Bean likes the river.
It is simple. Twisty, but simple. It has moods like she does; calm on some days, and jumping the banks on others. The river is also long and unending, like she hopes her life will be and it has been so far. She is not the tenderfoot she once had been though Bean is still relatively unchanged.
Or is that unmarked by her experiences in the sense that her sense of self is still unshaken? Bean is Bean, as ridiculous as ever, like bathing in the river like a luxurious and furry naiad. Her tail floats on the top of the currents, and her fur grows damp and heavy with each dunk of her head and shoulders. These immersions bring no conversations with fish to the forefront or songs of river-fronds to her waterlogged ears.
Just a moment of quiet reprieve from the sounds on the shoreline. Sounds that she chooses to otherwise ignore. Bean is not fit for company at the moment, or feels she isn’t. Still brown all over and hairy as an illusive sasquatch (she is certain they are real after all!) and becoming less dirty as the river washes the grime away. She almost looks sleek, like thick-pelted animals do for a moment until they start to dry out and fluff right up.
Then she’s a puffball of brown in the light. Which suits her, she’s Bean after all. But even the light eventually dies and all she’s left with after filling her belly full of river-grass is the wind in her ears and the stars in her eyes. It’s almost enough to make Bean look lovely. But she doesn’t, as she pushes her way out of the open and into the secretive dark of the nearby trees.
She putters around beneath the creaking boughs, sometimes humming wordless tunes to herself. Up ahead, the soft green glow of ferns look enticing. As much as the stars overhead and the twisty dark paths that only deer and wolves know that unfurl before her in beckoning ribbons. Bean pauses, one foreleg raised before her in careful thought. That single step is decisive, it always is.
Bean just had no idea then, how decisive it would be or what it would yield at the end.
The ferns it is! If nothing else, she’ll eat them or sleep in them. She hasn’t decided which and might possibly do both. A snack and a nap, all under the midnight sky. Except as she beats the inviting green nest, a smell arises that seems at once familiar to her and her heart begins to thump a little harder in her breast. The pale feather in her hair still sits snug against her neck, forever a reminder.
She pauses, how could she not?
Surely he’ll have heard her coming because Bean is never quiet or stealthy.
The breath comes and goes from her in short almost gasping bursts as she struggles to rein it in. Bean has never reacted like this but something about him made her instantly happy, more so than usual - more so than Bean probably has a right to be. She tries to creep a little closer to get a peek at him, as he’s clearly curled up there for the night just like she had thought about doing.
Bean hears whispering but can’t quite make out what is said, which is probably a good thing because she’d have a million and one questions for him otherwise. Instead, having tiptoed over as best as she could and almost but nothing quite nosing the ferns aside to see him, she simply says his name into the air like it was magic and so much more. “Clegane.”
@[Clegane] better late than never! ❤️❤️❤️