You use a can opener for what, now?

It wasn't enough. He had gotten a few wolves under his belt, and had all the space in the world to get over the losses but it still-

Silence followed the hulking wolf as he stood and left the Roots. It had been in the dead of night, and his restless mind urged him, commanded him to rid himself of this new kingdom. Of this place he had begun to model with he and his Son's cologne, he and his new underling's piss. He just up and left it behind.

The behemoth lumbered through the cool time he had, making most of his travels without food, without water, and he remained as quiet as the sleeping robins, hunting owls, and scandalous foxes that watched him depart. 'It's not forever' he told himself. Molten eyes scored the ground in a sear that held no value to anything. Every step led him away from the place. @Makaro would know to watch over the youngling, and ensure no one interrupted their attempts to claim that land. But ultimately, should Makaro see no use in remaining, or be outnumbered or attacked, he would know where to pick his battles, and where to leave them to rot.

The sun had been cycled at least 4 times before he had decided to quench his thirst. Pads were tired, but he ignored their whimpers. 2 more cycles around the sun, and then he indulged himself on a fallen prey. Then, he continued.

Mountains came to view, but his hassle was much more stubborn. Remaining on the outskirts of the peaks, he bypassed the biome, and kept with the green. Something needed to give him reason. His wanderlust was paired with such an agonizing loneliness that the murderer just couldn't comprehend. As keen as he was, he couldn't figure the void that lurched his limbs forward. It damned him, and he would merely obey until he no longer could.
On he marched.

Eventually, it began to chill in the mid of this morn. His limbs had grown tired, and now they wailed. Muscles had ached as his march began to slow. His bulk remained, but did not hold the vigor and vivacity it once kept. Those molten irises however, burned hotter than they had before, as he entered the horizon pastures of the Tundra.
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The crane stood just east where the rime river flowed near their mountainous home, and just as she lapped up the rest of the water she needed, the willowy femora had turned to head back towards the territory. That was until a dark shape began to materialize out the corner of her eye and upon turning her pale crown to look, a large ebony shape seemed to be prowling near their borders. How ironic it was that the young crane kept running into tall, dark men -- it was almost as if the universe was trying to tell her something. Not that the aloof woman could ever catch on, that is.

Her frosted lilac gaze did not leave the figure as she approached them -- calm, cautious, untrusting. She could not recognize this scent, as most who wandered the heights of Shiroshika often had the snowy empress' scent lingering off of them, so the girl assumed this man to be a stranger. "Greetings sir," she wisped softly towards the dark-cloaked man, coming to a slow stop a few feet from where they stood to observe. Izumi was cautious, but not cold enough to ignore their clear lethargy. Her greeting remained neutral for now.

"These are the mountains of Shiroshika. Is there something you need?"

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The tyrant's head rose to a voice that he had mistaken for either his own personal entourage of mental voices coming to greet him on death's revisited doorstep, or a breeze mistaken. No, his volcanic gaze sweltered up dry and dormant grass spikes to a pair of spindle stalks draped in black silk, ombreing up in eclipse of grey into sublime ivory. The limbs curled up to support a broader chest of snow plush, and the searing eyes drove against the stark nape to a startling rediscovery of onxy once more. Hidden behind it was a face of winter, and two expressive coals dotted well wary crystallined royal amethysts. It wasn't until he spoke that the catch of ink snatched his attention from the flash of movements - two ears as well, dipped in midnight. 

Too many thoughts had passed through him as he was unable to word a greeting to the wonder. However, his prompt was her second sect of words, another breath passing through his ears in a dulcet harmony he hadn't thought he could muster a reply against for the mere music it presented. 

He didn't want her to stop talking. 

