conduit

Kai had somehow much farther away from Winterfell than he meant to. He wouldn't be caught dead calling Winterfell 'home,' even in the confines of his own mind; while the male was far more comfortable in the northern lands in general, he still couldn't shake the feeling he was a prisoner. Nothing could convince him otherwise, even if he wasn't being physically held anywhere. He scoffed at the thought as he continued on, his paws moving him lazily through the clusters of redbud trees. It was a decent enough day temperature-wise, clearly warmer than the north after his long journey down to this particular forest - though thanks to the land's proximity to the volcano, it didn't really feel like true summer. There was no stifling warmth here that was typical of summer, though he felt the sun's rays splashing down on the dark fur of his back, though calling these lands pleasant would be a stretch.

He wondered briefly if this land would ever be free from the volcano's threatening presence to the north. Still it stood, no longer as angry as it had once been but he swore he could see a faint plume of smoke snaking out from it's summit. But his attention was on the land surrounding him, not the ones far beyond. In his mind's eye he could almost imagine how grand this forest had once been, redbud trees reaching high toward the sky, but now.. they somehow seemed stunted, where they still grew. The ones closest to the volcano looked startlingly scorched, and he doubted they'd ever properly heal. They'd likely crumble with time, hopefully replaced by seeds carried by the lucky trees that remained. What he remembered as a brilliant palette of green and vibrant pink seemed more muted now, a far cry from what it had once been. He remembered one of the first times he'd ever been here - it'd been storming, and even from behind the cover of torrential rain he had been able to observe the colors of the trees, as clear as anything. This had been where he'd Tyranis, he suddenly remembered, and the memory was suddenly tainted beyond repair. If he'd been scowling before, the expression only deepened as he went, worn plain as day on his features.

The way the volcano's eruption had tainted these lands too now seemed oddly fitting, and he couldn't help but feel a strange camaraderie with these sad, sooty trees. Their branches still seemed as though they were dusted with ash, and he found himself nosing at a thin, spindly tree as he passed it. The fragile trunk caught on one of his tusks, and a jerk of his head sent a fine layer of ash raining down upon the ground - and thus him, too. Hardly bothered by the debris, he gave his thick coat a good shake once the dust had settled, and let out a sharp breath of air in turn, watching the way the dust lingered in the air briefly before drifting to the ground. It was an interesting sight, and one he observed for a moment before losing interest entirely in the spectacle.

Releasing the tree from his grasp, he twisted away from where he'd been standing and headed even closer to the volcano's outer ring. There was little he feared and if he just so happened to be this close to the volcano when it chose to erupt again, well, he'd consider it his time. Or he'd get a damn good workout trying to outrun it. That foul, ashen smell had left the air though and he had little reason to believe he'd meet his demise today. Stopping to pause at one particularly damaged tree, he found himself digging at the dirt, watching the way the soot stained his pale front paws. But he was only temporarily entertained by the digging, his attention redirecting somewhere else, and so his wandering continued - his paws moving as aimlessly as his mind, without much purpose or determination today. He didn't give a damn about where he ended up, or how long it took him to get there, he just wanted to move.

If anyone happened to be watching, his carelessness was obvious; occasionally he stopped his trek to sniff at the air, or nose around in the ash that still lay in heavy pockets here and there, or to shake a frail redbud tree. But even more often he was scanning the horizon, watching the way the birds that circled overhead still stayed clear of the volcano in the near distance, and the way the sky still seemed to hang darkly over that particular landmark. His paws dragged behind him as he wandered, casting visible marks in the ashy ground, no care for who might follow his tracks.

Words: 800! ;)