Ashpects of Hunting (Ash y Pi)

[Pi dArtois]

She'd found herself here on these hills more and more often each night. The forest smelled of the perpetual decomposition of Autumn. Leaves that had fallen from the canopy above crunched under foot as she ducked between knotty oaks, whose limbs reached for the cloud splattered sky, barely letting the light of a watery moon filter through nuded branches.

Short perennials flicked her face as she walked, ducking when she could, pushing aside what she couldn't. Conifers with their pungent pine nettles whipped at her face as she navigated under their shaded limbs.

Pi was no native to this environment, not even close. She had been born a crows throw from the Eiffel Tower at Maternité Saint Félicite where nuns in their clean white habits plied her drug addled mother with ice chips and damp cloths held against a brow soaked with the cold sweat of a woman who had tried, and continually failed to lose the habit.

The same nuns who tried to convince that mother to leave the crack addicted baby where she was born, where they could look after her and tend to the specific needs of this squalling child that had been brought into the world, with her full head of dark hair and unfocused blue eyes that yearned for a drug she craved without knowing what that craving even meant.

She had been a premature, underweight newborn with lungs that barely filled enough for her to vent her cries of frustrated hunger. It seemed like Pi had spent her whole life frustrated and walking through these woods she felt the pent up angry overwhelm her.

No, this wasn't her natural environment. Not in the slightest. But she was going to make it that way.

The nuns didn't convince her mother to leave her with them. Pi used to imagine as a child how different it would have been if they had. Surely life couldn't have been worse than what she'd been forced to live through. No foster care system could fail where her mother had already done spectacularly.

She had roamed the narrow streets of Paris as if it had been her playground. Even the gypsy beggars had looked on her with pity, knowing eyes following her progress through shadow darkened walkways and little known nooks and cranny's. She had lived in a jungle, a dangerous wild jungle with sharp eyed criminals with murderous intentions but it had been nothing like this one, it had been an urban underbelly where her child self had learned the tenets of survival that had made her the perfect target for so many people. So many many people.

The ridge she stopped at was a raised portion of the forest that dipped sharply down into a shallow valley where a feeder stream glugged over smooth worn rocks, its water sparkling to the light of canopy filtered moonlight playing peekaboo.

With over 150 natives trees indigenous to Canada there was no way Pi could name or label even a tenth of what she passed. She appreciated as only a native city dweller could, in colours and textures and height of beauty. She appreciated the calm of nature with its nocturnal rustling. Even now, in the depths of a long winter night it held it's own life. Scurrying bottom feeders, and the rustling leaves of tree dwelling hunters swooping in to claim the lives of the unsuspecting.

Like her. Just like her.

She stood and looked out on nature's bounty, her hands held akimbo on girlish hips, shoulders thrown back, always razor straight, posture perfect. The shotgun she had slung across her back incongruous to her petite figure. Her short hair flopped across her forehead as the breeze played it across her face, and back again. Her mind felt quiet, as calm as the night that moved around her. She liked the Hunting Grounds.

A native of this environment she might not boast but a native comfort she felt for its environs.

She heard the rustle of leaves first and held herself abnormally still and she waited, a hunter whose watchful gaze held the patience of a long wait for an impatient prey.

[Ash Shevon]

The Past

"Yeah, punk goth freak!"

"Run away! That's what your mother did anyways isn't it? That's why you're so weird!"

"Go on Evan, ask him what his father does for a living...it's good...come on...ask him."

"Yo, freak, what's your father do?"

"He's a garbage man..." Ash found himself replying quietly, "Every morning he wakes up at midnight and then goes around town, collecting the trash." If his quiet tone had done anything it should have told them that by this time, their jokes and self praise and attacking words were falling off of him like rainwater on a clear day. There was no bitterness in his voice, no hesitation, no fear, merely a calm acceptance of his place in things. It was how it had always been. In his mind, it was how it would always be. It did not sadden him, the fact that instead of connecting with the kids and peers his age he was ostracized, if anything he preferred it that way. He could have done without the bullying part, but in his mind it just drove home the peace he felt when he was alone.

"Garbage...your father collects garbage...does he bring any home for you to keep? Is that what you wear? Hand me down clothes that you find in the garbage and paint black?"

"No, that's where he got his shoes, I heard he ripped the skates off of them because they were those old fashioned four wheel skates and painted them black..."

"Yo, gothy boy is that true?"

