[PRP] Restless Summer Air (Adala/Mrost)

[Meepfur]

Life, of late, had not been going to plan for Adala. Her mate had gone missing, and the search parties she had sent to look for him had failed - and two of those search parties had, in the process, encountered Burkuteshti patrols and been embarrassingly defeated. Insult to injury. And then there was her litter, six females and one sickly male - a male only she, Tala, and Sabit knew about. He had been left to die, and no one else would ever know that he had even existed. There was no proper heir to take Kotu's place, and all these months later, there was no hope that Kotu himself would ever return. He was dead, or as good as.

Alone in the middle of the night, sitting at the edge of the oasis as she took her turn on watch, she missed him. She did not readily admit to soft emotions, especially these days, but she had loved him, the male who'd given her her first scars.

...for letting herself drift while on night watch, no less. Adala wrinkled her nose and refocused her attention, staring out at the gravel plain that made up the northern portion of the contested territories. It had been too long since she'd seen the sand of the south.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Time passed strangely for Mrost, the god of War would sometimes take leave of mortals and roam far and wide across the expanse of Africa and when he returned it would be different, lives would have run their course and the faces he once remembered were nowhere to be found. After his reincarnation he had withdrawn from the day to day lives of the prides he'd once held dear, they had been left to their own devices to do as they might with what he'd taught them.

In the time that had passed since then his feathers had returned, long and blade like, and the old hunger no longer blighted him, he had no desire to destroy them or himself.

But in the long term solitude did not suit the god, he was a god of rise and fall, of brother against brother, of mothers whose cubs would never return. He needed the mortals and their prides, their feuds and squabbles. He was bound to them, bound to the painful drama of their lives. He both envied and resented them, so naive and yet so brilliantly bright they shone. He was free to wander as long as he wished across the lands, in theory. But in reality he must always return to the world of the bright ones as a parched lion must return to water, whether it be infested with crocodiles or not. Storm Valley would run red with blood again, it was not a matter of if but when.

The arid lands were for the most part, void of life, vast open spaces where creatures merely passed by and left no trace but footsteps in the sands or briefly displaced rocks. In the night the lands cooled slowly and provided thermals to effortlessly glide across, and camouflage of a sort for the male's deep deep blue fur.

When he'd spotted the lioness, he'd silently descended to proceed on foot, and as she roused herself back to attention he would be impossible to miss, strolling across the rough terrain with a clank of metal and a rustle of wings. "Evening." he said when he drew into earshot, and his voice was coarse with disuse.

Meepfur

 

[Meepfur]

Movement, sound and form - too large, and the shape not quite right - caught her eye and brought her to her feet, a cry ready on her lips, but...she hesitated. She knew better than to hesitate, and yet she did anyway, disregarding what was sensible. This was no ordinary intruder, come to attack them in the night. No, he wasn't ordinary at all. He was a god. She had never seen one before, but she knew the stories. There was nothing else he could be.

White fur bright in the dark, the lioness regarded him with narrowed eyes, her posture wary and rigid. She was comparatively tiny, a trait she had her Mistweaver mother to thank for, but she would take him if she had to (ha, she was thinking like a brainless adolescent and she knew it). There was a growling, warning undertone to her voice as she pointed out, "You're trespassing."

As much as suspicion, though, there was curiosity, a slow twitch to the tip of her tail.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

The male showed no hostility, relaxed and effortless in his movements from his nose to the tip of his slowly swaying tail. He was heavy and the weight was transmitted in his footfalls, long wild mane framing thick strong muscles, his build along with the gleaming hints of armour spoke of a creature who had little use for stealth.

The female before him, though slight of size, had a fearless defiance about her and immediately he found it endearing, you learned a lot about an individual by how they reacted when faced with the unknown.

"I'm not actually trespassing." he replied with a smile that twitched his long strange whiskers. "Anywhere that War has touched or will touched is my domain." He could not remember his past lives clearly, but he was sure somewhere in the haze at some time there had been rules, places where War and conflict would never touch and should never touch, places he could not go.

"But if you are concerned about my intentions, you should not be. I am not here on business, so to speak, merely traveling." He curled his tail idly and purred with a toothy smile. "Merely a lonely traveler on his way to nowhere. I am War and my name is Mrost." And once, he respectfully bowed his head.

Meepfur

 

[Meepfur]

"...I have to admit, that is one of the better excuses I've heard." The statement that may or may not have been intended as humorous was accompanied by no smile, but her posture did relax slightly. Still wary, still ready, but no longer openly hostile. There was no reason not to believe he was who he claimed to be; he was certainly a god, and if he was War, this was a most appropriate place for him to appear.

Ears that had been flattened back flicked forward in interest. "I am Adala bint Attila, Hatun of the Qyrhyeshti."

"You are...welcome here," she decided on the words with some hesitation, "Though I suppose that is an odd thing to say to War." Regardless of the deity's presence, however, war was already here. Whether that made it more or less odd to say that he was welcome, she wasn't sure.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

"A pleasure to meet you Adala." he said, because manners were afforded to those who he felt deserved them, and something about this lioness spoke to him, she felt like family, like one of his own, and he realized that perhaps it was not merely coincidence that he had found himself in these lands.

He moved to sit amicably by her. "If you do not mind me intruding on your watch, your patrol, whatever your task may be here tonight, would you tell me the tale of these lands? They feel familiar to me, as do you, though I am certain we have never met in person. "

Meepfur

 

[Meepfur]

Adala stood stock still as he moved closer and sat, forcing down the instinct that did not trust the nearness of strangers. Perhaps, as he was War, he was not so much a stranger, but she had not survived so long by being trusting. She did not sit, but watched him, tracking every movement for any warning signs.

"It is simple: were are at war. We have always been at war. The Qyrhyeshti fight the Burkuteshti for control of these lands. We win or lose battles, but no one ever wins the war. Generations have passed this way, and no one remembers a time when it was not so."

"It has been a long time since it was about the land, I think. Now it is who we are."

Baneful