Chapter 2 – Three months, two weeks earlier
It is not everyday you fight the undead.
But when the dead come knocking
You'd best have a word with Hades.
The stag had been spotted in the area just off the Verdence, and following its tracks, she'd managed to stalk it into the Grenbrack Delves.
The sun was crisp on her back, and her leathers didn't make it any easier to breath in the sticky heat.
But her skin prickled and heart thrummed with excitement.
This was her first hunt ever, two weeks out of the pod and she was out in the wilds, hunting. Though not for the kill, the idea of it still held its promise.
Marrow snuffed the ground ahead of her, his head low as he tracked down the White Stag.
He lifted his nose to the air, stretching so far as to climb on an extended root over the shallow waters of the Delves.
"Anything?" She calls.
He whuffs and beats his tail morosely.
Nothing.
She stands up in the water, finding no prints embedded in the mud beneath the surface.
The tracks had stopped at the water's edge but did not diverge on any other path, so into the water she wade, cool against her calves, a pleasant reprieve from the jungle heat.
She shielded her eyes from the sun, surveying the land. It was fair enough, no blossoms like in the Grove, but the cliff side was covered in green, mostly moss, ferns, and short grass. The twisting massive roots that arced overhead were the same, providing strips of shadow across the water below.
A tropical bird twittered in the distance, she could see the flash of red wings circling over the Verdence a hop and a skip away.
Then she saw the cavern.
Big gaping mouth showing off slate blue stone, a tall and narrow entrance to a cool refuge.
"Marrow." She clicked her tongue and the dog made a noisy splash down into the water from his perch on the root.
She flinched at the noise but couldn't help her smile at the dog when he realizes just how cool the pool of water is, and promptly drops onto his stomach, smiling like the happiest dog in Caledon.
"Maroooow." She coos, the dog's ears swiveling.
"I'm sure there's cooler water in the caverns." And oh the look he gives her.
He rolls his eyes and dramatically picks himself up, nipping at her outstretched hand as if to say 'Nowyou tell me, after I get all comfortable.'
She crosses the pool, smiling at the little fish that nip at her boots, caustics shimmering across the surface of the clear spring like shattered glass. Shots of white and blue that crisscross and make it look like an Elementalist's lightning field.
Except without the sting.
She admires the water for a spell, until she hears the low warning growl that launches her into a crouch, hand plunging into the mud between her feet at the edge of the water closest to the cavern.
Marrow stands at the entrance, his ears pulled back and hackles raised.
Her heart positively sang in her ears.
"What is it, boy?" She asks excitedly.
"Is it-" she barely catches the scream in her throat when a—a thing reaches from the ground to grab at Marrow's ankles.
The dog yips and jumps away, whirling to snarl at the pair of hands digging themselves out of the sand.
The skin is pale as pearl, blue veins throbbing black sludge out of oozing cuts. The undead minion clawed its way out of its sandy grave, going after Marrow on all fours, lumbering and nearly falling to pieces as is.
"Marrow!" she barks and he comes running back to his master unquestioningly.
She sheathes her bow and breaks out her sword and torch.
She wasn't excited any more.
Her skin didn't thrum with warm energy, no, now she was ice.
She felt a cold sweat roll down her back, comparing the droplet down her spine to the black goo drooling from the undead's broken jaw.
It whirls to where the dog retreats, spotting the sylvari, its larger and tastier prey.
"Its okay Marrow." She whispers though he didn't make a sound.
It was more for her than him, it always was, he'd seen these creatures before but she… she had viewed from a distance.
This would be her first time in combat with one.
The thing bared its rotting teeth, gums turned blue and tongue missing, red spittle flying from its mouth, maybe from an unfortunate hare.
She grimaces, tightens her grip on her torch to stop her fingers from trembling, lifts, and aims.
"Mother, wish me luck." And she throws.
The torch lodges itself in the minion's gawping mouth and she flinches again at its scream.
