Welcome to Gaia! ::

Wild Cry is in a fairly remote section of swamp, all tangled vines and thick mangrove roots taller than a kimeti. These are grandfather trees, big enough to catch up vast drifts of silt and mud, giving the ground a curiously rolling appearance. It's a part of the swamp that not even Longstride himself has been to, though of late he has cleared much, much more territory than he ever has before.

As the kimeti's foxbun yips at him, pulling him out of his wandering thoughts, he will look around -- and see an eaglehound, a bit bigger and sleeker than most, staring at him from where it stands on a cypress knee big enough for a full-grown kimeti to stand on. Behind the eaglehound a ghostly shape shakes a blonde mane out of its eyes; both eaglehound and ghostly kimeti-shape watch the buck with piercing blue eyes.

If eaglehound expressions are easily read, this one almost looks impressed to find another kimeti out here in this desolate place.

The legendary smiles down at Wild Cry; one side of its mouth lifts up, and after a moment, the eaglehound dissolves from view. It becomes less and less solid, until -- as though it flows into the ghostly kimeti-shape -- the stag stands in front of him, fully formed. A moment later it leaps down from the cypress knee without giving the action a second thought. That was a high perch, one most kimeti might have balked at jumping down from. Longstride makes it look easy -- one smooth bunching of muscle and then a splash.

After a moment, he realizes that this buck has come to him for the blessings the legendaries give to expecting parents. It makes him start, shaking blonde hair out of his face (from where it falls into those piercing blue eyes). "Don't apologize," the stag says; his voice is masculine but rough, as if he's swallowed a handful of gravel. "I understand about does." In his time he has fathered thirteen children of his own -- not that he has ever stopped to count them. "One who lives all the way out here? I haven't seen a kimeti in days."

If he feels awkward at all doing this -- making small talk before the buck comes out with what he really wants, it doesn't show. That awkwardness wars with a roaring, almost consuming sense of feral glee.

Longstride shrugs; after a moment he looks around as if this landscape is new to him, as well. He has been out here for a few days, letting his wanderlust take him, as it so often does when he wears his eaglehound shape. Whole days will pass with the landscape a blur about him; the destination isn't what brings him joy, it's the journey. The push and stretch. "Wandering." The answer is simple, but he doesn't need to elaborate: that's the sum total of all he's been doing. A moment later, he amends his statement with a toss of his hair, "I ... wander places. I can't help it. Ever since the change -- .. every horizon is a new challenge."

Those bright blue eyes turn back to Wild Cry after a long moment, where Longstride considers the horizon itself, glimpsed in tiny slivers through the mangroves, "But this isn't about me, is it? You ask about a doe because .. things happened." His look becomes knowing: not teasing, not insinuating. He knows what's happened.

How did the change occur? He woke up sore, his eyes burning with a searing pain; he'd thought he'd been blind until he had staggered to his feet and opened his eyes. He'd seen his own body rafting in with the tide, dead, eyes glazed over; the violence of that dream has not quite left him yet. He had died, somehow -- maybe. And yet here he is. Nothing has beaten him yet.

When Wild Cry speaks, Longstride's expression twitches back to something approaching attentive -- and then he blinks, thoroughly taken aback. This buck wants a blessing. The big blonde stag blinks, and then his mouth slides sideways into an unrestrained grin: he knows about does. For a moment he has to wonder whether the two does he has sired children upon did the same thing and found a legendary.

Longstride tosses his hair back out of his eyes where it falls in slightly tangled disarray all down his back. The way he moves changes slightly, almost imperceptibly; he regards Wild Cry for a moment with a certain feral grace best displayed in eaglehounds and the sleek hunting cats the kiokote use, circling around him. "You will find your way there," he says, with a certain amount of gravity in his voice. His blue eyes flick up to the buck's face. "It will take you places you have never been. But she'll be waiting for you. And everything will be fine," he adds, making his slow way around the buck and returning to stand in front of him. The eaglehound paces behind him, and then stands with tongue lolling. "The children will be healthy and strong, all of them, and," he pauses, perhaps searching for words, "the going will be easy."

Longstride shrugs, tipping his head so that his sun-bleached, coarse blonde mane tumbles over his features and down his neck. Part of the wanderlust is that it seizes him almost totally; if he finds himself in his eaglehound form for any length of time, it catches him up and sends him running in whatever direction he wants. "I've been past the swamp, out to the kiokote plains. Lots of grass," he adds, almost as a mutter; that was about all there was. "The kiokote move in huge herds. They eat meat -- I watched them take down a creature bigger than they were and eat it. Share it with the herd." It had been an unusual thing to see for a kimeti; Longstride has been known to eat the occasional snake or fish, but his diet is mostly vegetarian (except for the eggs he loves to seek out and eat).

"I live out on the coast," he adds, with a careless toss of his head back towards the way he'd been going. The way would have led him to the coast eventually, but ... in no way would it be fast. "It's been a long journey. You're welcome to come if you'd like," he adds, but it's going to be hard for anyone to keep up with Longstride, whose greatest gift is his endurance.