Mountain of Dire miss unafraid, miss out of my way

@Tomen The Lore experiences a bout of unseasonably warm weather. (Caro) 
ugh trying not to go to much into feelings because I feel like between this thread, another one, and the meeting I'm just gunna be repeating myself xD

Oak Tree Bend was, ever so slowly, stabilizing after the emotionally explosive meeting, and yet Sahalie did not feel like the equilibrium was anything positive. Generally, the mood in her home had always been rather somber, but the melancholic mists seemed to fall more heavily and thickly about the world now. The hole left in her world was larger than the size of the two wolves that left it. Both Drestig and Jessie had formed the bedrock of her childhood in Spectral Woods. They had always been there even when her father—when her mother— had not. Though she had never wanted to begrudge anyone their own happiness, it hurt that they had left. Especially on such uncomfortable, even painful terms. And now Sahalie had taken to wandering again, hoping naively that she would catch a fading oaken scent on the breeze. 

Up in roughly sculpted cradle of the mountains, however, it was hard to smell much. The wind that had so often brought her all sorts of information back home moved far too quickly for her to make heads or tails of the things that floated past her. At least, on this particular precipice, she could see for miles. She did not need her nose when every tiny movement of her eyes captured myriad and subtle changes in the landscape below her. She had spent some time on the mountains before, but usually only to pass through. She had never imagined it as a destination, only an obstacle. Yet, coming from a terrain thick with trees a view of so much was still quite novel and truly a worthwhile terminus. Especially in this weather: all the snows had somehow vanished uncovering a world of all sorts of browns that she hoped would quickly turn back to green again. It would certainly be a sight to see then.

(This post was last modified: Mar 15, 2016, 08:31 PM by Sahalie.)

It was pretty freaky up here. The mountain had always been a presence in his life, a backdrop to the forest when one got a glimpse of it and the vast rocky expanse to the east. Even when the restlessness had kicked in, though, he hadn't really considered them a realistic wandering place, because. Really. They were huge and far away and that was just crazy.

But then he'd spent one extremely restless sleep full of unnerving dreams and he'd just had to escape. That was two nights ago, now; he had known it would take a while to get there, but damn, he had had no idea. He felt like he hadn't stopped, and was beginning to worry that he wouldn't be able to find his way back. That was foolish, of course; if he could get to the cedars he could get home, and the moment the terrain started to go up, up and out of the trees and over the trees below, he had been able to look back and somehow recognise that forest even though this was a completely different viewpoint to what he was used to. Everything looked different from up here, and he had barely started; often he would stop, crane his head up the slope or the steep rocky path he was gingerly climbing, and be sure that he'd made no progress at all. Maybe it never ended. Maybe it was just a test of his own willpower to see when he would finally stop and say okay, you beat me, enough. Guess I'll go back to reality now.

There was a stubbornness in his gut which hadn't let him reach that point yet, though. Sides heaving through the exertion, because although he was an excellent runner it didn't seem to translate all that well to the strength and stamina needed to constantly haul himself up rocks and sharp slopes and - surely it couldn't all be as steep as this?! Desperately needing a rest, he finally came to a point which seemed to level out some, offering a wide, rocky not-quite-flat plateau which did eventually sheer off into the sky again. Happy to take it for what it was worth, though, he happily flopped over onto the cold ground among the dried and wispy grass, the snow conspicuously absent in the warmth of day. Was it the mountain which was freakishly warm or everywhere? He was losing his frame of reference. After several minutes he pulled himself to the edge to look out over his progress, letting a paw dangle free as an example of his wild side. So dangerous.

And yeah, it was pretty freaky up here.

