The prodigious clay hued male wandered alone. He hadn't made allies or enemies in this land- merely met a few new faces. He wandered aimlessly- just seeking information and more knowledge about the place he had found. Information was power and as he had learned as a mere boy, power was the only thing worth having.

He didn't think about the kingdom he had come from often. He'd chosen not to dwell on it much- there was little he can do about the past. That, however, doesn't mean that the thoughts sometimes come unbidden.

The place he found himself in today, was different. Spirals of white smoke seemed to come from the land, and due to the cooler weather- it seemed to create a dense sort of fog that he felt that he could simply disappear into. The air felt thick with the moisture- and he had to rely on his other senses- his nose and ears, as he moved around- because his eyes couldn't cut through the fog well enough to help him any.

Eskel froze, his ears straining to attention... as he thought he heard a rock shift against the ground. A low rumble built in his chest as he halted- waiting to see what would emerge from the fog- friend or foe.

@Charax

"what i speak"

ART COPYRIGHT IRISH

Charax

The landscape here is harsh, and Charax thrives; using the hardened contours of rock to train her body and the dangerous slopes to train her mind. She navigates terrain with a natural ease, an inborn love for the puzzle of landscape, an innate connection to nature. She, once-was-swamp-woman, can see the beauty in any land, and here is no exception.

Yet, she traces the footsteps of a stranger with no way of knowing his importance. Pacing stones and roughened edges until she spies his figure, tall and dark, looming through a nearby smoky haze. She approaches, charcoal belly low, skirting boulders to keep some degree of safety between the strange duo.

Slow, gradually, an eerie feeling of familiarity begins to creep her core.

@Eskel

_.

He does not realize that he stands on a precipice of destiny, as he stands there among the rocks. He had frozen when he heard the slight shift of a rock. Maybe it was the wind, but his instincts screamed at him to halt- like some unseen force was guiding his life in that moment. He stares into the fog and the mist, trying to use his nose and his ears to hear and smell the world around him- where his eyes would fail him- they often had not.

There is a scent there. It’s faint but it is of another with a since of familiarity to it... So he speaks into the open fog around him, deciding to break the silence and step forward into whatever was awaiting him on this day.

”Who is there?” The words are a demand and a challenge for the fog. He despises that the fog is blinding him of his vision- rendering his partially useless eyes totally useless, unless who ever lurked... came closer.

@Charax

"what i speak"

ART COPYRIGHT IRISH

Charax

It is an almost gut wrenching feeling of her old life, the woman slinking as she always did; abdomen low to terrain, chin stretched before her charcoal breast. Though his figure wavers through the haze of smoke, filtering through earth-cracks, it is hauntingly familiar. Perhaps, she knows who he is deep within her core even before she truly sees him.

"Charax," she says, pausing to witness the singular stride that reveals him, @Eskel. He is unmistakable, hulkingly massive, black-haired and pale-browed. Her lungs inhale sharply, gaze narrowing as though she were suspicious. It was entirely like Charax to suspect anything other than chance had brought the pair together again.

Her half brother, born barely days apart, they had grown together. She had thought him dead. "How... what are you doing here?" alive and well?

_.

Perhaps it is instinct that whispers within his mind the importance of the moment. Maybe on some base level he knows that this moment is going to change things in his life. This moment...

Charax

The other speaks her name, and he freezes- almost mid stride. Memories play like a symphony in his mind, flashes of a life long before. How? How is this moment happening? He finishes his stride, and then she is there- his half-sister, with her clay colored features, and marbling markings. His eye travel over her hungrily, but not for desire- but only to make sure she is really her- she is really there.

She speaks again, asking how, and while he is typically a silent male the words that would answer that leave him. He opens his mouth and only silence leaves, so his jaws close again and he swallows nervously. The informant (he) had survived when their father the king had fallen. He did not think that Charax had.

“I... I don’t...” He speaks, and then hesitantly he steps forward as if he would embrace her before freezing... How would he be received? “I wasn’t there... I was... I had left to gather information.” He scarcely hints at the fall of their home- the fall of their father. Eskel had gone to gather information for his father... doing his job as an information gatherer.

“How... how did you..? Survive

He studies her, his muted pink eyes roving over here again, as he questions if this moment is a dream? A quiver goes through his body, as he takes a deep breath- her scent going through his nose. She smells like her, but different from the years that have passed. There is another scent that is cloaked around her, a scent of a pride. Had Charax found herself a home and a life here?

