Keeper-
Keeper is at a loss;
The deer are gone. Only for the winter, as she knows they’ll return after the snow melts.
Argo is gone. Where to, what for, and why? Are the questions that plague her, but then the two of them have never been around one another long enough to pose a question of forever, only right now. Each small moment with him is kept closer to her heart than a secret, and Keeper loved secrets as much as she loved mushrooms and moonlight and everything else that one like her is capable of loving which is a lot, apparently.
She realizes that he hadn’t known she was there, tailing him through the trees. Nor had Keeper realized that he had been lost in thought as much as she’d been lost in whatever whims she was keen on indulging that night in the woods. Mushroom hunting, dreaming, running headlong down treacherous paths but none that were too treacherous to her because she knew a fair amount of them which meant that she spent as much time here as she did in the field or in Hyaline.
The smile he gives her is sad as he stops at last and notices her. Too late! Keeper is struck by the sudden horror that he has caught her disappointment that he is not the him she has been looking for and her emotions had run amuck all over her face. He moves to breathe her in and asks her a question; her face falls instantly apologetic as her black eyes take a downward cast in pure embarrassment as she answers him. “No, you’re not him.”
It is a painful hushed admittance because for all that she likes to hold secrets close to her, she does not like to share them and the one she mistook him had fast become a secret she kept closer than most and to admit that he was not him… it took something out of her, a little air, and added in just a bit more sadness than Keeper was comfortable with. She has no right, she thinks, to feel the way that she does about someone that she barely knows but her brain argues with her heart and says she has as much right as any other - some things are just instantaneous, like her connection to the one she mistook him for.
“I’m sorry…” she begins, sensing a bit more of his own melancholy. Had he for a moment, thought to have been someone she sought? Hope is cruel, she realizes and both of them had felt it in those first moments together. It makes her move closer to him, daring to bring her nose to his cheek for a brief swipe of camaraderie. Her mouth turns up a smile, just for him, as she moves back a pace to give him room after her sudden touch as he introduces himself to her. “Malekith.” she turns his name over and over in her mouth like a pebble, working the taste of it deep into her mind and memory.
Behind him, his bicolored tail flicks over haunches that are nicely muscled and Keeper’s own snarly tail is still against her hindlegs. It has grown quiet again as she looks at him, memorizes the features of his face against the backdrop of trees before she decides to introduce herself. Making the introduction was not a hard decision, it was rather necessary given that he’d shared his name with her so easily despite knowing he wasn’t who she had first thought him to be before she knew the scent and shape of him was all wrong. Bless the shadows, they’d lent him enough disguise to make her heart leap and her legs chase after him! She gives the tiniest shake of her head and another smile, this one more like how Keeper’s smiles always are - friendly.
“I’m Keeper and I’m truly sorry I thought you were someone else but maybe that is for the best, yes?” If anything, she can find the good in the situation and the good is that she is standing here, meeting him - Malekith.
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless