Perhaps, Perhaps

KRINNAG

The trees stood as black, dead bodies, charred by the fire that he had seen seasons ago. The black hadn’t – it couldn’t be – washed from the trunks. It’s all that they were. From the ground, the ash and char had turned to soil, ground in, dissolved, churned up by the seasons that had passed. The vagabond paused for a moment, huffing out a few breaths as he studied the slowly curling greenness that began to push through the earth, new growth in the wake of tragedy.

These little happenings occurred all throughout the burnt forest, life finding a way to start a new even after the trauma that fire caused. He had learned that something had been important about the forest. Something about gods – is that what they called the stars that they named? Is that what they were to those that followed the religion of the place that Krinnag now called home? – and a tree that went beyond his scope of knowledge and realm of caring.

He paid little mind to even the gods that he had been raised to recognize – gods of war, sacking, the taking of bodies and belongings that his birth pack had so delightfully relished in – not speaking to them, not offering them anything. The thought crossed his mind from time to time… Perhaps he would find something to call his place in life once again if he began to heed them once again. He had considered it from time to time, but never quite went beyond thinking the thought. Perhaps that life was his lot in life, and he would hold little beyond it. Perhaps he should strive for it once more?

”Fuck off with that shit,” Krinnag mumbled to himself. He needed to get out of his own head, out of his past. He wasn’t the warrior that he had been. He had been the scapegoat, and pack life was no longer for him because of that reason. ’But maybe… No, just shut the fuck up.’

His ears twitched, and his head snapped towards the sound of a foot fall. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the tree’s corpses for signs of life beyond his own beating heart and the newly sprouting greenery and the small upright twigs that would become trees in years’ time.

euric wintervale

with frozen feet i'll move

The northern man had given to hanging around the area for some time now, taking comfort in his solitary ways as he explored surrounding lands. Periodically, though, he'd find himself coming to this dead forest. The graveyard of giants taken down to nothing more than scarred remnants, ash and dust. Euric would come here because here is where things were truly quiet. A silence hung over this area as dead as the trees themselves, and for some reason, in that he found solace. When he had no energy to bother with it all, he would come here to reset his thoughts.

- - -
As Euric crossed into the ashland he knew he wasn't here alone. The stillness that usually laced the air was tainted by the scent of a presence; a stranger. Though, surely a native of these lands, but certainly a stranger to him. He debated his path, wondering if avoiding the contact with another would be better or investigating, if he had the social energy to do it. Did he ever, though? Staying his course, eventually Euric caught sight of a dark man, his body littered with scars. He stopped a yard short of the male, ears perked upwards. “Good day,” he offered plainly.

“I am speaking”

table made by soar


@Krinnag

KRINNAG

Krinnag’s eyes landed on the shape of another, a man of greys and whites, and eyes a blue he had personally never seen before. His ears twitched. Perhaps what he had heard hadn’t been a footfall and had been something else. Maybe a twig breaking from the charred remains of a tree with a quiet sound, before tumbling to the beaten, watered down ash below. The man that the vagabond saw now made hardly the sound of a breath as he walked through the dead forest – outside of the odd soft crunch of chunks not yet crumbled to dust, the man’s ears could detect little in terms of sound from the other.

Krin gave a small huff and tilted his head when the other got close enough to speak. “Good day.” Conversational distances. Silence hung for a few moments, as the man decided whether he wanted to spend the energy to speak, to interact, to do anything but wander in the way that he had become so accustomed to. In taking the time to look the other over, he noted that the other didn’t seem… Overtly excited for interaction, but there were no signs of aggression. Perhaps… Perhaps it was worth it to talk? One of his ears flicked to the side, slowly relaxing into a lazy hang before his lips twitched and he rumbled out:

”Hello. Who’re ya?”

@Euric