His panting subsided, his heart returning to normal speeds, and the urge to continue grew too strong to ignore. Pulling his paw back so that he could push himself up with it, when he placed it on the edge of the lip he was resting on and pushed, it momentarily gave way - just his weight enough to dislodge the small rocks buried loosely in the earth. But though the rocks themselves tumbled free, he jerked back safely, heart immediately leaping into his throat. Glancing over the edge, he watched the stones fall and patter against the rocky climb he had just endured, and they quickly fell out of sight and sound. How quick it was to make the return journey if you just fell...

It gave him a wicked idea. Spotting a larger rock to his right, this one twice as big as his head, he hopped over to his and judged its weight with his paw. Finding it quite moveable, if with effort, he nudged it towards the edge where the ground fell away. It balanced for a moment right at the edge, and he paused in pushing it to admire the sight, but just as his paw had been too much, so was the rock; suddenly it tipped over and was gone, and this time he stood over it staring down so that he could watch it go the whole way.

Instantly he realised that it had been a terrible mistake. The rock tumbled down several yards of steep slopes, crashing into vast pieces of immobile and earth, but then it smacked straight into another boulder a little larger than itself which had, apparently, been quite carefully balanced itself, and then suddenly there were two rocks falling down the mountain, and each and every smack of stone on stone caused him to wince.

A few moments later, three, and then five, and then one of them stopped or maybe he just couldn't see it anymore and then - the sound of the crashing and tumbling faded as quickly as it had started, though it was never quite gone, even as he couldn't really see any of them anymore. If he concentrated, there was an element of something disturbed to the air.

Oh man. "I hope I didn't ruin someone's day," he breathed.

@Tomen
A strange sound disturbed her wonder, and her ears twisted in every direction possible in an attempt to understand it. It seemed like the same sort of feeling of teeth scraping on bone, blunt claws against tree bark but not quite it. The rough stone was so unfamiliar to her that she did not expect, could not expect to grasp at the meaning until it smacked her in the face.

Literally.

As her dark face tipped up, she squinted through the sun and saw a sort of cloud of dust above her. The grating noise had more or less ceased, now replaced with a rumbling and a dark shape—oh, it was a rock, she realized— bouncing and rolling and down the mountain. Despite it's considerable size, nearly a third or a quarter of her body size, Sahalie was not worried: the trajectory of the rock did not really lead straight to her. Yet, noting this, the small boulder crashed against another of it's kind and, instead of stopping or shattering, it unearthed its companion and she found that it's course was now shifted, tumbling toward her with a renewed vigor. 

Lacking in a quickness of thought or body, the girl was not fast enough to leap away—for where was she to go? Her jagged outcrop left her vaguely stranded, and jumping down was not necessarily a safe option as the singular rock began to amass an army, and jumping up required too much calculation. As it was, the dark girl attempted to fling herself upwards in any direction that seemed like it would not be pummeled by the blitzkrieg, and largely avoided the more formidable boulders, but found her rear half struck with one or several of the smaller rocks. Balance ripped from her, she spun about in the air, forced into a sort of half-turn as she returned once more to some solid ground—and for that she was lucky.

She groaned loudly, her head a little rattled. The boulders were gone, but in her eyes there were still moving shapes that could have been rocks. One of her back legs throbbed painfully, but as she nosed it, it felt like there was no structural damage. Maybe just a bruise.

(This post was last modified: Mar 30, 2016, 10:44 PM by Hocus.)

There is a rabbit\'s nest nearby. +1 Health

No sooner had the last word left his lips when his fears were realised. Somewhere below came a faint sound, one which made his heart leap into his mouth, his breath catching as he strained to hear it. A moan, someone had moaned, and it couldn't be a coincidence. "Oh nooo," he whined, paws kneading into the rough earth of the edge he was perched on in anxiety and guilt, trying to lean forwards as much as he could without falling to desperately see who had been caught in his unintended rockfall. So careless!

