole introductory bit out of the way first. Just made things easier.

(This post was last modified: Feb 05, 2023, 07:18 AM by Artyom.)

They appeared to be on a similar-enough wavelength when it came to demeanor, causing Clouse to feel relaxed and relatively disarmed in the other man's presence. After all, he certainly didn't plan on offending or otherwise giving this stranger reason to flip. Well... not unless the guy was particularly sensitive. Artyom gave him several versions of his name at once, and Clouse couldn't help but feel this hinted at something fundamental about his personality. What, specifically? Surely it would take really getting to know Arty in order to figure that out. In other words, it wasn't really relevant to the runaway at this moment in time.

"Clouse," he returned, before bantering, "and would a few nibbles really be all so bad?"

There wasn't much meant by it, just as there hadn't been with Loach. At first. Just the way he got along with others, one could say. The words would have been chosen even if Artyom here didn't have a particularly striking face.

"You been watching the sky?"

His dark muzzle motioned up, and there his own gaze went too, the vivid colors ever so faintly reflected in his otherwise hue-void irises. He'd kind of just been wishin' he'd had someone to enjoy it with, though his thoughts had more-so featured a fire-eyed fisher...

(This post was last modified: Feb 06, 2023, 06:02 AM by Eros.)

Clouse, the other introduced himself as. He did not give Arty much time to ponder over that or offer any additional pleasantries before.. asking a question. Engaging in banter, having fun. Which Arty rather liked. It sure beats back home where he’d always been expected to act prim and proper all the damn time, and where everyone else had as well. Almost as though there was some sort of law against having fun.

”Ah, I suppose not. As long as there’s no permanent damage done,” he teased back with a wry grin and a shrug. If there were more wolves like this in Relic Lore, Arty supposed he might actually reconsider the idea of settling down. There was still a lot more to see before that decision was made, though.

A subsequent inquiry was posed, this one spoken in a more serious note. Clouse motioned up with his nose, prompting Arty to looked up again. ”Yea, it’s pretty,” he murmured. It would’ve been all too easy just to lie back and stare up at it until morning, or until he fell asleep. But that would be rude considering he had company.

”Wonder what causes it?” Arty couldn’t help but muse aloud, curious if the other might have some sort of insight or knowledge he didn’t.

Clouse watched the colors jump and waver while Artyom spoke, the innocuous question conjuring memories that superseded the swath of greens and indigos. Murmurs of omens and cycles, an insistence on something greater and relentless pressure to submit to it. His expression dulled briefly, and then he forced his mind to clear and rolled his shoulders in a shrug.

Who cares? he almost asked, but ultimately the Archer refrained from such undue rudeness; Artyom here had nothing to do with that dollop of bitterness within him.

"Don't think I'd trust anyone who claims to know what goes on that high up," he replied in a joking tone instead, paws shifting to take him back toward the tree.

"Got the perfect view of it here though. Want in on it?"

Maybe he had somewhere else to be, but Clouse hoped the other wolf's night was free instead.

He hadn’t expected much of an answer to the inquiry. There was almost no way any wolf could truly know what caused the light show, but the response Arty received was deeper than that. Though it sounded as if it were said in jest and not to be taken seriously, he couldn’t help but ponder it as such, at least for a few moments.

It was.. something Artyom agreed with. ”Seconded,” he replied with a nod. And though a part of him was tempted to dig on that, he wasn’t sure he wished to risk turning off or shutting down an otherwise amiable wolf by doing so.

An offer was extended, and again, Arty offered a nod. ”Be a fool to say no to shelter and good company,” he offered with a grin and a shrug, daring to venture forth to try to take a peek inside. ”And thank you. Your kindness is appreciated.”

Genuinely so, for it wasn’t something Arty’d seen a lot of. Wolves being nice seemingly just for the sake of it, and offering to share your shelter with someone that was still nearly a complete stranger was.. well, something Arty would call almost too kind. That, like this light show, was new as well.  

Clouse's tail wagged and he threw a toothy smile over his shoulder as just like that, he had company for at least the evening. The Moon Mother always provides, his thoughts churned out sarcastically, primed by those surfaced memories. It was good that he had a distraction rather than being left alone in such a state of mind. Artyom seemed to excise a healthy dose of caution rather than rushing in, as though this were something like Clouse's property. The young Archer followed and passed him, crouching down and disappearing briefly beneath the boughs.

He found that same divot he'd been resting in before and slid into it, using four paws to push away a bit more snow to create a space for the other wolf before settling onto his back. The natural slope of the snow was nearly perfect to rest upon, and his dial peeked out just past the evergreen needles so that he could still gaze up at that spectacular sky.

'Kindness,' his acquaintance called it. It was just as much selfish, Clouse thought, if not an equal exchange.

"Aww, like I'm gettin' nothin' outta this," he teased.

(This post was last modified: Feb 23, 2023, 08:38 PM by Clouse.)