It does not burn as she'd hoped, the soggy skin stopping the fire from spreading doubt its insides are certainly starting to cook.
But it doesn't yank the torch out, it has no sense of self-preservation, it just screams that horrid wet scream and charges her.
"Go!" She points and Marrow lunges, knocking the minion down by landing on its chest.
The undead flails its arms, trying to grab the dog already jumping over it.
It twists to follow the dog, clawing into the sand to pull itself back to its feet, a dire mistake, perhaps for all three of them.
Abhari swings her blade, the Asura make cutting into the minion's side…and cleaving it in two. The bottom half drops, kicking for an instant before going lifeless, the top half flails and gargles in the water. Her torch is snuffed out and now jutting through the back of its skull when it fell forward, onto the pommel of the torch.
Black ooze seeps from the severed spinal cord and the thing twists, trying to see Abhari with its wide and wild eyes.
She sneers and doesn't let it make eye contact, stabbing through its skull with a downward thrust into the ground.
"O-okay…" she breathes, and does the begrudging task of removing her torch from the body.
"T-that w-was-" she swallows and shudders, walking stiff-legged away from the dead minion to clean off her blade and torch at the clear edge of the spring.
Her heart hammers in her chest and her hands tremble, making it a difficult task to clean the worst of the goo from her leather coat.
Marrow whines when he returns to her side, nudging the hand cleaning off the black ooze.
"I know but… the earth will clean the water. Uhm… filter it, don't worry." She scratches him under his chin.
He lifts away from her stubbornly and murmurs in his mouth, pawing the ground as if in warning.
"What?" and he looks right at the severed body still rotting in the water.
"Oh…. Oh no." she groans and looks at him "Really?" he whines, ears flat against his skull and tail thumping the dirt.
"oh fine." She murmurs and jabs his nose "You're helping."
The process of extricating the undead from the pool was simple enough… minus the uh—trailing entrails.
She nearly dove into the pool soon as they were done, just to wash off the cold fingers climbing up and down her back.
But a small heart shape in the sand caught her attention first.
"Marrow, look." She points, and he swings his head lazily over to look.
"Tracks." The word alone makes him muff at her and pull himself up as dramatically as he had before. She taps his hindquarters with her boot.
"Lazy pup." She chides affectionately before following her dog to the lone track.
A second identical stood only a shoulders width away.
"This is where it landed." She looks back to the other side of the pool where they'd first lost the tracks, and can't help her jaw dropping in awe.
The stag jumped the entire pool, a fair feat even amongst its own kind.
"I don't know about you" she looks down to Marrow happily lolling his tongue "But I want to meet this creature."
Marrow ignores her, returning to his task of tracking the scent, snuffling the tracks in the sand, sneezing once he got the scent.
He circles the tracks in an ever widening path, paws kicking up the sand as he searches for the direction of the trail.
She waits, measuring the distance of the pool with her eyes then looking over the sandy bank, searching for distant hoof prints in case the stag had made another extravagant jump.
She purses her lips and glances towards the caverns when she sees no prints along the bank, and spots a white scar on some of the entrance rocks.
Perhaps from a sharp landing.
"Marrow, come." She clicks her tongue and for a moment the Sylvan hound ignores her, snuffing the sand and the air.
She lets him, walking cautiously to the caverns and peering inside.
She could see a waterfall inside, a small one, about 20 meters in, and a glowing blue creek cutting the caverns in half, disappearing around the corner.
The soft blue caustics reflecting off the surface of the water lights the cavern, shimmering along the walls and ceiling.
If there was any refuge from a hot summer day, this would be it.
"Marrow." She whispers.
There is something wrong with the place, throwing caution to the wind would certainly be inviting chaos.
She crouches next to the white scrabbed marks in the blue stone at the mouth of the cave. White scars scratched into the surface, two parallel lines, and another pair at shoulder's length distance.
It is possible the stag came through here.
She hears a distance mrrwuff. She pulls herself up to see her foolish dog prodding his nose into a wall of roots inside the entrance of the cave.