"Hello?" he called, voice shaky, unable to see anything but more rocks and dirt and then, beyond that and far below, the trees. "Are y-you okay?" No matter how frantically his eyes canned left and right, he could see no movement. Maybe they were tucked away behind a ledge he couldn't see, it was pretty steep, or maybe he had imagined it... what if he had imagined it? With a tiny yelp he almost tipped forward, but saved himself, pushing back from the edge to stand securely on solid ground. It suddenly looked really high up here, and he was really, really far from home. And he wasn't a healer. What if he'd hurt someone?!

But what if that someone wasn't even a wolf? What if he'd just pissed off a COUGAR? They lived up here, right? Oh man oh man oh man-

With a brief wince of pain but no undue effort, the girl pulled her hind legs under her and sat up straight. Absently, she began to groom and dust off her shoulders that were coated in the avalanche debris. The ground was just so loose here. An ear above her head twitched as she heard, but did not immediately perceive a sound above her head. As her brain worked out the puzzle from her ears she determined that, no, it was not another rock about to come falling down, but a high pitched whine of—another wolf. That it was so far above her was immaterial: she had no idea from how high the rocks had come. It was very likely that this other stranger had been hurt in the fall, probably much more than her by the sound of it.

She opened her mouth to call out, but the motivation evaporated as a hello bounced down through the stones straight to her. Now that there was some more force behind it, the voice sounded much closer than the whines had seemed. But as she leaned left and right she couldn't spot a single soul. Where were they? They were polite enough. "Me? Just a bruise," she chirped, straining upwards as if that would help her get a better view and allow her to see the voice at last. While high pitched it was clearly male, young. Young like her? She'd have to find out. If only. "What about you, did any of the rocks getcha?"

"Where even are you??"

(This post was last modified: Apr 06, 2016, 05:05 AM by Sahalie.)

The voice that floated back up was feminine and way too chipper for someone who might have just been crushed by a rock. While the idea of accidentally provoking some rival predator was terrifying, the fact that his unintentional victim was indeed a wolf just made him feel awful. Me? she'd said, as though he might be talking to some other wretched soul he'd harmed.

Wait, what if there were more?!

That she didn't seem to realise it was his fault was obvious, and he paced nervously along the edge as he fretted. "I'm-" he started, but wasn't brave enough to say sorry, then she'd know, and he was too cowardly to face that, "-okay, um, I'm..." His voice trailed off, probably not carrying very well over whatever distance lay between them. While he couldn't bring himself to confess his crimes, he determined to ensure that whoever-she-was wasn't hurt, at the very least. Maybe if he came face to face with his victim, his guilt would force him to be honest, but it was too easy to shy away from it up here.

The mountain wasn't looking so fun and dangerous anymore, mostly just dangerous. Suddenly and keenly aware that, at any time, someone above him could do exactly the same as him and then he'd be the one having to call up 'I'm okay' - or maybe he wouldn't be okay - Tomen decided that he was pretty much done with this adventure. Coming back to the edge and leaning out as far as he could, trying so hard to catch a glimpse of her, he saw nothing - so back down it was. "I'm coming down!" he barked, and hopped to the next ledge, distrusting every rock and stone. Still seeing nothing, he hopped down another. "I can't see y- where are you?"

@Tomen i giggled a lot when writing this :>

Vaguely she could hear him responding to her, but for some reason he was not putting the same force behind his words as he had earlier when he had called out to her. This lead her to conclude that he was not, in fact, okay. But when she twisted her ears around, attempting to make sense of the weird sounds, she was left with a million possibilities of what he could have said. In her chest her heart was like a tumbling boulder. His leg could have been trapped under a rock. His whole body could have been trapped under several rocks—this seemed almost more likely, as it could explain why he was so hard to hear. He could even be bleeding to death. This possibility brought about an audible gasp as she looked upwards, searching for any signs of life. How was she supposed to get up there and find him in his mess. 

"I need an adult," she mumbled to herself, feeling for the first time in her life that she was in over her head.

