Private Tales The Withering - Part II

A private roleplay only for those invited by the first writer
Though he hadn't a lick of empathetic powers to his name, Baenon could see her frustrations and helplessness getting the better of her. The black shuck knew body language well enough - all part of his training in sniffing out irrevocable truths. His hand lifted to grasp her upper arm, squeezing it firmly, "Now is not the time for letting your emotions get the best of you. Keep trying. Eske would not have assigned you the task if she did not think you were capable. There must be something here..."

His voice trailed off at the distant rumble of thunder. He could smell the rain on the air like the faintest wafting of perfume in the breeze.

"We'll stay here tonight. You have time to work. I'm going to look around more outside."
 
Aster wished she had a fraction of Baens stoicness sometimes. He could stay calm and collected in the worst situations. His firm grip did help her some. Weirdly.

She nodded and took her gloves off again. She heard his footsteps retreat from the house as she started to feel her way back to the couch. She made note of the basic layout when she was a raven so her falling over things would be minimum.

Aster found the arm of the couch and walked around it slowly, dragging her hand along the dusty fabric. She stopped walking as the visions started again. Still weird but she could make out a couple words this time.

The Omnia moved to the counter and walked slowly. More of the same but no words she could make out. Just that Vashe and the man looked tired. The bone weary and exhausted type tired.

Aster eventually made her way back to the couch and sat down to collect her thoughts and sort through what she had seen.
 
There was just as little to see outside. The clearing had become overgrown and where there had once been a pathway was now overtaken by briar and vines. Having no command of flora to speak of, Baenon withdrew his sword and summarily hacked his way through until he felt the shocking sting of metal striking stone. A wall.

Cursing at the abuse of his blade, he studied the edge with a scowl before re-sheathing the weapon. The shuck stepped back from the tangle of old vines and leaves, turning his gaze upwards to what he thought was simply a thick hedge of overgrowth. His eyes followed the greenery upward until they were nearly turned toward the sky - and there he blinked against the patter of emergent rain, spying at last the spears of stone that marked the top of the wall. He leaned back, casting his eyes left and then right. Seemed the wall went on for some length, disappearing into the shadows of the forest.

But was it keeping things out or keeping something in?

"Aster," he called back to the treehome, "Aster! Come out here, I've found something."

Could potentially have climbed the wall, but Baen was about working smarter, not harder. What was the point of expending all sorts of effort and energy for nothing but an overgrown forest within?
 
Aster heard her name and her head came up to look in the direction it had come. Outside, Baen wanted her outside. She stood and shifted into her raven form before flying gracefully out of the treehome. With her sight, she found him easily and landed on his shoulder making sure to grip a little harder than she actually needed to.

"What did you find?" The raven Aster asked before she saw the wall and tilted her head to the side. "Ask nicely and I will fly over the wall to see what is over there..."

She knew that is what he wanted but, of course, she would make him ask.
 
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Aster's raven talons clasped into stiff leather armor. Baen cast a deadpan sideways glance at the Omnia, "Have you no concern at all for your Triumvir? Say the word and I'll take you home and inform Eske to send me with an Omnia who does."
 
"I hate you," the raven ruffled her feathers before she lifted off Baen's shoulder and took to the sky. It did not take her long before she reached the apex of the wall. She landed on the stone and surveyed the surrounding area. It was absolutely breathtaking from up here and part of her could have stayed here for longer but she had things to do.

She dove off the wall, spread her wings to catch the wind, and glided through the dead plants and the overgrowth. This had once been a beautiful garden and now it was just dead.

Aster did not have any concept of time so she was not sure how long she was gone for when she landed on Baen's shoulder again.

"There is a wilting sapling in the middle of a very overgrown garden. It was once beautiful but not anymore."
 
