"Speech"

It was hard to bite back the urge to seek the darker, more shadowy parts of the territory. He knew, he knew that the light of the day had never dissipated the shade of his mother. She had existed in the sweltering heats of a desert, the translucent white of her coat iridescent and otherworldly, shimmering like the heat that rose from the sands beneath his feet. He could only cast fugitive glances at the toes of her feet. Any more blatant attempts to see her and she would vanish before him like mist.

That was a different world to the rocky territory he stood upon now where sheer drops appeared around every bend, and movement meant climbing, jumping, or crawling over rocky obstacles. There where dark caves that travelled deep into the unknown, and a treacherous path that lead upwards, spiraling into the tip of white that marked the top of the mountain. This was different again from the woods him and his mother had travelled through in the last weeks before her fall. It expanded his knowledge of the world, the realization that there was so much more beyond than whatever simple territory you stood in.

The silent boy fought his urge to sink deeper into the mountain, conquering it by climbing upwards instead. His breath was heavy as he took the climb, scaling upwards, paws scouring into muddy rock as he pulled himself up a ledge twice his height. Paws coiling beneath him as he jumped a ledge, all in the name of journeying ever higher. He didn’t stop, even as his pads wore thin by rough rock, and his body had connected roughly to more than one obstacle as he threw himself around recklessly. He didn’t still until the texture beneath his paws turned to snow, and he shivered at its cool touch. Here was something else new, and his paws sunk into its depths, adding another difficulty to his journey. Panting, wordless, he continued.

He was weary now, his vision swam and his body ached. The air seemed thinner and his breaths where more ragged, drawing in that much needed oxygen into the depths of his lungs. he took another step forward, faltered, and lay against the snow. in the past, the more abused and battered he felt, the more tired and hopeless, vision scrambled, mind asunder, she had always found him. Her ghost did not come to him now. She was gone, lost to the wind. She had left him all alone.

Art by Sigath

Korinna was slowly but surely growing used to this terrain. A large portion of her time in Ruina so far was spent navigating this slightly treacherous volcano. She knew fully well that Elias must've had a good reason to claim Mount Volkan, and it probably held excellent tactical advantage over other packs and their territories, but that didn't make getting used to living here any easier. No, navigating the sides of the volcano was a tricky endeavor, and she was dedicating herself to the task of learning the terrain until she no longer had to question which way she was heading.

Due to the vastness of the terrain, it was rare Korinna actually ran into anyone... at least on purpose. Especially so close to the peak of the volcano, where breathing felt more difficult and the ground grew steeper. Even Korinna, who had been training her body to get used to these climbs, was feeling fatigued as she climbed. Her steady breathing had become labored and uneven, and she felt her limbs quivering slightly with each step. She'd need to stop for a short rest soon, though she knew there was no chance of finding water to refresh herself with up here. She'd have to endure the slight bit of thirst she was feeling before finding her way back to the surface. As she climbed, the faintest hints of snow grew less sparse, and before long she found herself trudging through it. Perhaps it's time to turn back around soon, she thought to herself, deciding that she didn't feel like being stranded up here ankle deep in snow for very long..

But the scent of someone unfamiliar caught her attention, and Kori redirected herself to follow their scent. From a distance she finally spotted someone with a dark brown coat, of relatively small stature. Well, smaller than her, at least, though it was impossible to really tell from a distance. She trudged on, her breathing still unsteady and her chest heaving as she picked up the place. The stranger appeared young, she could tell now, and was.. lying in the snow? Was he hurt? Frowning, she pulled a bit closer, finally loping completely towards him and nudging him roughly on the flank. "Awful place to stop for a nap, boy," Kori snapped as she examined him, deciding that he was a member of Ruina from his scent alone, but she didn't know a thing else about him. "I'd get up if I were you. Unless you're trying to get frostbite, then you picked the perfect place."

"Speech"

Alone. It was all he could think about, every fibre of his being set to the task of examining how definitive and absolute his loneliness was. What he wouldn’t give to have his mother returned to him. The longing to look up into her familiar face, and know that everything would be ok.

Instead, he was left with the impossible task of avenging her. Left waiting, uncertain, for someone who might train him body and might to take on the murderous stranger who had ripped her from him. The woman who had always been quick to smile, to show him the wonders of the world. ‘Look, my little dawn’ she would say, her nose nudging upwards, directing his gaze. ‘its a macaw. Isn’t it beautiful?’ and whatever he she was pointing to, it would always be wonderous and fascinating. More so for the way her voice changed, the wonder in her tone as though she herself saw it for the first time. Every time.

