talking to the mirror

He felt like he was falling. Infinitely, through licking flames of hot fire and burning ash. His eyes were closed, and yet he was blinded by a searing light. It sank into his skin, hungry fangs of memories that he could not grasp. And yet, they haunted him. They scratched at his skin and pierced his lungs. They taunted him. Laughing.

And he fell ...
    ... fell ...
       ... until he couldn't fall anymore.

Thud.

He hadn't been moving (or had he?), and yet he hit the earth like a ton of bricks. It knocked the very wind out of his lungs, causing a sharp and piercing gasp to escape his tightly pulled lips. And the fallen meteor lay there, covered in the debris of ruin and ash from another time entirely. Ash and bone of a world unknown ... forgotten ... clung to his fur.

And then those purple eyes opened, glittering brightly as those silver flecks shone in the morning sunrise.

And the mechanical body quivered ... stirring weakly to life.

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It was a jarring thing, to watch a body fall to the earth, seemingly spit from the halls of the dead, as though excommunicated from the feasting table of the Allfather. It was not something for Stjornuati to presume, this excommunication; rather, he had seen something akin to it before, eerily similar in fact. The vision of @Valmúa falling from the very same sky upon the form of their irritable brother, @Solpallur. This fireborn creature, however, had no suneater to catch him, to break his fall, nor was there a rampant poppy to gnaw upon the nerves of those present. Even the little dreki, @Hothieriel, was nowhere to be found. It was himself and the Fallen One before him.

Liver colored eyes peered down at the briefly lifeless form, unmoving as he began to twitch and stir. Only when the wolf's eyes flashed open, did the golden man step back. Expression remained mostly stoic, a flickering light of curiosity dancing in his eyes as he gave space to the one that awoke before him, watching and waiting, to see what was to unfold before him.

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His body ached. And stunk.
  Ugh, he smelled like shit and mud.

He moved slowly, painfully. An otherworldly groan erupted from his lips as some sort of demon expulsed itself from his depths ... and he crawled weakly up upon rosy-colored stilts. His head and neck wavered low, and as he lifted his head, those glaring purple eyes widened as he beheld the sudden form of another. The groan mutated into a startled growl, hackles raising as he nearly tripped over himself backing up.

"Wh-" he started, but could not finish, his voice croaking as if he'd inhaled the smoke of a thousand suns.

Chest heaved, a fit of coughs wilting him and nearly sinking him back to the earth.

'Fuck,' he dialogued internally, legs locking desperately as his head lifted again. He allowed his eyes to meet the unwavering and emptily curious gaze of the other, trying to quickly figure out the intent. But he couldn't see it. Fuck. He had so many questions. But his chest ached, his muscles burned ... his brain was on fire. He felt everything, and yet ... and yet ... he knew nothing. And even worse, he was at the complete mercy of this stranger.

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He was unmoved, unstartled by the sudden come-to of the fire-cloaked man... boy? The slightest wrinkle of his nose was the only signal that the stareater could smell the mire that lifted from the other wolf and even then, it was but a brief motion, a small ripple in the calm lake of his countenance. Another ripple, his ears pushing forward to give attention to wolf, watching in stretching silence as they coughed and retched. Stjornuati made no move to close the distance between them; vulnerability was too often a force to be reckoned with, driving those usually peaceful to lash out, strike, defend.

And then, as the coughs quieted, as violet eyes darted, pupils small and agitated, the stareater made the slightest dip of his chin in greeting, tail neutral, limp behind him. These were not his woods, these were not his trees, not his territory; he held no care one way or another for the appearance of the male, other than that it was an oddity. He too had once felt the confusion he saw lingering in that gaze, and perhaps it was that very feeling that drove the Northman to speak.

“Velkomin í heim hinna lifandi. — Welcome to the world of the living.”

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The pale golden wolf hovered over him, his presence oddly warm despite how distant those deep brown eyes were. He was like a sun, a constant and certain figure. The heaves of Nothus's chest slowed as he steadied himself, realizing slowly that the other was not here to extinguish him. Again.

It took a moment for the boy to finally catch a breath that would sustain him, giving his weak muscles the strength to lengthen so that he could poise himself properly. Black-tipped ears swiveled, his eyes yearning to glance around the lush landscape around him, but paranoia causing him to stare forward at the stranger.

“Velkomin í heim hinna lifandi.” The words slid from the stranger's mouth easily, but the syllables made no sense to Nothus's untrained ears.

Oh, great. And they didn't speak the common tongue, either.

What kind of Hellscape was this?