Suddenly his voice returned, stronger this time, to tell her that he was coming down to find her. Immediately all scenarios that involved him being trapped or significantly injured or in a life-critical situation were tossed out. That didn't mean he was necessarily "okay," though. "You sure? I could come up instead and try to find y—" A the sound of small, scattering pebbles above indicated that he had already begun his descent. No point in stopping him now. If only her ears were any use in locating the source of the sound: up hear the world was so echo-y and strange.

If she was not coming up then she might as well make herself useful. "Uhm, uhm," her head whipped around as she tried to find some sort of distinguishable marker that he could use to orient himself. "I'm by some...rocks." Well that wasn't really helpful. There were rocks everywhere! "Under ....a rock thing that sticks out. You'll see me, I stick out like a sore thumb. I mean. I'm black—I mean, my fur is dark." Sahalie was really not a detail-oriented wolf. She was a "bigger picture" sort of wolf. Descriptions of the physical world were well beyond her—especially when it all looked the damned same! 

Light bulb!

"Maybe you could push a rock over the ledge! So I could see where you are. And then I can find you?"

(This post was last modified: Apr 22, 2016, 08:37 PM by Sahalie.)

you are cruel and unusual

He regretted everything by this point. Going down was so much sketchier than climbing up, because the whole world was just laid out below you, taunting you, showing you exactly where your broken-bodied fate lay if you mis-stepped. In fact, he was beginning to feel a little queasy, but maybe that was also the guilt of hurting someone innocent mixed in with the sudden onset of vertigo.

Working hard to breath calmly and steadily and deeply, he carried on picking a careful path downward, hearing her call airily back up at him, first offering to come up (which must have meant she wasn't that badly hurt, right?) and then trying to describe where she was. Unsurprisingly, that description involved rocks. He wouldn't laughed if he didn't feel ill.

He was just strengthening his resolve enough to shout something back when she offered a brainwave, and he swerved dangerously for a moment as the mere notion of it completely eliminated his balance. Then he did laugh, the sound light and touched with desperation, because that was just the universe being entirely twisted at his expense. "No!" he squeaked, retreating away from the edge for a moment to regain his composure, eyes flitting between the loose stones and rocks and begging them all to stay exactly where they were. "No, I mean - n-no, um, that's okay, I don't think that's necessary, it's... no. I'll find you, j-just, just keep talking to me!"

And then he took a deep breath, tiptoed back to the ledge, peered down, saw nothing resembling a black-coated wolf near some rocks (or, more rightly, every shadow looked as though it could fit that description), felt his stomach flip over, took another deep breath, and carried on descending.

"Jeez" she whispered under her breath, wondering what had the kid in such a panic. There was no need to object so strongly—it was just an idea, although apparently one that sucked. He wasn't as rude about it as he could have been, though, offering a different suggestion. Her head tipped.

Keep talking?

"But," she called up, her voice just as uncertain as the mystery-boy's, "What should I talk about?" Did he want more description of the same rocks or did he want to hear about her day, or, what? It probably didn't matter, she realized with a twinge of shame at her own stupidity. He was just trying to echolocate her, like a bat. With a lot less accuracy than a bat. Good luck. The echos of her words all around her left her doubtful but she took a breath.

"Uhm... well, my name is Sahalie. What's you-- I mean. Yeah. I'll just keep talking. Stop me if you wanna say something I guess. Uhhh.... I like to make friends and I think this mountain is pretty cool. Maybe...scary but cool." She stopped. "Am I doing okay?" Her eyes scrunched as she stared up in the sun in search of the boy or a sign. Anything. Why she felt so uncertain about talking, something that normally came so easy, was a mystery. This was, though, the first time she had been commanded to talk. It was a lot of pressure. "I'm from Oak Tree Bend on the other side of the mountain, by the way. Uhm...oh yeah I'm a Tainn. I guess I was up here to look at the other side of the Valley. Like for Swift River or something." When would it be enough?

(This post was last modified: Jun 03, 2016, 02:15 AM by Sahalie.)