He was so lost in his memories, that he would catch no sign, sight, or sound of the newcomer. He would not know her presence until her muzzle nudged into his fur. He jumped in startelement, backing from her touch. He was no longer accustomed to physical comfort, it was as strange to him as speaking. Stranger perhaps, he had said more words since his mother’s loss, then he had felt touch.

He didn’t waste any now, turning his backing into a rising, his paws firming against the soft ground, his stance cautious, through not afraid. What did he have to fear? He had already experienced the worst loss the world was capable of giving him.he regarded her curious, silent. The blue of his gae tracked the scars the lightened across her face like crackings in wood, or the fine webs of a spider.

Art by Sigath

He was so young... why was he out here all alone? Korinna was able to get a better look at him now, and though he was not at all small for his age he was quite visibly young still. Though she knew Ruina wasn't exactly a pack that catered to the weak - and likewise, she doubted they coddled their young at all - but to climb so high up this volcano seemed unnecessarily dangerous for a wolf not yet fully developed. Perhaps he had gone on his own, without the knowledge of his parents, or anyone who might be responsible for him? Kori wasn't sure, but she also wasn't comfortable with the thought of leaving a boy to freeze in the snow. She was fairly certain Elias wouldn't be pleased with that. Her dark nose wrinkled at the thought, nosing him somewhat roughly again a second time, before he finally jerked away from her touch. He seemed startled by her presence, turning and swiveling away from her.

His posture was wary, but he didn't seem downright scared. She was a member of Ruina, after all, and the last thing she intended to do was to harm another packmate. Jeopardizing her place here wasn't something that was on her current agenda. Kori found herself furrowing her brows as she regarded him, watching as he veered away to examine her. Silent, but luckily alert, so she didn't have to wonder if he was losing consciousness from lying in the snow. "The hell are you doing out here anyway, hm, boy?" She snapped, not necessarily out of annoyance but simply wanting to know what he was doing. "Laying out in the snow is a stupid thing to do, especially this high up and so far from the rest of your packmates."

"Speech"

The cold ran through his veins, matching the cold, empty feeling in his heart, and the ache in his lungs. There was a dampness in his coat where his body temperature had melted some of the white substance that clung to him. He knew there should be a part of him that was weary of pain, and what it could mean. Death didn’t scare him, not like it should. He had sought out pain too much in his past to find anything but a dull comfort at its presence. There was something fundamentally wrong about him, broken. He didn’t respond like any normal wolf should.

He looked at her with a soft, dull expression, hiding a deeper intelligence beneath. This wolf before him was Ruina, he knew that much, and little else. He had never seen her before, nor heard many names of the members of this pack. He had none to match her to, and she offered him none now. Only scorn in her tones as she berated him for his actions. The faint itch of a smile could possibly be made out in the corner of his muzzle. Or perhaps it was a twitch from the cold, it was hard to tell.

Lying in the cold seemed perfectly reasonable to Astraios. Pain had brought about the shade of his mother in his past, and here and now when he seemed so distant, so many world away from her, he had hoped to open a link between them. Instead, there was nothing. Still, the pain could only tame his body, teach him a lesson. Isn’t that what everything in life was for? Losing his mother, finding Ty, ending up here. It was all a lesson of some sought, whether he wanted it or not.

His lips parted softly, through he was still reluctant to speak. The steps he had taken to welcome back the ghost of his mother would be shattered if words escaped him. Silence, pain, dark and quiet. These where the places he found her most easily. A soft sigh escaped his lips, and he raised his eyes to the womans before her, openly looking at the stranger who spoke to him.

Art by Sigath

What the actual fuck? Korinna wasn't exactly an ordinary wolf, not by any means. She didn't fear death either, though only because she thought it unavoidable - and what might've been emptiness inside of Astraios was instead a burning wildfire inside her own heart. Because of this, she couldn't understand the reason for his empty stare. Not one for empathy, she couldn't begin to understand this young boy or what he had been through, even if she'd had half an idea. Instead, she was merely annoyed, knowing fully well what would be thought of her if she let a packmate freeze to death at the peak of this damn volcano. Korinna huffed, exhaling a soft puff of white breath into the frigid air as she tried to figure out what course to take.

He parted his jaws just slightly, and she felt a surge of hope that this stupid boy might finally say something. Instead, he was merely silent, staring and empty. "Goddamnit," Kori was huffing again, moving closer to the boy. If he had been anyone else, she would've been tempted to shove him down the cliffside and make him roll all the way down, but his scent was clearly of Ruina and she knew better. "Elias will definitely kill me if he knows I left you up here to freeze to death. You can either walk or be carried, take your pick." Kori's eyes held little sympathy as she eyed the boy, moving as if ready to grab him by the damn scruff and start barreling down the cliffside - she would, too.