"Marrow." She hisses.
He ignores her.
She smiles and rolls her eyes, "Marrow, blasted dog, you're-" she screams.
Marrow spins around at the sound of his master's distress, hackles raising and teeth bared.
Cold clammy fingers snatch at her feet, the ground shifting beneath her when the arm shot out to grab at her, nails biting into her skin, golden sap oozing from the wound.
She swings her sword in a panicked frenzy, slicing the arm off at the middle, blood black as oil splattering against the sand.
She can't help the squeal when the hand doesn't let go.
"Dammit." She purses her lips, breaking one finger after the other to make it let go, pop, crack, each sound makes her flinch.
The stump left in the sand flails for a second, blue veins audibly thrumming, before dying out, the stump going limp.
The hand drops off her leg but she doesn't have time to investigate the wound when Marrow barks angrily.
She looks up to see a norn.
Pale as the others, blue and black and soggy, dripping oil black hair carelessly in front of its eyes and great maul slung over its shoulder.
A human mage slinks behind it, skirts and feet dragging in the sand and scrabbling the stone for purchase as if both its ankles were broken.
She can see behind them, other forms of movement, the cavern infested with undead.
If the stag was here, it's gone now.
"M-Marrow." She swallows, her voice trembling "L-let's go." She couldn't take them all on, not on her own. And her leg hurt, she couldn't come out of that cavern unscathed.
The norn shuffled its way towards her, Marrow skirting it to return to Abhari, he almost made it too, until something makes his ears swivel and causes him to spin around, looking around in surprise.
"D-dangit M-marrow." She swallows "Let's go." But he snarls, facing the norn as if it weren't two times her height and four times his.
She curses.
Of all the adventure loving, stubborn dogs, she ends up with-
"Hello? Is someone—" That's when she hears it, the dying voice bouncing off the cavern walls.
"P-please—help." Her heart flutters, she grits her teeth and tucks the pain in her leg away to the back of her mind.
"Alright Marrow." She takes out her bow, knocking an arrow in and aiming.
"Sic em'." Her arrow snaps, plunging into the kneecap of the norn.
It yowls, crumpling to one knee, screams turning to angry snarls. Marrow lunges, landing on the norn's chest like the first minion, but doesn't make a clean get away.
The norn's great hand swipes at Marrow when he jumps away, clipping his hip mid-air.
The crash into the ground is not graceful and her dog yelps.
That is enough to turn her veins ice with fury.
"Don't touch my dog." She lets loose another arrow, plunging into the norn's hand, pinning it to the sand just inches from reaching the dazed dog.
The norn screams, its voice gargled "TO ME!" and the human mage suddenly stiffens to attention and whirls around from its aimless wandering.
It screams, a gurgled horrid thing and charges, hands lighting with magic.
Abhari tucks her shoulder and lunges to the ground, rolling to dodge the ice spike that flew from the mages hands.
"Marrow" she shouts, remembering her training both in and out of the Dream.
The dog shakes himself out of his daze and goes for the mage.
He runs by it, biting the mage's ankle and with a horrid snap, breaks the leg off at the knee. Bits of pale skin sheds from the dismembered limb, and the scream stretches the skin of the cheeks clean off, down to the tendons and raw muscle turned ice blue.
The arrow through its eye stops the scream and the body drops, lifeless once again.
But the norn is back on its feet, swinging the maul with all its weight, giving a roar of pure rage.
She doesn't dodge it.
It hits her square in the shoulder just as she lets off a frightened arrow, her fingers trembling the fletching and she hopes it flies true.
The arrow pierces the underside of the jaw, pinning the jaw closed, the arrowhead exiting out the top of the skull.
The norn moans and sways, dropping forwards.
"Oh nononono." She squeaks and lunges to the side, hands hitting the sand, she tumbles away from the loud fwump of the dead weight norn.
She twists on her hands, scrambling to knock another arrow aimed at the norn.