"Yes-" his baritones came, sounding much weaker than what he had anticipated for himself in front of this ... what was she?? Surely she couldn't be the same specie as he. Something so plain, so telling-

"I do not know what it is that I need..." it was though merely giving her attention would fuel his honesty where before, there was none. "I am missing... something inside. And I feel lost. It forced me to leave my home, my people..." Something violent in him screamed profanities, while something else laughed. But collecting another breath, he found some sense of stability in those irises that held some uncanny beacon to his words. "I am not looking for a shelter, but I seek a home. Something to make whatever hole is inside of me, fixed." He couldn't dream 'companionship' up in an emotion, but it was something that made his heart hit his chest with not a single sense of restriction. There was a lot of holes in him, but the eclipsed beauty before him was... there was something unbelievable about her. Something worth more awe than a little boy's first kiss on the cheek by a girl he didn't know liked him back. Something that reminded him of home. 

"I am Slade." he gave her his first name, not his last. Not his many titles he had earned and brutally claimed through his past. Not the last words spoken by a robbed mother as her child had been gutted before her, before her final screams too had been silenced. Not the pleas the father cried before he was snapped apart. Not the mourning the grass cried as it drowned in copper and salt, in phosphorus and sulfur, in rot and decay of an entire pack gone. No...

He gave her his first name. And he did it without a single bit of hidden intent. 

He stood still, only just offering a pinch of motion of his snout, a push forward to catch a whiff of whatever perfume she had on her, but the dark king was given no breeze to allow him such a gift. The girl who was seized by dusk and kissed by dawn was only just out of his nares reach, and the Nightmare King had to swallow to fight the urge to march forward and take the scent. Her limbs would outrun him easily. And surely there were eyes on this event, should she truly be claimed by this pack who's name he couldn't care to pronounce. He merely wanted her name, and he left his words to entice her to reveal it. A chasm for her to either leap across, or leave him standing on.
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His voice was quite startling at first -- a low baritone that could vibrate the atoms around them, and made her dark audits twitch ever so slightly. Nonetheless, it was not as if he spoke in a tone that would give off aggression. He seemed rather calm, despite his intimidating presence, so she stayed a while to listen. The crane had run into large lupine and even felines that had no intentions of hurting her, after all. What fairness was there in judging based on appearances?

The dark wraith spoke, and she listened. Though his words were so vague and disoriented, the crane had a difficult time actually understanding. "I don't know what I need" he said -- "I was forced to leave my home", he said. To what extent she was able to comprehend, Izu attempted to piece together the things he wasn't hinting at himself. Then it hit her; this stranger had walked up looking dizzy and confused -- so he must've woken up in these lands not too long ago like others have.

Izumi was unaware of what was going on in the shadow clad's mind, as all she saw was what she'd experienced herself in the beginning -- and the willowy crane had already made it her personal mission to aid people like this. Both for research purposes, and to help any way she could.

She took a moment to visually assess him for a few moments after he introduced himself, a bit hesitant at first due to their fresh presence, but would slowly tread closer to get within a clearer talking distance. "I am Lady Izumi of Shiroshika." the femme introduced, bowing her crown as she always did to greet others. Now that she saw him up close, he could've easily been mistaken for Tiberius if it weren't for the lack of lighter patches and bright, expressive eyes of gold. 

and the lack of an accent too, of course.

"Slade," his name slipped carefully through her dark lips -- would that soothe him enough? "You said you seek a home. Is this where you wish to make your stay, then?"

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Voices he hadn't even recognized screamed at her, for her to waft closer to him. What would compel him, today? What lie on the menu? Violence? Hunger? A message to leave behind, that he, the King of Nightmares, was back? No- He couldn't touch her. Her face, her body as it roved forward as tenderly as her words however, begged for it. He swallowed, an invisible gulp under his sea of black.

As she had pleasantly placed his name into the world, he aimed to return the favor. A cant of his crown dedicated regality to the humble soul, his voice bringing royalty to such an unassuming christening. "Izumi."

