ꙮ Tiny motes of jade flit through the air, so very briefly, blinking into existence, and then out again. Reach out and grab one, and it slips through your fingertips like it was never there. You see them out of your corner of your eye, sometimes - they never seem to pop up right in front of you. They’re around the small black-cobbled space at the end of the Obsidian Road, around the lamppost and the currently-staticky obsidian portal, -definitely- around the ziggurat comfortably hunkered down nearby, around the Obsidian Road’s odd occupant.
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- Aurelius
- The Awoken
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← Active ScenesAt the End of the Obsidian Road, I
#wolf
#tlanextli
walks over to the pile of…leathers? Tent-stuff? It’s hard to tell what it was, just that it was once something that it is now…not. He looks at the orb of gnosis that it’s curled around and smiles a little. “Is that a toy you’ve found, hmm?” A thoughtful look. “Or a meal?”
ꙮ It certainly looks like leathers, or at least someone from Almachadta or the Beast, somewhere with a tradition of leatherwork, would see it as such. Faint traces of long-faded colour, the ghost of yellow and red hues, tiny lines suggesting the recollection of pigment where it’s creased. It shifts, very slightly. Jade eyes blink up at the Wolf-Priest, slowly. It’s sort of… curled up around the orb of tenebrous gnosis. If it’s a meal, it’s certainly one it’s savouring.
chuckles softly. “And where did you get that, I wonder?” He stretches with a grimace, the crackle of his shoulders audible in the relative silence. “May I sit, cousin? I wouldn’t presume on your company, but it has been a surprisingly long day.” He sounds like he means it?
ꙮ You very clearly hear four specific tones; you may have heard the Awoken whistling the same notes at some point, or singing random words to the contour of it. Low-high, high-low. It then scootches over a little bit, careful not to dislodge its orb. You can communicate ‘absolutely, there’s lots of room’ without words!
tilts his head, just a bit, at that familiar melody, blinks at the orb, then laughs. “Ah. I see. Goodness. I shall have to ask him about that…it’s certainly far from where he last was.” He sits down with a grunt and a bit less of his usual grace than normal, twisting a bit to stretch some more. “Thank you, cousin.” He smiles. “In case you’re wondering, I’m well aware that we’re not related.” A pause. “At least, I presume we’re not. These days, I don’t precisely feel safe to presume.” He shrugs and continues. “It’s the way of my people–the yeresh, I mean. Each stranger is ‘cousin’–a reminder that we are all, in a way, connected.” He grins a little. “And neither would it do to be rude.”
ꙮ The jade eyes blink, slowly, peering at the Wolf-Priest as if committing him to memory, and then half-close; it hunkers down companionably next to him. It seems absolutely fine with all of this. Wolf notices it - someone else might not, but Wolf does - a very very faint, not -precisely- tuneless but very meandering, humming-under-one’s-breath, resonating through the gnosis around it. It’s a pleasant sort of meandering.
tilts his head and half-closes his eyes to listen…perhaps not even conscious of how he hums softly under his own breath, as much a rumble and resonance in his chest as a tone, but he finds the counterpoint quite easily, following the meander of it…not attempting to override or even guide the other’s melody, instead letting himself fit comfortably within it. His breathing deepens, evens–it’s clear he finds it quite soothing.
ꙮ The jade eyes blink, once. The humming grows… not louder, precisely. Easier to pick out, easier to follow. Harmonizing with the Wolf-Priest sometimes, sometimes letting him harmonize with it. It is, utterly, instinctive, like yeresh festival-song with someone you’ve sung with many times. The melodies are -there-, and they weave together, tracing lines that feel like they’ve been carved in stone for centuries even as you’re singing them.
hesitates, briefly, then lets himself sink deeper into it; letting himself empty in the way he might at a festival, or a rite–or a Rite–not an absence of self, but an openness of it, letting past and future slip away to a continual, crystalline moment. ⁂
Unbidden, words bubble up from within him, and he lets them, shifting the melody–not taking over so much as briefly taking ‘lead’. “At the second stop where paths cross, you pause / Leave time behind and weighty thoughts / Where you are headed, they’ll be of no use / The burden lightens but heavy is the path ahead…” 🙧
ꙮ The entity… it’s hard to say whether it recognises the song. It’s happened before: singing with the yeresh, and someone starts singing a song they’ve not heard before as if they’ve known it their whole life. The voice that sung when you first ventured on the Obsidian Road picks up where Wolf leaves off, or sings with him: “At the third stop where paths cross, you pause / Leave fears behind, let fall all masks / Where you are headed, they’ll be of no use / The burden lightens, but heavy is the trail ahead…”
falters, his breath catching, but he can’t not finish the pattern. “Naked at the top, the mountain knows you / North waves an eagle-wing, the wind it draws / The shadow-women dance about you / They sing for you, chanting powerful runes…” He falters to a stop, his eyes full of wonder, and of questions, and swallows hard. “It is…an old, old song. One of my best-beloved…” His eyes slide up to that ink-black sky, and his brow furrows. “Ah, my friend. I have so many more questions than answers.”
ꙮ Jade eyes blink, very slowly, and it hunkers down, again, peering up into the velvet-black with the Wolf-Priest. It then begins to sing-hum a melody - the melody Wolf played that carried them to the Obsidian Road in the first place, the melody of the song at the Courtyard hot springs. Wordless… elaborating on it, a bit, here and there, little melodic flourishes, harmonic complications. Nothing that gets in the way of the melody, just… a somewhat playful spirit.
He looks surprised, then laughs, drawing his flute from his sash and putting it to his lips–playing along, adding his own occasional flourish and run; and from time to time, you can almost hear the rhythm of words in his breath… “And my heart beats, and beats, and beats…”
ꙮ It sings as the priest plays, until the song reaches its end, and they fall into companionable silence. It adjusts, slightly, around the orb of tenebrous gnosis it’s holding. ⁂
ꙮ It seems happy. 🙧
reaches out his hand, gently, to lay it gently on the leathers where he suspects its head might be. “Thank you, little Ember.” And, on impulse, a modification of the traditional words: “It is a long road to your Hearth, but I shall walk it to its end, and keep the Fire safe along the way. So says the Wolf Who Sings.”
ꙮ It does not -quite- nuzzle into the Wolf-Priest’s hand, but there’s a faint pressure against his hand where it lies against the leathers, and a pleasant hum in the background gnosis, and jade eyes blink, again, slowly.
breathes deep, and relaxes, and lets himself drift in pleasant thoughtlessness, eyes cast up towards the blackened heavens. He stays there, quiet and companionable, for a goodly time.
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I think that's a good spot to call it?