"Yes," Ash said, shifting his weight a little in the shoes they were talking about. The hard feel of the soles of them would never compare to tennis shoes in any way but they did just fine otherwise. Once he'd gotten the metal bars off and the brackets and reduced them to the worn leather skeletons they were perfect. The black had only smoothed the aged tears down and added a depth of something personal to them, a claim that made them wholly his own. It hadn't been anything his father had brought home for him, the relationship he had with his old man was nigh non-existent, which was the way he liked it. He had found them himself...fitted them himself, modified them himself. Just as he did with everything he wore. Laughter rang around him, buzzed through the air, the fact that it was directed at him not lost on him in the least, he sighed.

"Is that why your clothes are so torn up? Is that why you had to repeat a grade? Because the only thing your family is good for is trash?"

Ash stared at the youth who had spoken, the mascara lining his eyes making the dark color of his iris stand out, giving his gaunt almost pale features a haunted cursed look. His fingernails, painted black as they were curled a little more around the strap of his backpack, his form lanky yet not without muscle. He wasn't the sort of kid to stay inside, he liked to wander around the city, constant walking, constant climbing to the roofs of buildings and scavenging had given him a pretty good build. Indeed although the youth's surrounding him would nag and fire insults and insult him at every turn not a one had ever worked up the nerve necessary to actually throw a punch. His mohawk, a good foot or longer arched spiked ring around his head sort of warned any ideas of messing with him away. It was his armor, it was his one pride, it screamed wild and gave his slouched posturing and his embellished eyes a dangerous look. The deep purple highlights and the sheen of black it carried as well as it's stiffness always had him imagining that he could charge at his tormentors and run them through with it.

The Present

A lot had changed from the age of eighteen to twenty two. He'd moved out for one, he no longer lived under the same roof as his old man, no longer had anything to do with him really. The place he called home was a step up from homeless, a dinky studio with walls so thin that there was no silence, no blocking the other residents out. He paid for the place out of his own pocket, as well as the clothes he wore, the day when he'd searched out clothes and necessities out of the abandoned trash piles around the city having ended when he'd gotten a job in a seedy bar. Now he made his way in the floundering establishment, eking out a living by cleaning dirty tables and dishes and pouring drinks.

His social skills had not increased any.

He no longer wore a mohawk, the signature do having been replaced, left behind in his harsh childhood, instead his hair fell around his face like a sleek black and purple curtain. His eyes were as dark as ever but the mascara and the nail polish had seen their day as well. Now sleek satin pants, white long sleeved shirts clung to his rather intimidating build. His awkward lanky height from his youth had filled out, giving him a well proportioned look. His shoes were black, polished til they gleamed and despite the backwards neighborhood, the drug addicts and the gangs and the assorted tattooed bullies that lived near and around him he went through his day largely unmolested, untouched, uncared about and unnoticed. That did not mean he no longer wandered the streets at night though, he had to, the only times he actually spent the night in his abode were when his neighbors had crashed from drunken binges and other party like handicaps. It was also why he preferred the night shift, it allowed him to take advantage of the fact that every other soul around him had no sense of decent living and no concept of sleep or how it was a necessity.

He did have days off however, and on those days, or night's rather, he had the entire night to himself. Such as this night, where he could wander and explore the dregs of the city to his hearts content. This night didn't find him meandering down silent streets or empty store fronts, nor did it find him in alleyways, peering out at passerby with a bored air, or behind the supermarket in the empty parking lots. No, this night he stretched his wanderings outside of the city, leaving the somber light filled monstrosity slumbering behind him as he made his way into what he realized with surprise...was true darkness. No motorists roared nearby, no lights flashed brightly between the branches overhead or the thick trunks around him. None except starlight, the far away soft twinkles catching his eye like nothing else could as they winked at him through the foliage overhead, imparting the secret, the revelation.

Peace lay here.

The smell of decay, rising from the leaf litter underfoot, the musty woody scent of the various trees, the slight rustles and groans from unseen wildlife or wind all called to him in a way no abandoned building or forgotten graffitied enclave ever had. It shocked him, that he had never considered escaping to this fairy tale like place before. It had never occurred to him, so often had he been hemmed in by buildings and structured chaos...that the concept of open space, of sky, of a horizon was as far fetched a thing as a mother was. School was a staffed prison, had been fenced in, his concept of nature cemented in the brown patched grass field. Even work was a prison in and of itself although he liked the muted light and the somber drugged atmosphere of it. This...this was freedom.