Next she addressed his words, him already regretting the scaffold from which he began to build his shambled den with her, a skyscraper made of damned wanderings and forsaken fucks to give. She had taken it another way, began making her own home of the lost boys story, a pretty place, clean pillow and fresh linen for him to rest. Something sacred, a meek little cry that had been buried under the scrambling fury, madhouse of murder and draconian tyrannacy, they yipped an echo of hope that he hadn't bothered to smother in eons.

The Nightmare King watched himself agree, for her to lead him into the wonderland of frost and dry grasses behind her, to a place of welcome, of judgeless messiahs who would allow him to rest the demon who puppeted him for so long. They would eat together, water together, bed together, grow together, and enroll themselves in a happiness that could not be culled. Slade would shed his cloak of carnage, and instead cree himself to her home, to attribute his newfound freedom to the offer she had offer to him this fated day. His body had relaxed and the bastard was not as tense. Izumi would gift him the passage of rest where he had toiled so long- "No-"
-it could only be a few days-
"I can not accept this offer." His words revived something vile in his chest, and it breathed a venomous fire he had memorized the burn of, for so long. It was comfort. It was home. "I have a place of rest, and others who require me," he allowed her. But truly, did it answer her confusion? Who would wander from his place of rest and his pack? No wonder her befuddlement. "I appreciate your offer, Izumi...It will not be forgotten." His mind cackled at the roll of emotion that almost bled from his lips which he swiftly shut.

'Neither will you.'

His graceless gaze dragged trails of embers over the coldscape behind her before he brought them back to simmer on her sucrotic lavender candies. He allowed himself a pair of steps forward, offering her his snout to sniff, and posturing for her stiffly should she desire to get any other information off of his cologne in other areas. "Are you free to talk?" he asked, blood-orange golds tracing mindfully observant outlines across her body without much resistance.
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"I can not accept this offer."

How strange.

In the wake of what he'd revealed earlier, that certainly would've seemed like the case -- that he needed a home. Though a stead had already been found, according to him, in addition to others that need him back as well, too. Perhaps the man simply needed help then? Because if it was medical help Slade needed for his currently drowsy state, then he was unfortunately looking at the wrong person.

Just as her head turned to call for Reiko, as she might've been more experienced in taking care of the ill, she was stopped again -- asking if she was free to...talk? It was a peculiar request to ask so suddenly, but since she was already here,

"I....suppose so, was there something else you needed?"

There was really no reason to turn him down now.

She was just curious about this strange man -- from his sudden approach to his origins -- and patiently awaited the moment he word explain himself. His offer to sniff him was taken reluctantly, slowly, but taken nonetheless.

The way he eyed her was not missed, and if things went south, she was comfortable enough to know that the odds were in her favor -- lest she not need to remind the male that he was near the borders of an established pack....

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The ebonian was given the opportunity to inhale a slight of her own perfume, and while the variety of other scents had danced around them, he caught a whiff of a certain flower, pungent with it's lie of delicacy. Wisteria, a flower once heavily spreading through a majority of a side of Blackfeather, he had crossed it a multitude of times. He had watched the relationship between the viney shrub and the flora around it, as it took over trees who'd been established for eons, strangling them through such a slow process until the trees had been left as dried out reminders of how cruel nature was. Yet, beauty permeated the graveyards of tree trunks, decorating the woody tombstones with lavender hued chandeliers of flowers. Briefly the Nightmare King wondered if the fair phantom wandered the halls of deceased woods, skirting herself against the timber corpses and frolicking in the aftermath of arbor genocide. Was she as true to delivering death, as she gave the dead life?

"I am in need of companionship," he admitted with a pause over the side of he snout. He had directed his eyes to her own after she had pulled away after her sniff. It surely sounded strange, a random man traveling so far to receive something like this - but here he was. And though she were so far away from his current place of residence, she was who had caught his attention. Of course she wouldn't outright leave her family, nor her home for him -

'Not yet,' the inner demon settled in the emberous confines of his soul.

- yet he wanted her. Beauty had been what had snatched him, but the allure of her voice, her mannerisms,... Would he travel to see her? What if she were mated? How much blood would he spill to have her?