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The shuck used his time to traverse the front face of the wall, prying through the vines and flora covering in an attempt to find a door. He was unsuccessful and mildly put upon. The continuing rain did not help his mood. There had to be a means of accessing what lay within that didn't require scaling the wall - in the end he suspected it was another Ask. Any other magical means would have been trackable, but not an Ask.

"Sapling..." Baenon paused in his circuit of the perimeter of the walled garden and offered the raven a curious glance, rain water dripping down his brow and off his lashes, chin, and nose, "what significance is a sapling to a heradryad?"

Was it a child? Did ... heradryads replicate in that manner? Was this the method of creating more dryads? He'd never known dryads capable of birthing children so a sapling didn't seem far off the mark, but he'd not taken a particularly deep dive into the study of them to know much beyond the basics.
 
Raven Aster fluffed her wet feathers as she perched on Baen. "It means she was trying to start a new grove here. I do not know why or why here though."

She didn't shift back to her fae form yet though. She would much rather be soaked as a raven. Smaller surface space and all.

"Do you want to look at anything else or can we go where it is dry and start a fire?"
 
New grove...

Baenon's pensive expression furrowed in deeper thought as he took a step back to give the wall one more look of consideration. He felt a need to get inside, but with the rain growing heavier and the light of day dimmer, there was nothing here he could find now that would not be more easily revealed in the morning.

"Mm," he stepped out of the overgrowth, brushing branches and bramble away as he went, "no, we're done for the night." Time to turn in and, yes, start a fire.

The shuck walked with his raven companion at his shoulder as if they had done it a thousand times before. In fact they had when traversing the busy walks of Winter Court, Aster often kept her raven form. Baenon stepped back inside the treehome, moving over to the hearth where he lowered himself into a kneel and magicked into his hand a vibrantly glowing rough-cut red stone. He placed it into the hearth and held his hand out before it. With an utterance of words the stone burst into flames and slowly filled the fireplace with light and heat.

"Are you hungry?"
 
Aster had flown off Baen's shoulder as soon as he had stepped into the treehome. She flew over to the kitchen table and then shifted back to her normal form as the world went dark again. She had shifted so the chair was right in front of her. The Omnia took a seat and stared in the direction of the man who drove her absolutely insane in multiple ways.

"Yes, very. That stew was pretty good but it did not last this long," she said as she ran her gloved finger over the wood of the tabletop in circles. "What are you catching me?" She could already imagine the withering look Baen was going to give her.
 
It was not so much a withering look as it was a distant glance of thought. In the rain there would be slim pickings for a hunt, but he'd come across a deer path while he looked around so...

"Venison," he replied as he stood from the fireplace and with another gesture of his hand produced Aster's travel bag out of thin air to place it on the table before her, "your affects."

He stepped out of the treehome on two feet and into the woods on four paws. The hunt took time, as Aster already knew, because not only did he hunt ... but he ate his fill. If asked what he preferred, the black shuck would always say he liked his meat raw. Fresh. Strangely enough, Baenon was a rather brilliant cook.

One of the many skills he'd gained within his ceaseless studies at the Winter Court's university.

The black shuck returned to tree home some time later, after the light had completely gone from the sky and the moons had been swallowed by the stormclouds. Soaked to the bone but belly full, Baenon strode inside with the scent of the forest, heavy rain, damp earth, and blood clinging to him. He had in his hands the carefully cut and cleaned tenderloin wrapped in large leaves and set to work preparing it for Aster in the fire. Cooking it in a pan over the flames within seasonings and lard, Baenon's skill of pulling essentials out of thin air continued to work in Aster's favor.

The trick was, everything he magicked into play had been packed into his harness bags for the journey.

When the meat was done he found tableware in the kitchen area of the home and prepped the plate for her by cutting the pieces to size and setting it all just as she knew he would arrange each piece before her on the table.

"I'm afraid there isn't any wine," he said to her, his tone lighter now that he'd hunted and eaten already.
 