It was also dark.

He found himself stumbling over a rather tangled root and having to reach out to catch at the grooved bark of the tree trunk to keep himself upright. His walking had in no way been silent, nor had he cared in the least. He thrilled at the concept of being alone, of facing his inner demons and fears and knowing that if anything happened that there was no one around to hear him, to care. It was how he felt when he was with others, so to luxuriate in it when he was alone was a guilty pleasure. A normal person would have stood in the places he'd stood in and felt unease, imagination running away with all the ways the darkness could conceal something, all the creeps that could be out at night, all the muggers looking for victims or psycho's waiting to carve their name in the bodies of those unfortunate enough not to have walls around them. There could have been a wolf, a mountain lion, a bear just out of sight, just behind that bush, waiting for him to draw close and then rising up, coming at him to end him.

But he didn't care.

He wasn't suicidal, he didn't want to die, he didn't hate his life, quite the opposite, he loved it, those moments where he pushed himself past that unease, where he accepted the danger of what he was doing and did it anyways. That's when he felt the most alive. Where he found himself standing in a place that was unwelcoming and feeling welcome, feeling like it was his, like he alone knew of it's existence, that he alone could find shelter, safety in it was a singular experience. He had found shelters and refuges like that all around town, he was determined to find such a thing here, maybe a grotto or a clearing, or even a cave...it didn't have to be anything more than a claustrophobic shadow touched area where he could sit...and listen...maybe even fall asleep.

[Pi dArtois]

It sounded like a freight train moving through the forest, all it was missing was a fog light and a warning toot to mark its passage across stopped traffic. Except this was no place for a train and whatever it was that was stumbling around in the dark making a god awful racket wasn’t anything remotely resembling a locomotive.

Closing her eyes she tried to recapture the moment, tried to search back for the zen place she’d found between the sighing of the Canadian’s version of the williwaw wind and the forest noises that only an unbroken silence of thought could render.

It was no good. The freight train had eaten up the place and spat it out in fits of broken branches, crunching leaves and unmuffled stomping of human feet. No animal moved through the forest with such a lack a grace without there being a life or death situation. This wasn’t one of those moments.

The williwaw wind wound its way around her face, flicking her hair in all directions, in a natural style of natures’ own making.

With a sigh Pi twisted, her movement a silent turning of the body as she maintained her place there on the outlook but moved enough then to look back into the forest where the noise was coming steadily closer.

It couldn’t be a vampire. Not even the most clumsy could move with such ill grace in the night. What surprised Pi was the lack of illumination. Why in the world a human would come traipsing about in this place without a flashlight of any sort seemed a special sort of madness. In some places the woods were midnight black, canopy leaves blocking out any hint of light a watery moon could shine with its overhead carpet of rustling green furled for the night/

Yet here came a human, all clumsy stumbling and seeming reckless.

She couldn’t tell the shape until it got closer, tall and lanky with extraordinarily thin frame. The outline reminded her so much of Caine she had to look again to make sure it wasn’t the same. It had to be human, it just had to be. All that noise, all that reckless movement through a still night.

Pulling back into the shadow of low hanging branches she moved herself out of the reflected light that illuminated her outline on the skyline. Standing on an outcrop overlooking a small gully was one thing when you were alone but to outline yourself against the skyline when approached by a stranger, was a whole different back of tricks altogether.

Such a dark night it was, such an opportunity to grab what she wanted and be damned the Masquerade. Out here in the wilderness there was zero chance of being caught, being a danger to their kind. She could take her time, she could hunt a prey, chase it down and..

She stopped the thought even as the idea of it made adrenalin sling through her veins at the idea. A hunt, a real hunt, with a human?

Atrocious. But dammit, she admitted to her self. Very very tempting.

[Ash Shevon]

Usually even in the darkest corners of the abandoned places in a city you could find light, whether it be from the streetlight down at the corner, the shadowy lighter grey twisting and rebounding off of walls, lending the black of night a subtle lightness or the light rising from the city up to the night sky to eat away at the starlight getting reflected back down by the underside of clouds and smog. None of which was present here, he'd never been in dark such as this, usually squinting and allowing his eyes to adjust gave him some semblance of outline, some idea of what was around him. He found himself forced to pause, forced to listen to himself breathe, squinting and unable to see what was in front of him.