"You are not expected to come now." the baritones thrust the finality on the table they stood at, putting at ease any worry she might have that he would snatch her and run in the middle of the night. He didn't have the artillery for that, yet. "But you are someone who's caught my interest. And I want you to be the piece which fits that hole in me." Slade hadn't ever admitted to any female willingly that he wanted them for anything. Not even admitting to them they were mere playtoys for his urges, flings for him to scratch an itch. Not since his very first and last true mate did he harbor such truth for. But here, he was alone. He had no name, no history, no titles as he stood before someone who knew nothing about him. It was an offer from whatever gods Zafina had attempted to have him believe in, for him to start afresh, and possibly regain a piece of his former happiness and fulfillment that he had thought was lost, forever. He was seasoned well, thanks to his fated resurrection. But what was Izumi's beliefs? Truly, after he unveiled something of such tragic magnitude to the woman, what would she take from it? How could she reject him? Bashfully shy? Gratefully appreciative? Apathetically uncaring?

His own doubts began to cloud, paranoia trickling in the milliseconds as he awaited her reply. How many suitors had fallen to her paws, trying to ensnare her heart to their own? What were their intentions? Could they be better matches for someone of her caliber than his own? Externally, he was a patient statue, a gentleman who gave time for the princess to answer, but inwardly, he boiled, ripping and tearing at the grains of time that threatened to smother his fires. He breathed even and slow, daring himself to relax further, against all wishes of the screaming voices puddling and splashing about his mind. Against all odds, he waited.
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 When Izumi had asked the dark cloaked man what he needed next,

 "I am in need of companionship."

 --this was not the answer she was expecting.

 and for a moment, the crane had to process the meaning of what he was even saying, ecspecially the rest of his words -- something about it rubbed Izu in all the wrong ways. To try to explain it when she'd never experienced a situation such as this one before was difficult to describe right off the bat, but the crane couldn't help but compare it to a time when she'd encountered another in her youth...

 A man who sought out not only her, but her sisters as well -- leering at the quartet as if the girls were but shelved items in a convince store that caught his interest. Izumi would've been too innocent to have realized then, but she knew something was off about the sire as soon as she made eye contact with those titian, hellfire eyes. The same ones alit with rage at her parent's dissmisal of him, and simmered in delight while the lives of her clan were taken away by his men.

 ほむら. — Homura.

 Izumi may not have been in love before, but she was no believer in love at first sight. "Companionship" was a strong word -- one that carried meaning to it, and one that took time and patience to achieve -- how could you crave the companionship of someone you've never met before? Was that all she was to the male sex -- just a random face that interested them? Could no one take the time to appreciate Izumi for the things that made her the person she is -- only for what interested them at first sight? Or had the dame just been too gullible to actually believe something like that was possible? Because if this was the "companionship" that everyone spoke so highly of -- which led up to marriage and children, then she didn't want it.

 "I don't understand..." To be eternally bound to someone who wanted something so superficial out of her; Izumi didn't want it at all. "I'm sorry, but I think I should go now....."

 and these were the only words she could've spared him before she walked off, with an expression soured by anger of the memory he'd brought up. His expectation that she'd come at a later time only made this feeling worse, and the young crane sought to leave now before her rage and fear got the better of her.

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She had taken what he had said, and turned it into a horror show. It fed the vile beast in him with such delight, watching the hope fade from Slade that there might be salvation for him yet. For there to be a soul that would nurture the slight good that hadn't ever been given the chance to root, to grow, to bloom.  It hurt. But luckily for the Devil - 

Pain was nothing new.

She had left him, all his miles travelled for naught, all of his desire smothered into an ash which blew with the winds of her hasty retreat. He had watched her go, leaving him stuck in place as time ticked by without much more than tons added to his shoulders once more. It was time to return home. To return back to what he was. And quell silly beliefs, for good. 

As she had vanished, he then turned to leave. Back to the slow trod, once again, to Reclaimed Roots.
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