Aster had moved to the couch after digging through her back for a pair of clean pants and a shirt. Her Governess had packed her bag so the matching sets were rolled together and easy for Aster to dress. She knew that even if she had been mismatching, Baen would have made of change. Sometimes she thought about messing with her bag to drive him crazy. Aster was slightly vain though and she didn't want to be mismatched...even if she couldn't see.

After she had changed, she made herself comfortable on the couch and fell asleep. It was not until Baen returned and started to make noise that she woke up. She didn't speak though. She just laid there and enjoyed the sounds and smells until she heard him cutting the meat.

Aster pushed herself off the couch and walked to the table. She took her seat and reached out for her fork. He set up her plates up the same way every time and she had learned it quickly. In the early days, she had tried to tell him that she could cut her own steak but he did not listen to her.

"Thank you for dinner," she said as she took a bite and let out a low sound of appreciation. "It is delicious as usual and I try not to drink when I will be using my magic. It causes issues..." Her eyes narrowed slightly. He knew this. He had known this for a long time. He was probably just tired.

"Sit with me, Baenon. Relax for a few minutes."
 
Baenon was not a fae who forgot such things, it just pleased him to tease her from time to time. Out of the pair of them, Aster drank more than he did - which was to say, she drank at all.

"I will relax when I am free of my wet layers," the shuck replied, drifting away from her chair back and over toward the fire where he began the process of removing his armor piece by piece. He'd hunted and feasted in the pouring rain, regardless of the fact that he'd done so in the forest didn't make him any less drenched for his troubles. Honestly, the fact that he'd cooked for and served her before he'd stripped was saying things.

In his hound form he would have just shook and drenched everything else, then curled up by the fire. Unfortunately for him (fortunately for Aster) his hound form didn't exactly fit in this rather cozy space.

She'd hear him heave a sigh from over by the fire as he cast his dark gaze about for a place to string up a drying line. A wave of his hand magicked one into place just before and above the fireplace hearth and soon enough his many layers, and Aster's too, were hanging to dry.

Instead of joining Aster at the table, Baenon set out his bedroll on the floor before the fireplace, "The bed is yours," he murmured to her as he let himself down on his bedroll onto his back, "are you warm enough?"
 
Aster would never understand why he could just humor her sometimes. At least sit with her a few minutes before he flopped down onto the bedroll. Payback would be hers.

She took a few more bites before finally answering him. "Yes, I am fine," she said flatly as she finished eating. She set the fork on the plate and shifted to face the fireplace.

Aster hated when Baen didn't sleep with her. Even if they didn't fool around, she liked being near him. She felt safe with him. "Why aren't you sleeping in the bed with me, Baen?" She asked with a hint of annoyance in her voice now.
 
Good. She was fed. She was warm. She was unharmed. He'd done his duty for the day. Now he just needed to repeat the process for ... however many more days this took. The thought of this was nearly enough to give him a headache. Baen rubbed at his forehead and cracked an eye open to glance over at the annoyed Omnia.

"It is a small bed and I am wet from the rain."

Nobody wanted a wet dog on their bed.
 
While the annoying shuck was correct, the annoyed Omnia hated to admit defeat. She would rather dig in her heels and suffer while Baen sat there smugly knowing he was right and she was miserable. She didn't actually know if he felt that way but she felt like he felt that way and that irritated her even more.

"Will you at least help me to the bed? This is a new space after all..." Her voice was the picture of innocence.
 
Baenon reveled in the misery of very few others and Aster wasn't one of them. Presently.

He closed his eyes with another sigh at her request. Innocent little words. Part of him knew better, but he was hard pressed to deny her needs when she asked for help. Aster so rarely ever asked for help. Baenon pushed himself back to his bare feet and stepped over to the table where he reached for her upper arm in a light hold, "Come."

Despite the earlier misstep on the path in, Baen took care to guide her across the home and over into the bedroom area. He did so with his left hand at the small of her back and his right guiding her own to the bedpost first, and then to the pillow next so she could easily situate herself.