Normally it would have been a sign that he'd found a place cut off from the world, but for the first time he could remember he found himself staring into the darkness...unable to see whether what he looked at was really cave like...or open, or occupied by something far more dangerous than him.

He couldn't...step...forward.

His fingers dug into the bark of the tree beside him as he stood there, staring, taken aback, feeling his heart began to pound in his ears, his imagination finally leaping away from his usual calm acceptance of whatever may or may not happen. He found himself focusing on his own breathing, trying to hear over the loudness of it, trying to strain his senses to pick out any hint of movement from the shadows. Maybe I should climb a tree, that's what a sane person would do I'm sure, to stay off the ground away from the bugs I can't see...and other assorted dangers...what if I lay down on an ant hill or near one and they swarm me? What if I wake up and the grotto I thought I was in turns out to be just trees closely grown together...and I simply sat in the middle of them because I mistook the darkness for solidness? How sad that would be...that would defeat the purpose of finding a private place to rest.

He accepted the fear, recognized it for what it was, breathed through it, thinking and dismissing each fantastical imagining his mind tossed in one by one until the darkness regained it's quiet and became manageable again. It's no good, he reminded himself lightly, chastisement in his mental thought, To dwell on what one doesn't know...you just have to accept what is and move on the basis of that. If something is hiding in the darkness, it'll make itself known and I'll have to deal with it...but until it does, it does me no good to convince myself there may be something there when there isn't. If I feel around calmly I'll be able to picture in my mind what's around me, like a blind person would. Blind people do the same things seeing people do...they aren't scared of the unknown...because it is what they live in...so for tonight...I am blind.

That settled he stepped carefully away from the tree, much calmer than he had been, a sort of pride filling his chest at having overcome his own sense of panic and reasoned it away. He crouched, his curiosity coming to light as his fingers touched down on the leaf litter covering the forest floor lightly, smoothing through the slightly damp prickly leaves and twigs until they touched down against dark soil. A visual image of what the ground had looked like when he'd first walked into the forest wavered up into his mind's eye at the texture and the temperature of it and he smiled. "There...see that's not so hard, at least now I know that what I'm walking on hasn't changed." His voice was a comforting thing, the amused tone of it self deprecatory and calm at the same time. He drew in a light breath, smelling the air, "It doesn't smell like anything bad either so I must not be standing in animal waste...or touching it...that was a stupid fear anyway...the entire forest floor wouldn't just turn into that because I can't see it. While we are on that subject...there have been no shifting sounds or growls in response to my voice...so the idea that there is a frightened or vicious animal within arms reach is preposterous...because it would have reacted."

A sigh of relief left him at the sound of his own reasoning and then he shook his head, amused by it, "Yeesh, I haven't felt like this since high school..."

[Pi dArtois]

He was so damned close his fingers nearly plucked the laces on her boots.

She’d had time to check him out as he got closer, tall and lanky with hair that fell around his face and clothes that were way too nice to be worn crawling around on the ground out in the middle of the woods at night.

Something was very wrong with this man, something very very … off kilter.

She looked out over the expanse of darkness that stretched out in front of her. It’s like he’d landed on her moment like a bull in a china shop all loud banging and smashing porcelain. The shards of sound jarred at her senses and pierced the quiet she’d wound around herself and appreciated not moments before.

Stillness turned to irritation and irritation turned to a gaze which centered on a male who sat at her feet feeling around like a blind mole, directionless and searching. He sifted through leaves, as she watched, picking up opossum **** without realizing it and tossing it away as his nocturnal meanderings saw him scoop up all manner of forest decomposition, spores of fungus lifting skyward as their sacks released early under his clumsy explorations.

You come to love the night when night becomes the sum of your waking hours and you learn its nuances, its natural ebb and flow.

Here crawled a man who obviously didn’t see what she saw in this place, who didn’t grasp the beauty that could be found in silence, who didn’t see the abstracted splendor of darkly cast shadows, and the deep purple of a cloud covered night.

Instead he talked to himself in an effort to calm his own fears of what lay beyond the shadows his humans eyes couldn’t pierce. His voice, an outer utterance of an inner unease fell into the night and sat in the silence like bubbles that lived short lives and popped out of existence leaving nothing but broken quiet.

The only thing Pi had to decide was whether she was actually going to answer the silly wippet or let him roam about on his hands and knees and get himself mauled by a bear. Except, she rationalized, why the hell should the bear get all the fun; which was the thought, funnily enough that decided her.