Would she welcome his return...? Or would she wish he had never found her and this land that he assumed she was making a life in.

@Charax

ART COPYRIGHT IRISH

Charax

For her time here Charax had fulfilled her goal of purpose. Now that Wolfbron, namely Amara, had come to trust her, the marbled vixen considered herself an integral part of the pride. She was always busy, a workaholic in near every way. Yet, even still, there is a quiet whisper of longing, needing for something more.

Her instincts tell her it is family. That now, she has found @Eskel, she can close the whimpering void of need that had curled within her soul. Yet, it is not so simple - if anything, she is becoming confused. Her brows are furrowed, knitted together in puzzled waves. She feels impulsive, and her skin begins to twitch over her musculature in electric ripples.

She lurches at him, attempting to whack her forepaws into the sturdiness of his chest in a singular punching motion. She tests him, because she has to. What if he has been sent here to kill her? He wouldn't. If he is spurred on by her whack and attacks, perhaps she will have her answer. If instead, he does not retaliate, Charax will seek his contact yet again - for his comfort - to butt her forehead into breast and just stay a moment.

_.

His mind is a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, as he studies her. She is here, she is alive. Most importantly, he is not alone in the world, like he thought. Critically, he stares at her, his eyes roving over her body again, as if he’s looking for strings or some kind of set up... Someone is playing with him. This cannot be real. This cannot be. It has to be a lie, a game, some sort of sick twisted game?

Then why does she smell like home?

His heart thunders in his chest, stuttering as he studies her- as words seem to fail them both in the thick silence between them. He feels his body seemingly freeze, falling cold to the touch as his focus is only on her. It is only on @Charax. He wonders what is going on in her mind, is she as shaken by this moment as he is?

Then she moves, and he is so frozen to the earth that he doesn’t react to the whack against his chest that she deals him. Is it a test? Surely i this moment, if being frozen in place is the cost of winning- he will win. The blow reverberates through his body, and yet he is still frozen as if he is now made of ice. He wants to move... wants to react, to prove that he is alive- that he feels her blows... but he cannot.

How did she survive?

It’s like he is watching this scene from outside his body, studying the pair of half-siblings with a third parties interest as they reunite. It is as if he is the third party sitting upon a rock here, spying on them. He does not feel like himself in this moment.

When she moves again, her head pressing into his chest it’s like the ice cracks. Feeling floods through his body again, from his ears to his tail to his toes, and he lets out a shuddering sigh of breath, as he aims to lower hie head to press his own jaw down into the top of her neck and shoulders, if she will allow the movement.

He breathes her in, while she’s flush against him, and as the scent trickles down into the very core of him, he feels a part of him flicker to life again. Charax. Charax. His half-sister, a part of him that he had not realized that he was missing. She is here. She is here.

She is here. Charax is here.

He does not have the energy or effort to think of the future in this moment, only to stand there in the now. To remember that feeling of home as she is pressed against him. Even if the memories of home weren’t always good- he could remember playing with her- fighting with her... Every core memory of the brute- she is there. She is more prominent than perhaps his own mother. It was Charax who he learned life with- whom he dreamed with.

She is his home.

@Charax

ART COPYRIGHT IRISH

Charax

He is immovable as her paws thud against his chest, and he towers with a sense of stability over Charax - through her confusion, through the reignition of bloodied memories within her mind. She is strong in psyche, she has not been plagued by the memories of bloodshed, until now. Until she realises @Eskel was not among it, that he had been spared by the will of mother nature. Or dumb luck.

Still she can see them, falling like flies, wildly outnumbered. But not Eskel.

Her forehead presses to his chest and after a quiet moment of disbelief he embraces her, the clay woman leaning deeply into his sternum, replacing memories of war with that of a carefree childhood, at least briefly. She can feel the weight of his jaw upon her neck, and she wears it like a blanket of comfort; her muscles easing into something more akin to relaxation, relief.

Then, the guilt. Washing over her like a tidal wave, bringing the rigidness back to her spine, to her shoulders. "I ran, Eskel," a shallow breath, ashamed, her face buried within his mane, "They were all dying, and I left them." It was instinct perhaps, but Charax has forgotten how overwhelming the innate need to flee had been - instead, she harbors the guilt of a survivor.

