I will always find you

He’s out of his mind, or perhaps he’s just lost deep within it. He said he would find her, and still he is uncertain if he himself is missing. His thoughts don’t seem to be his own, everything is new, everything is familiar. Everything is a mess within his head, memories flooding him from their encounter.

The still in the wood when they met. Long forgotten are the cries of the ravens because they didn’t matter then, and they don’t matter now. The momentary brush of her warm skin as they collided. The soft down of her feathers, fleeting as touch had been. He can still taste her scent in the damp air as he leaves the Chamber borders, though still he doesn’t realize he’s tracking her-not yet.

It’s a time before he does, sorting through his thoughts as he is, part desire, part denial. His head warns him away, that women are trouble, as they always have been. This one had even admitted to being as much, on the run from some unknown. It’s been a long time since he’s felt anything akin to the fire Engelsfors had brought to his life. Still he grimaces at the memory, a frown tugging at his darkened lips before he can send his past back to the recesses of his mind. It’s a dark place where he keeps many a clouded memory, yet the mother of his children always comes back to haunt him in a vivid manner. Like it or not.

It’s then that he realizes he is skirting the edge of the common grounds, the forest lands full of spruce and saplings. It’s no surprise that he is drawn to the familiarity of a wood, the tall trunks smelling deep and dank but lacking the pine scent of home. Only one here or there, intermingled with oaks and birch and spruce alike. A chaotic abundance of species all meshed into one biome, creating a disarray of smells that he finds oddly reassuring. And he knows she’s been here, her scent still hanging in the air. The essence of airy feathers leaving him with a sense of longing and he can’t explain why. Nor does he have an explanation for calling her name, ever so soft as his deep baritone can.

" Spyndle?"

By now he’s sure he’s imagined her scent, the faintest of its aroma filling his nostrils. All has gone quiet in the wood as her names leaves his sooty lips, a spell, an enchantment to make her real. His glassy eyes close, pushing him into darkness where he can focus on his surroundings, so he can say a silent prayer to the Gods he isn’t sure are real.

What is real anymore? His life felt like an awful dream sometimes, things that they call ‘nightmares’. Had he deserved it? Probably, he’s done little good in the world, he has no ambition to bring goodness to it either. What was that saying? Birds of a feather..?

His name falls from the forest to this dream, the witchery he has surely called to the place of limb and bough.

Killdare.

He’s sure this is all part of the mind trick he felt half asleep in, but then the rustle of twigs, the snap of sticks tells him it is not. That this is too real to be a figment, that spectres do not cause such corporeal noise and movement. Still the shadows cover her, nature’s camouflage still hinders his sight, if nothing else he can smell her better. A few rigid steps in the direction of the call until he is inhaling fiercely a spot of greenery, until his breath falls hot into the tangle of brush, vine, the like...

So soft did she speak it, so uncertain did his name proceed from her lungs that he can barely taste it in the air anymore. “I’m here.” his own speech clawing to reach her, forcefully pulling into reality that he finds it more guttural than he had intended it to be. Nor do his intentions give warning as his giant head breaks the surface of cover, breaches the depths within to brush against something warm and familiar.