Elm

Is it the sea you hear in me,
It's dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?



It was nearly night when the frigid wind would inform the man that his harrowing call was no longer needed. Yet a final cry would part his black lips; hot breath billowing from a display of stained teeth which gleamed in a sallow light as the sun began to set. The cry no less powerful than his first, but rough and somewhat haggard as it was his twentieth. He had not shifted since he had set out that morning and his haunches were somewhat numb with cold. Yet he would not stand until Basilisk's form began to fathom it's self in the distance; his gait stiff as he sought to close the distance between them.



Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it
Listen these are it's hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.



When they did meet the man was somewhat speechless. And given the soreness of his abused throat a desert of silence could have settled between the men for the minutes that they stood in the bitter wind without speech. At last the rough clearing of a throat would broach that sterile air, an attempt to cut the roughness from his voice before he spoke. Basilisk, a deep nod following the name, I am alpha among the Redwoods. I invite you to become my ally and advisor. A dignitary among the ranks. In his staple fashion, no decoration would accompany his speech and no foreplay would come before it. The man's voice had hunted him for the entirety of a day; there was little worth in building up to an inquiry which would have an answer of yes or no.