She breathes relief when it doesn't move.
"Thank the Dream." She sighs and replaces her arrow into the quiver at her hip.
Marrow doesn't comfort her.
He's already slinking into the caverns.
"Marrow." She scrambles to her feet and goes after him, grabbing his scruff "Stay with me you silly dog." She mutters to him.
He ignores her like she wasn't the one who just saved his hide.
She huffs "Suit yourself."
Together they crouch along the walls of the cavern, skirting the undead glowing green.
Those were the kind to blow themselves up if you got to close, poisoning the air with their rotting stench, and she'd rather not be covered more in pale bits of flesh and blood thick as mud and absolutely impossible to get the stains out.
Though at this rate, she was sure she would need at least a new tunic, and a very long, very hot bath.
"—Is someone there?" The voice asks again.
She freezes when the undead swivel their heads, searching the caverns for the voice that bounces off the walls.
One of them jerks too hard and its spine snaps, it flails for a bit before righting its head with a crack and continues dragging its feet along in the mud.
Marrow shudders for her on that one.
"I'm over here." The voice whispers this time, realizing its mistake in calling out.
"please-"
"I'm here." She whispers and the voice quiets.
The caverns echo every sound, the moans of the undead shuffling their feet reaching the high ceilings. She thanks the Pale Tree that the ground has turned to moss and sand and ferns sprout along the creek bed, dulling her and Marrow's steps.
It's a careful process, skirting the undead and making it to the corner where the creek disappears behind, but she and Marrow manage to get by unannounced.
When she turns the corner she sees the ceiling widen and shoot up, creating a dome of sharp rocks, stalagtites filtering water that drip-drops in to the shallow pool below. Sun filters from a few holes in the ceiling and the blue glow of the water creates enough light for her to see.
A burned out skeleton of a ship sits on its side, looking like ribs of a great whale sprouting out of the ground. A sputtering fire pit still smokes in the center, gray wisps coiling from the ashes.
Her heart flutters when she sees hoof tracks.
The stag was here, and in her excitement she nearly misses the chainmail boot lying limp in the shadows of the skeleton.
Or the laughing green eyes watching her.
She blushes, tucking her ear in nervous habit.
"I—uh… are you alright?" She asks, crouching in the shadows with the sylvari.
He's favoring his right side, arm gripping his stomach, black drops splattered across his brass and red chainmail.
But he smiles, trying his best to hide the pain and fear in his eyes; it quickly turns into a grimace.
"I will be." He mutters, pushing his free arm into the sand and crying out, her hand shoots out to muffle the sound.
"What are you doing?" she hisses, looking up over her shoulder to make sure no undead were heading their way.
She turns back to see him giving her a look, her face flushes and she drops her hand from his mouth.
"Ah, sorry."
"I was trying to get up." He seethes and curses under his breath.
"Hold still." She touches his arm, pulling it away to see a gash in his armor, leafy green skin peeled back and slowly oozing gold sap glistening in the blue light.
"I'm not a healer but-" she touches the wound and wills the small amount of nature magic she has into the wound.
She hears the sparkling of her healing spring, chiming with crystal droplets, the cool feel of water pooling down her arm and into the wound.
It doesn't close up the garish wound, but it does stop the bleeding
"That should help." She helps him first to his knee, then to his feet.
She lets go and he wobbles, but manages to stay on his feet.
"Thank you, sapling." She blushes.
"Am I that easy?"
He smiles "You have a…. spriteness, about you, that I've only seen in saplings."
She tucks her ear again nervously.
"Uhm… I'm Abhari-" he stops her with a laugh.
"I think this is hardly the time for introductions." And she blushes.
Again.
"….Right, sorry."
He scowls and looks past her, still gripping his stomach.
"Your dog-" she whirls around to see Marrow sniffing and burrowing at a sand mound.
"MARROW!" she barks but the mound stirs in activity before she can warn her fool dog away.