Her voice dripped sarcasm when she spoke, the French rolling off each tight word, soaking it with dry humour. “You regularly crawled around in the woods, in the middle of night when you were in High School?”

Moving left just a little Pi let the filtered light of the sky outline her body and waited for her little verbal bomb register and explode into the still night.

[Ash Shevon]

The voice, was wholly unexpected, there had been no sound of breathing, no footsteps crunching towards him or flashlight beams breaking up the dark. He was in a word shocked. It was as if the very night itself had taken form and spoken to him. Either that or an animal had taken pity on him and finally revealed that they could speak. A chill creeped down his spine but he didn't stand up, instead he tried to place where it had come from.

Then he saw her.

Mostly because she moved, the feel of sudden presence and the movement against the stillness was what registered to his eyes. That and the area she stood in had a backdrop of moonlight. He blinked, not straining his eyes just taking in what they showed him, shocked at how quietly she moved, how still she was afterwards, her voice holding no fear, no unease whatsoever. It had to have been intentional, he realized this as he stared avidly, she appeared to be wholly at home in the forest, she had to have moved where she did for his benefit. He found he was grateful for the gesture, even as he was entranced by her, curious as to her purpose out here. He had never thought he'd find another who did what he did, who braved areas most avoided and felt comfortable in them.

"No...if I had, I would know what I'm doing...I've never stepped foot outside the city before. The city was my forest..." he replied, hearing the sarcasm in her voice and brushing his hands off as he sat back on his heels. "This is all new territory to me...it's entirely different than scouting out alleyways and long forgotten buildings...what I meant was I hadn't actually felt scared by the idea of being in the dark since high school. I like the dark, I've just...never seen it so...complete before, it's fascinating...like a blanket one could pull over one's head and hide under." He sighed a little, realizing how he must look, if she could see him that was, "In truth...you seem to embody what I was trying for...you seem far more comfortable than I am...I'm jealous."

It was strange, usually when confronted with another person he would close up...become defensive, disinterested, he didn't have any friends, he wasn't known for making connections with people. But with her, he didn't feel awkward at all, didn't feel that usual fear of being an outsider. He figured it was probably because of where they were and how they'd come to be there, that and the fact that they were completely alone. As fearful as he had been, having heard her voice, having conquered his unease, he felt more confident now, like anything was possible. He didn't feel the need to view her, to judge her, to compare her to him or vice versus, he just felt like for the first time he was truly anonymous and could simply say what felt right to say and not worry about being laughed at.

[Pi dArtois]

This was not the reaction she was expecting. When you are surprised in the dark woods, on your hands and knees, in the middle of the night, it doesn’t seem quite normal for a person to be this… calm

She wasn’t expecting calm. She had girded herself for gasping shock, angry terror or even a high pitched girl like scream that echoed through the night and bounced off the leaves of shadowed trees, over valley, hill and dale.

But no, what she got was a male sitting calmly at her feet telling her he was jealous of her comfort out here in the night. Surely a person could not be this complacent, except he really did seem to be. He accepted her presence with an aplomb she couldn’t have shown in the same situation, had never shown in a similar situation.

Pi had been born with a quick trigger it seemed and it didn’t take much to flick her ‘**** kicker’ switch. Even as surface-ly calm as she seemed to be, the truth of the matter was, for the most part she just wasn’t. Calm at all.

Maybe it was because he didn’t seem at all concerned that made her turn her back on him and take up a position on an outcropping of layered rock and sat with her feet dangling over the rolling incline. It was no death drop by any stretch of the imagination, its gentle drop into the gulley below was a tiered graduation of rock and trees, slipping down into a gurgling stream.

Not that he could see that, she could. And not that falling down the gentle incline couldn’t kill a person, because taking a nose dive down any embankment could break an unwary person’s neck, just not hers.

When she spoke she did so turned back to the moonlit view over the silent valley of forest trees. Knotty branches and lofty pines that swayed in a nonexistent breeze.

“I grew up in Paris, have you been there? Like you, before I came here I did not appreciate the forest as it is tonight.”

Tilting her head back she continued. “With its bright stars and watery moon and these wide open spaces.”

With a smile in her voice she finished with a bland statement that spoke volumes and nothing at all.

“Oui, I am. Comfortable here in the night. Je suis Pi, you are?”