His tongue rolled over his lips in an attempt to dampen his mouth and throat so he could speak. "Where ... Am I?" The voice was raspy and harsh, but if he spoke slowly enough, the words could escape without the violence of a cough to follow. He blinked once before continuing: "Úbi sum? — Where am I?" There. He would try again, in the only other language he knew. And despite his simple question, his eyes begged further: 'And who are you?'

There was something about this man that stirred him.

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Weee phone post bc I’m in bed

---

He calmed, as if the steadiness of the Northman affected him as well, aided in settling his nerves. That or he realized that Stjornuati’s steadfast position meant that he was not going to resort to violence. Whatever the truth, even a truth not thought of, it was a good thing. The fire-cloak calming meant that he was less likely to lash out, less likely to bare fang, punishment and consequence surely quick to follow such an action.

He did not seem to understand the wolf of pale gold, but it was not long before he answered in a tongue that Stjor could understand. The halting common language, though… was he from another land as well? It seemed so. The words that followed rolled off of his shoulders, uninterpreted, useless to the Viking.

“New World,” he answered, disuse of the language they held in common making his sentence short and sweet, accent a guttural thing as he questioned the male. “Your life. You remember?”

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It would seem at least one of the languages he spoke, the other would understand. "New world." The words were gruff, factual, and broken. Nothus's ears swiveled forward, eyes narrowing not with anger but with confused suspicion. He felt it crawling from the base of his chest, coiling up around his neck like a cold tentacle. A fit of coughing threatened again, but the boy swallowed ... maintaining everything internally this time.

So if this were a New World ... then what was ... the Old World?

Was there an Old World?

“Your life. You remember?”

Nothus tried to think; only catching glimpses. It felt like pain, white-hot fire searing. It felt like crashing all over again.
   It smelt like soot and ash. And shit. Like his fur.
      He didn't want to delve deeper. Not yet.

And he also didn't want to announce all of this to the stranger, so instead, he shook his head.

"My name," he answered simply, eyes flitting back toward the stranger as his eyebrows softened. "Nothus," he offered. And finally, he allowed his eyes to wander, staring upward toward the blood-red tree that hung curiously over him. In a way, it matched him; firey, visible, stunning ... but the way in which those flowers wilted and fell matched the way his very soul felt in this moment. For wisteria hung low ... wisteria wept.

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All the inner workings of the young man's head were of little concern to Stjornuati. Either he remembered or he did not. Either he was violent, or he was not. Of every choice, every movement, every word he could have spoken, none of it would truly ruffle the hackles of the Northman. It was true that he would react accordingly given what the flame-cloaked wolf chose to do, but in the end, Stjornuati would not be bothered one way or another.

Nothus.

His head dipped, a nod of greeting, of acceptance. The exchange of names was a good sign, and while the boy was surely disoriented, he seemed to be putting himself back together in a quick manner; adaptability was a trait to be admired, in the stareater's eyes. Liver colored eyes drank in the vision of the boy casting his own gaze upwards, to the reach of the colorful tree. Stjornuati had seen many things in his life, but trees like this were new to him.

“Stjörnuáti,” He would answer in time, his voice low, thoughtful as he moved his gaze to the birds that flit between the long, hanging branches of the woods. How curious they were, how different from the stalwart trees of his mountain. Was the similarly colored wolf just as different from him as these trees were from the evergreens? “These lands, they are...” He sought for the words as his gaze fell to the other once more. “Familiar to this one.” @Valmúa would tease him for his lost grasp on the common tongue; it had been some time since he'd spoken to anyone in anything other than the tongue of his homeland.

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“Stjörnuáti,” the man replied, and Nothus had to pause a moment to process the word. Sorry, the name.

Nothus relaxed, unwinding the ridge along his back further as the muscles across his back and chest relaxed. He knew not much of this man, and that was okay ... for he knew one thing: this man did not intend to hurt him. And for now, that was a prospect that was to be praised. Cherished, even.

Of course, that did not mean that the stranger understood the common tongue. Or that literally anything he said would make any sense whatsoever.

“These lands, they are... Familiar to this one.”

The abhorrent teenager half of him wanted to spit and screech — Obviously.
  Anything was similar to anything if you pondered it hard enough.

But the child bit his tongue, instead allowing the true meaning of the words to wash over him.

But he was, still ... a teenager.

"I think," he began, biting his lips and brushing those dusty rose paws against the ground ... "Where I lived was ... a fortress? A stronghold?" Nothus pulled his eyes from the wisteria, burning hot as embers despite being a cool, silvery-purple. "And it wasn't like this ... at all." Nothus was no longer looking at the stranger — no. There was a half snarl, limited to the ghost of his past. Nothus turned away, perhaps embarrassed.

