A ghost from the past

The man visited the Red Forest often. Haunted by some strange sentiment of belonging. His responsibility to the land had not gone when ownership was shifted. When the life here shifted with it. His black body would be found resting alongside a redwood trunk, his posture as erect and alive as the tree that accompanied him. But in the darkness of the night only his eyes were visible to the observant traveler and with no one to witness his forlorn gaze it was as if he was not there at all. The sound of travel would stir him from a thoughtful state and his head would slowly turn to acknowledge the wolf that approached him. He recognized her in scent but her presence was unmistakable for her violet eyes glowed vibrantly in the scattered moonlight that poured through the canopy above, her immaculate pelt glowing in a ghostly white.



"Hello Alena." He would speak his greeting and when the words would leave the man he would be left with an uncertainty of what to say next. His interactions with the woman had been few and he knew only a handful of facts about her that left him without any context of her character. Her presence had both summoned him from contemplation and fanned the flame of his current thought. Deteste had realized upon leaving Amenti that he would not be able to move on to a life elsewhere. So he returned, constantly fueling a cycle that could not bid the hollowness of the abandoned forest away. He was a leader and he was a father. He desired to leave a meaningful life for his children once his time expired. Upon the close of discourse between Valhalla and Glaciem the man would set his plan to re-claim what he had come to think as his.