"Your bed, Lady Omnia," Baen's low voice rumbled into her ear over her shoulder.
 
Aster loved Baen with all of her heart. She had never and would never tell him though. Well...maybe one day but he would have to say it first. She was not one to wear her heart on her sleeve. Her lust and desires? Absolutely. Heart? No.

She smiled as Baen gently guided her to the bed and after she had touched the pillow, she turned to face him. "I do not think you smell that bad, my sweet shuck," she placed a soft kiss on his lips. Perks of being the exact same height and know how he stood. "The offer still stands..."

Aster turned away from him and pulled down the blankets. She touched the spot where she thought the pillow was to make sure before getting into the bed and pulling the blankets over her.
 
The sweet shuck went still as a statue, grounded to the spot by a sudden surge of intense, savage emotion at the unprovoked touch of her lips. Touch. Such a black and white, sensitive subject for the shuck, but Aster had a way of making everything grey because touch with her was warranted. Necessary. But touch with her also resulted in so many other things, the very good and the very bad.

Their first skin to skin contact, a most innocent brush of her hand against him, had brought back memories and visions of his life he'd taken extreme efforts to forget and grow beyond. He'd almost killed her and he might have too had Asemir not been present.

He watched her, unmoving, as she slipped into the bed and willed the fire in his nerves to dissipate over a slow, controlled breath. Once he saw her settled, his looming presence drifted away from the bed and back to the fire where he sank back down before the flames and carefully pulled his hair free of its tie and over his shoulders so it could dry.

Baenon spent the next hour in silence sitting by the fire, combing his hair free of forest tagalongs and tangles with his fingers and letting his saturated skin dry. A hushed word and gesture of his hand later and the firestone in the hearth dimmed down its flames. He departed his bedroll to return to the Omnia in her bed and slid in beside her.

The black shuck was now dry and warm and smelled of the fireplace instead of the hunt.
 
Aster had accepted his decision to not sleep with her and rolled over onto her left side to fall asleep. Even with her earlier nap, Aster was still exhausted. It was not long before she was surrounded by the darkness of sleep. It was a different darkness than what she lived in every day. The smells and sounds of her normal darkness were gone.

Since she had not expected Baen to crawl into bed with her, she did not take any precautions to guard her skin from him. She could barely control her magic while she was awake so while she was asleep was a total crap shoot.

The Omnia rolled into Baen purely out of instinct to go towards the warmth. She curled against his side and sighed happily even though she didn't wake at all. She was dead to the world.
 
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Having prepared himself mentally for the inevitable turn that contact would be made, Baen braced himself when the woman rolled over onto him, her bare face coming to rest upon his chest. For a moment he held his breath, awaiting the jolt of uncontrolled power, but as Aster sunk into his side content and warming, Baen let himself relax. Nothing happened.

The Omnia breathed slow and steady.

He shifted and made himself comfortable. Sleep found him quickly and dreams found him not at all.

In the morning Baenon was the first to awaken, but found himself inextricably tangled within Aster's arms and legs. Most males would have seen this as an opportunity. Baenon saw it as an inconvenience. There was work to be done before they left for their next leg of the journey and the dawning light of day mean that daylight was already burning. He extracted himself from the Omnia by dissolving into black smoke and reforming, naked as the day he was born, over by the fire.

Baenon quickly and quietly dressed, then departed from the treehome to make his way back through the overgrown brush to the walled garden once more. He stood there for a moment, assessing the wall before him while he tied his hair back again and then stepped forward to grab hold of the vines that climbed the face of the stone. Thorns that would have torn through skin were easily broken off under his armored gloves and the shuck grunted as he carefully grappled his way up to the very top.

There he stooped, precariously looking inwards upon the garden, and felt for the first time the vestiges of the Ask protecting the sanctuary. He wasn't sure how, but suddenly he felt the question: why have you come? and it gave him pause as he considered all that lay before him.