The undead grub bursts from the sand, snapping at Marrow, its round orifice ringed with several rows of sharp drooling teeth.
Between her shout and Marrow's bark, the undead nearby twist to see them, some so quick they break their hips and drop to the water, gargling and dragging themselves forward.
"kiiillll" The undead chant, slithering from their broken voices and poisoning her confidence.
"Dammit." The chainmail sylvari grumbles and grabs his mace from his hip.
"I hope you can fight, sapling."
She doesn't trust her voice to reply with an ounce of bravery.
The little box in her throat would barely let her squeak.
The grub on the other hand, squealed with pain, curling in on itself where a large chunk of its body was missing. Marrow stumbling back, hacking the grub out his mouth, a charr's hammer smashing into the sand next to him making him jump back in surprise.
She shouts, but forms no words, just a cry of anxiety.
Her arrow shoots into the charr's neck, but it ignores it like the prick of a mosquito, raising its hammer over the dog again.
But the hammer wouldn't make another smash down.
The chainmail sylvari slides in front of Marrow, lifting his shield and shouting, a blue dome encircling him and the hound, blasting the charr back, tumbling into the water.
She flinches when its back cracks at the force of the throw.
The sylvari turns back to her pale face flushed of color.
"Are you going to stare or are you going to fight?" He snarls and she starts.
"Right." She doesn't have time to blush like the sapling she is, instead, she aims her arrows, and pin cushions as many undead as she can.
She's never fought beside a Guardian before, and she can't help but find it relieving.
He shoulders the brunt of the attacks, drawing attention to himself, keeping the enemies off of her so she can stay at range.
Following behind him, she has time to rip her arrows from the corpses they sunder and reuse them, shooting through kneecaps and eyes, avoiding the black spittle as Marrow fells his targets just as soon as the sylvari's mace or her arrows do.
The fight to make it outside the cavern is arduous, more than once she shoots down a charging asura intent on blowing itself up, just as the guardian knocks back low hammer blows sure to crush her skull if given the chance.
The light of the afternoon sun is dying by the time she is able to drop into the pool outside.
"Thorns, that was tough." She mumbles, lying in the pool on her stomach, face tilted for air.
She closes her eyes for a moment of calm, when she opens them the guardian is smiling at her.
She's sure her cheeks turn dark, "Uhm… the water is cool."
He shakes his head, and eases himself down to the ground, grimacing as he goes.
"Your wound-" she pushes herself up but he waves her off "I'll be fine, I need only rest a moment before I return to my hunt."
She scoffs "Are you serious?" he gives her a look and she ducks her head.
By the Mother that was a stupid thing to say.
"I must, my quest is greater than my health. If I fail, the consequences will be dire."
"Your quest won't go very far with you dead." She mutters, blushes when he gives her a look.
She sighs.
Thistles she was making a fool of herself.
"I… uhm… maybe I can help?" She stammers, "I'm… I myself am on a quest. After the white stag."
He brightens, "We have the same goal, sapling."
"Abhari." He stares "M-my name is Abhari."
"Gavin." She takes his hand when he offers it, stumbling at the pull but managing to help him to his feet.
"And… maybe you are right. I must rest to succeed in my quest." He smiles charmingly at her. "May we hunt together? You are an accomplished tracker for one so young, after all, you found me."
She tucks her ear "Uhm…Marrow helped." The dog whuffs happily.
"Yes, helped to bring a battalion of undead upon us." He banters.
The glare she gives the Sylvan is not cold enough.
And he completely ignores it.
Gavin laughs, and winces, gripping his side "You two are quite the pair." He breathes.
She softens, and grips his shoulder "Caer Verdant is not far, there should be a healer for you."
He sees the black bruise stretching from her shoulder the size of a norn's maul.
"You as well." She starts and looks, sees the black peeling bark, and remembers the biting wound in her leg.
"I—uhm, don't feel a thing."
"Humans call it adrenaline."
"…ah."
"Trust me, you'll be feeling it bad as I soon."