And then he laughed lightly. A soft glance turned upward toward his new friend as he considered everything. As he realized, perhaps, that he was no longer of the living —  "but perhaps that's what a ghost might say?"

The thought crossed his mind. Perhaps he'd gone insane.

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A fortress? The stareater's ears flickered in thought; He knew of the northern strongholds, where kin and kith lay claim, but of others? That were not like this world? Perhaps he had seen more than thought, on his way down from the halls of Odin. The embarrassment of the male went unacknowledged, livered eyes moving from the boughs of the woodland back to the boy. “A ghost?” He queried, parroted, not understanding the reason a ghost would say, well, any of that.

“Many of us wake here,” He explained instead of waiting for some sort of explanation. “Some with memories, some without.” Why? They had not determined such reasons, but he'd met enough wolves before to know that they all had somewhat of a similar appearance here in this world, even if not necessarily the same. “You smell any you know?” Perhaps he'd appeared with someone.

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Nothus had attempted, in some weird, estranged way to explain himself. It was something that even he did not understand. And in those moments, his purple, hazy gaze turned toward the elder. He waited for something. A revelation, probably.

    And what he got was.
        "A ghost?"
            Was that it? Was that the response?

Nothus could have bristled if he wasn't so fucking exhausted.

"Am I dead?" He decided to take the more direct approach, his brows furrowing in inherent frustration. And it was not a frustration with the gold-plated male, but with the entire situation. With this fucking stupid sunrise. With these stupid fucking trees. With his own stupid, dumb fucking amnesia.

Nothus grimaced, talons tensing against the earth below him.

The other continued to (maybe annoyingly) calmly explain ... that some knew where they were. Some did not. Some remember. Some did not.

Why didn't he remember?

"You smell any you know?"

The anger had already subsided. He'd submitted to the facts, now.

"No. I'm ..." He paused a moment, not looking up before spitting the rest of his sentence out: "I'm alone."

Oh child, if only you knew.

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Alone. It was a word that held weight for some wolves. @Valmúa was one such wolf; the idea of solitude -- true solitude -- almost scared her, made her nervous, anxious. She fared much better when she was with her brothers, even if she liked to act like the opposite was true. Stjornuati missed the fiery flower, wondering idly if she still haunted the lands (and that tiger) or if she, too, had struck out on her own. Either way, she would return at some point, the stareater had little doubt of that.

After a moment, the man snorted. “No.” A simple answer, rebuking the boy's claim of loneliness. This was not alone, not truly. “This one is here.” And even simpler, a solution to this feigned problem. “Come,” He commanded, not stern but not the soft sweet touch of a mother's request. His head tipped back and to the left, indicating their southwest. “Tveir eru betri en einn. — Two are better than one.” His resolute answer gave little room for argument, but even if the teen did dig his heels in, Stjornuati turned and began to walk.
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Nothus writhed in his insecurity, insides melting and bubbling, leaving only the blank glare of his purple gaze on the exterior. He looked through the other wolf, regressing inward as darkness clawed at his chest and ripped apart his lungs. Maybe he was still bleeding — maybe his lungs would just fill with blood and he’d fall again. 

It was peculiar, the stark differences between the two. The older male a stoic, calm beacon; accepting and malleable. He survived easily. But Nothus … Nothus was a child with a brain that worked far too hard for far too long. Where Stjörnuáti was relaxed and strong, Nothus crippled himself with his own anxiety of the unknown.

Inner turmoil burned.

”No,” the other said suddenly, and Nothus had almost all-but-forgotten he was even having a conversation with the arctic ghost. No? “This one is here.” Nothus blinked, the fire exhaling as a cold breeze fell over him. The red-coated child knew that Stjör was, in fact, being literal … but something about the phrase soothed the blanket of red hot coals in his soul. 

“Come,” he continued, tall body turning and walking away with a gentle flick of his tail. 

Something stubborn in him stopped his movement … but he realized, then, he had no where else to go. No one else to look to. 

And so he moved, long gait catching up quickly and falling into stride beside the other. “You live around here?” He wanted to grimace at his social skills — but perhaps simplicity of conversation would be better.

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A rumble of acknowledgement and agreement was all the boy received in answer; where the boys social skills were sparse, Stjornuati's were just as lax, though in different ways. Where words were unnecessary, the Northman didn't use them, insteadd leading the fire-cloaked wolf back to Raven's Watch, back to the mountain that Synin and himself called home.

/fade

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