_.

TRIGGER WARNING: DEATH, LOSS, TRUAMA

Then:

It was hard for Eskel to describe- what he saw when he had returned home after the informational mission that his father had dispatched him on. The pure carnage... the terror and rage still frozen on the faces of the dead. They had been slaughtered- there was no other word for it. After finding his mother’s corpse... he hadn’t the heart to dig out Charax’s. He had laid on the earth beside his mother’s cold body, his nose pressed into her fur as he wept her loss.

His mother’s beautiful features had been savagely ripped apart by claws and teeth. It wasn’t rage frozen on her face, but terror and the very sight of it had caused him to retch upon the earth. The spy who learned to torture and maim others for information, reduced to a puddle of vomit and tears at the sight of his own slain mother.

He had buried her, though it had felt so wrong to bury his own mother and none of the others. He had been to weak to risk finding Charax’s body among them- to weak to risk what that sight would have done to him. He had fled after burying his mom. He had paused only long enough to ensure that his father had died as well. His feelings were a mix, looking at his father’s corpse. Loathing and love. Desire to make him proud. Hatred of his father’s ways. His father- the king- had died with a snarl of outrage on his face, but by the looks of his corpse- he hadn’t truly put up much of a fight.

He wondered what had happened here first. Had it been a raid in the night? A raid in the day? Had they been forced to watch the cubs that had been slaughtered. Had they been forced to watch as each young life was snuffed out? Eskel had gone with his father once, and watched his father- his king do that very thing to another group. It was a horror he had never dared tell Charax about. He had never wanted her to know that he had stood there and allowed it to happen.

Some nights he still heard the screams of anguished mothers.

His father had deserved the death he had gotten.

Now:

His sister leaning against him, into him, he is able to banish the thoughts. Able to breath her in, to know that she is alive. She is here. She is okay.

He looses a long sigh while she is pressed against his chest.

‘I ran, Eskel.’

Those words make his heart stop, mostly at the anguish that he seems to hear within them. He stilled against her, but not in any sort of condemnation towards her- but towards the happiness he felt towards his relief that she had run. She speaks, explaining more, and h merely presses his nose down into her head or neck, whatever he can reach, breathing her again.

He lets silence pass between them before he whispers, “I’m glad you ran.” He pauses, his voice catching, throat thick with unreleased emotion. “I... couldn’t bare to dig through them. I couldn’t stomach finding you like that.” Slaughtered, tortured, maimed. He could not... He would not see @Charax like that.

He breathed her in again, the inhaled motion long and deep.

“I am so glad I found you alive. I...” His voice cracks, as he falls silent again. His eyes burn as if someone has kicked sand into them, as the grief he had experienced was threatening to overwhelm him.

“I’ve missed you, Charax.” The words are little more than a whisper as they leave his lips. “I’ve missed you so much.”

ART COPYRIGHT IRISH

Charax

Unlike @Eskel, Charax never went back. She could not find the reason to risk being finished off by their fathers enemies, or perhaps she simply did not want to see the carnage that Eskel had subjected himself to. Charax had been among the scouts who saw the armies encroaching, among those who had warned the warmonger King of their impending demise.

He would not run, ever. Perhaps, the lack of struggle Eskel viewed upon his fallen bones was a sign of his sickening pride. He would sacrifice his entire family before he would run. And he did. Every last one of them, or so the sibling pair had believed.

She relishes his closeness, a rarity for a woman who thrived upon her own space; letting his mane rest against her hungry nostrils, breathing in his consistencies and differences. His comfort. As he soothed her aching soul, Charax's face wrinkles with the pain of truth, the pain of letting it be known. She wanted to ask what happened to their closest siblings and friends, she wanted to ask if he had seen them - but she knew she would not like his answer.

She wants to tell him of their cousins who fled with her, what had become of them, why they weren't here, but she is stuck. Voiceless. Still wearing the weight of her prior confession. She hears his struggles, wishes he didn't have to carry the weight of the sights he had seen, but in that moment all she can say is, "I missed you, too."

She sits then, vulnerable, tucking lithe haunches beneath her torso, but keeping her face firmly burried within his mane. She will stay like that if he will let her, for what might have been hours, but felt like barely a moment of relief. They were back together.

-- fade out/exit via comforting ?

_.