And as it would turn out, it was half way to Caer Verdant when she resorted to field dressing her leg if just to squeeze the pain out of it, massaging her bruised shoulder and mumbling under her breath.
"Should've dodged that hammer."
Gavin smiles and shakes his head, loose pollen falling from his sprigs.
"You can't parry every attack, sometimes you need to take them to get your perfect strike." She crinkles her nose.
"You have a shield, Gavin, that is cheap advice from a soldier." But she laughs, eyes shining at the sight of the stars appearing in the purple ether of dusk.
Gavin notices, connecting the dots soon enough and with a chuckle, points out "Your time is coming, isn't it, Abhari?" She turns to him and smiles.
"It is." He gestures to a pattern of stars, just arriving from the gold horizon, above the vast jungle canopy.
"What are those?"
And oh how she feels the pride swell in her chest.
"Those are the fangs of the viper."
"Where's the rest of him?"
"The sun still has him."
"Ah." Gavin smiles and points again above the watch tower of Caer Verdant getting closer as they came to the foot of its hill.
She grimaces at the throbbing in her shoulder but analyzes the constellation over the twisting root tower where a Warden looks down on them and announces their approach.
"That one is the Hunter's companion."
"A dog?"
"A hawk."
He squints his eyes at the stars "Oh… oh I see it." She touches his shoulder, leaning her head next to his and pointing from his point of view.
"You can see the wings, those three stars." He nods.
"To the norn it's the great Owl, the one vanquished by Jormag."
He shakes his head "How do you know all this?"
She shrugs "Most of it I seem to remember from my Dream. Malomedies has taught me some."
They're within the firelight of the watchtower, blinding the stars from sight, but she points to one of the brightest ones.
"That's the eye of the west wind."
"Ah, the zephyrs?"
"Right."
"And that's-" she stop and ducks her head, cheeks burning furiously when one of the wardens clears his throat.
"I'm guessing you're here for more than stargazing."
Gavin smirks at his companion and addresses the warden "We could do with some healing."
The warden's eyes widen the slightest in understanding and notices where Gavin holds his arm close to his stomach.
"Is it serious?"
"I suspect it will be if left over night." The warden nods and retreats to retrieve one of their menders.
"Gavin," she starts quietly, feeling the burn in her ears "I'm sorry. I got a bit… carried away there."
"Abhari, I enjoy listening." He smiles warmly at her "You night blooms are usually so quiet and secretive, and I've always been curious about the stars."
"Ah… well… glad I could be of service."
"Plus, it's distracting."
She knits her brow, confused, "Distracting….?" Then her eyes widen as if remembering just how bad of shape he was in.
"Oh! Right! Gavin, I'm sorry. I'm over here dawdling and you need healing-"
He laughs though it pulls at his wound "So do you, sapling, if you don't remember?" he taps her bruised shoulder.
Marrow growls for her, making the guardian throw his hands up in defense.
"It was in jest!" he laughs when the dog grumbles at him and stalks away, nose held high.
"Your dog is peculiar."
She finds herself tucking her ear in embarrassment.
"He means well."
"Yes, if you consider unleashing an undead assault 'meaning well'." She jabs him just in time for the mender to see, the sylvari woman screeching.
"I don't need wounds stretched beyond repair!" Abhari flushes, turning her face away shyly.
"Do not be so hard on the sapling, Wyieth." She can hear the mender huff "Fine." Grabbing Abhari's wrist with an ice cold grip.
"Let me take a look at you." Her skin is freezing to the touch, shining white against the torches and when Abhari meets her wilting brown eyes she feels a root in her stomach pull tight.
"H-hello." The elementalist lifts a brow at her and looks at Gavin who just shakes his head.
"Hello." Wyieth's voice is dry as tinder, the sound Marrow makes clawing into wood or against rock.
"…Hello." Gavin bursts laughing "Wyieth! You've dazed the poor bloom." Abhari flushes, looking away from the two of them.