"I'm looking for you," he uttered quietly, the words spilling from his mouth as plumes of warm breath in the cold morning air, "trying to learn what's become of you, for your sister. I mean no harm."

He then felt the shift in the air, like an unseen fog slowly dissipating in an eerie sigh. The moment passed and the sensation was gone. Baenon wasn't sure how, but he knew he'd been granted access. Standing atop the wall, he peered over the edge before dropping into the thick of the overgrown garden.
 
Aster felt Baen leave her but she did not have the presence of mind to figure out that it was him until she woke up. She smelled the fire mixed with the earthy scent she knew so well and she immediately knew that he had relented the pervious night. It made her smile knowing that he had wanted to sleep with her. It was like pulling teeth to get any type of emotion out of him so it was the little things he did that reminded her he cared.

She eventually rolled out of bed and started to walk towards the kitchen. Her still mostly asleep brain forgot she was not at home and she ran into the back of the couch with a curse. She stood there for a few moments and a deep breath or two before she walked around the couch using the the back and arm as a guide.

She was not entirely sure where he was but it was easier to just wait for him than to go traipsing through the woods.
 
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It would not take long for Aster to have company again. Baenon strode in from outside, bringing with him the scent of damp earth and fresh rain, "I've found something," he said rather urgently, moving across the space from the doorway to the small kitchen table and setting something down with a hefty THUNK.

"It's a chest, it was hidden away inside a tree hollow inside the garden. Come," the shuck moved over to the couch where Aster was waiting and reached a hand out for her upper arm, the firmness belying his relative eagerness at finally, hopefully, having some form of break in their cold trail.

"See what you can learn from it before I pick the lock." There was no physical lock to pick, which meant it had been sealed by magic. Baenon wasn't certain he could open it without destroying the item, so gleaning what she could from it beforehand was important.
 
Baen's hand on her arm was firm as he guided her to rise and over to the table. Aster had not put on her gloves so it was relatively easy to reach out and touch the cold chest. She closed her eyes out of habit as the visions started to flow.

Music filled her head as she saw the chest packed with items that meant nothing to her. The name Detlan painted it across her vision and she saw the man from the other visions putting the chest inside the tree hollow. She didn't know the time it had been there but her mind told her hundreds of years.

Aster removed her hands and looked up at Baen. She relied everything she saw in her vision and she made sure to reiterate that she had no idea what the objects were.
 
"I see..." he'd peeled his presence away from her while she worked, watching with intense curiosity. Baenon was regularly marked by his cold, collected patience when it came to the hunt, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't the least bit impatient to hear about her visions.

"Good," the reply was short as he picked the chest back up and took it back outside into the pale light of the dawning day. Setting the object on the ground, Baenon moved to kneel before it, placing a hand over the top and closing his own eyes to concentrate on the magic that had sealed its contents away from the world for, what Aster believed to be, several hundred years.

Lines formed along his brow and he focused his own magical knowledge into the aspect of secrets, shifting through the various layers that formed the combination. After his first attempt the magic repelled him with a sharp jolt of pain, causing the shuck to swear loudly and yank his hand away. Whoever this Detlan was, he was proving to be a capable magician and smart. Baen could appreciate and respect the challenge, but found himself presently more annoyed than anything.

He rather hated resorting to brute savagery, but he wasn't keen on allowing a silly box to waste anymore of his time. So with a snarl he took to his hound form once again, seized the chest in his maw and bit down with fangs equally destructive physically and magically. The box emitted an ethereal screech before giving in with a satisfying crunch. Mouthing at the pieces, Baen spit them back onto the ground. A single scent filled his airways as he pressed his nose into the pile of belongings and he took the time to slowly, deeply inhale, fixing the smell to memory.

"It's ... clothing," he rumbled to Aster from where he stood over the pile, "looks like some type of uniform. Red with gold trim, a cross sigil."
 
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