Wyieth just smiles crookedly, before smoothing her cold hand over Abhari's shoulder, and the sensation of sharp icy fangs sinking into every pore made her stiffen.
And when the pale sylvari reaches for her leg she jerks back.
"N-no, I'm f-fine." Her shoulder felt miraculously better but this… this healing didn't feel right.
"Nonsense, your dressing is bleeding through already." She, shocked, looks down in time to see Wyieth's hand flash in white and blue attunement and presses her palm into the moon shaped wounds dug deep in her calf.
She seethes, the ice crippling her leg from the knee down, lurching to grab Gavin's shoulder for support.
"Abhari." He says, laughing "She's a mender, not a necromancer."
"I-I know, it's just—" so cold.
She does not voice her thought.
"Good enough." Wyieth stands and immediately goes to Gavin who opens his arm to her, letting her heal the gash in his stomach and minor scratches in his arms.
Abhari watches, and notices he does not flinch.
She'd never had occasion to be healed, maybe this was how it felt in the hands of an elementalist?
She preferred her own nature magic or Marrow's regeneration. It was at least familiar, not Wyieth's foreign claws of water and ice.
"You two should rest for the night, we'll set the fire." Wyieth turns away and calls out to one of the wardens to put together a small campsite for Abhari and Gavin.
She watched Wyieth go, her short golden leaves and fronds on her head were dappled brown as if wilting.
"Abhari?" She starts and looks wide eyed at Gavin "Are you alright?"
She smiles "Now I am." She lies.
"Come," he takes her hand and leads her to the edge of the cliff the Verdant sits on, standing at the end of the torch light where the warmth is at their backs and the cold nip in the night air becomes evident.
She welcomes it.
This cold is familiar.
It is the night, it is home and she remembers the first time she opened her eyes not two weeks ago and saw the same stars over her head.
"Will you show me more stars?" he asks, pointing at another cluster of stars.
She snorts "Those aren't anything… not yet." He turns a darker shade of green.
"I feel… hrm… uncertain, at night. I want to know more but it is rare to find one so versed in midnight."
She smiles though her mind still scratches at the fangs still digging in her shoulder and leg.
"I'm at a disadvantage too, Gavin. I know nothing of dusk." He smiles "Am I that easy to tell?" he asks.
She ducks "Uhm, you—you're curious, I feel like a puzzle when you ask me these questions." He beams "You make a good puzzle Abhari."
"….thanks?" she has to stop herself from tucking her ear nervously.
"I'm afraid there isn't much to tell about dusk. We do not have many secrets, no stars to guide our way." He shrugs "we're the transition from noon to night, before dark. Some call us philosophers, I simply enjoy learning and understanding the world."
"Gavin!" they both look to see Wyieth gesturing, pointing to a small fire set for them on the edge of the Verdant, away from the other wardens, for privacy.
"Your fire's ready."
He lifts his arm in thanks and turns to Abhari "We'll need to rest if we're to continue our hunt in the morning."
She nods and follows him across the Caer, glancing up at the stars that disappear as she adjusts to the fire light.
She finds herself missing them already.
But she sits across from Gavin at the fire, Marrow helping himself to her lap, resting his muzzle on her knee and sighing, exhausted.
"Thank you, Gavin." He starts from his own stargazing, meeting her bluebell eyes with his ivy.
"For what?" he asks with a smile.
She shrugs, smoothing Marrow's foliage down, "For asking, I've found many who are curious but never voice themselves. It's… different… talking."
He grins "Just talking?"
She nods "Yeah, I'm still getting used to my voice and I'm surprised so many do not use theirs." "It's a polite world. To ask is to intrude." She smiles "So you're intruding?" he turns a shade darker.
"No! Abhari-" she laughs and he flicks a twig at her "You are sly, sapling, perhaps you truly are a night bloom."
She gives him a sincere smile, but she tucks her thoughts behind her eyes.
Sometimes I do not feel like it.