[Ash Shevon]

When one's worst fear comes to pass, that's when one finds oneself confronted with the choice of how to handle it. Either one lets the build up, the anticipation one felt, the paranoia add to the happenstance occurrence, or one realizes, admits to oneself, that now that it's happened, it really isn't all that bad. To say that a voice talking out of the darkness at him hadn't been on his list of runaway fears would have been a lie, but hearing it, hearing her took all that built up tension and just washed it away. Suddenly the night wasn't so mysterious, wasn't so unknown, instead of just dealing with his own imaginative wonderings he found himself able to focus on the reality of what had actually come to pass. He wasn't a jumper, he wasn't a flincher, when someone punched him he watched the fist until it hit his eye without squinting or looking away or blinking. He had never yelled, or screamed, even when he'd been taken by surprise in the hallways, he'd merely paused, whatever thought he'd been thinking scattered by the electric sense of shock.

There was no need in him to know why she would be out in the middle of the night like him. No pressing curiosity to know who she was or her past or what made her tick, no desire to understand what he did not know. He just accepted what he did know about her, that she was there, that her voice held a timbre, a tone to it that enthralled him, that revealed to him his unspoken idea of beauty portrayed by sound. If he'd been asked to assign a voice to the idea of womanly mystique...hers would have been it, her accent was a pleasant undertone to listen too. If later on something happened that he wasn't expecting, he would deal with it like he had her appearance.

But he would not worry about what it was, try to imagine worst case scenarios, his imagination had no place here and he did not allow it to run away from him a second time.

Instead he took a rare enjoyment from her presence. An enjoyment he'd never once experienced with any other individual. He'd never had a high school sweetheart, he'd scared off all the 'good' girls with his looks and all the girls who were into 'goth' like tendencies were usually high or drugged and more socially inept than he had been. It might have been because he couldn't see her that well, because despite the undeniable curves she possessed, the graceful silhouette of her form against the night, the silent way she moved, the halo of hair around her head, it's color unknown to him, she was...largely undefined. Just as he felt unjudged, free, cloaked by the darkness so was she, a wraith born out of the very night, with the voice of an angel, her persona enough to draw him in, she embodied what he'd searched for in the empty roads and quiet decay of the urban city.

That was enough for him.

"No," was his reply to her question of whether he'd been to Paris before or not. "I have never managed to escape this town...I was born here...I shall likely die here..." He did not sound saddened by this, or jealous of her experience or the fact that she'd seen more than he had. He didn't even sound like he cared overmuch, although he admired the flavor it added to her personality, he didn't crave knowing what she knew. He found enjoyment out of life, it didn't matter where he had or hadn't gone...as much as the city was a cage, it was familiar...comforting, it was a place he felt a part of in some small way.

He got to his feet, straightening up unhurriedly, watching where she moved. Then he moved towards her, in a far more human, inching one foot in front of the other sort of way. Reaching out with his hands to feel out a nearby tree and then situate himself against it, looking in the direction he thought she was looking, blinking slowly to try to bring it into focus more.

"Uh...wide open spaces..." he repeated, sounding vastly amused at the fact that the impression he'd been left with was very closed off areas full of tangled roots. Although the moonlight did seem to twinkle, it's glow catching in something between the branches of the nearby trees, almost as if they were on a hill...looking down towards a river. The starlight painted a vast canopy above them and once he'd looked up he realized that the trees around him...weren't so closed in as he'd first thought, because he could make out quite a bit of sky. "You can never see this many stars in the city...never..." he noted, an awed tone in his voice.

At her name he blinked, dropping his eyes down from the stars, the last time someone had asked for his name...it had been at the interview for his job. That's how good he was at being sociable. The pause was only infinitesimal, but it showed a hint of the fact that he was out of practice when it came to holding a conversation...or sharing anything about himself. "Ash..." was his quiet response, "Ash Shevon."

[Pi dArtois]

What an unusual thing, sitting here with a human indulging in a conversation so at odds with their surroundings.

Moving the shotgun slung over her shoulder Pi leaned back and looked up at the sky, his mention of the stars prompting her to raise her gaze to take in the constellations above. In doing so she got a quick look over her shoulder her brow arching as she realized how tall he actually was, stretching way above her as he did.

Considering how careful she usually acted she was surprisingly unaffected by the potential threat. Instead she felt almost surreal-ly calm about the whole thing.

Noting his height as a matter of form and filing away the bit of information she switched her gaze back to the night sky. Like watching clouds race across a summer sky, picking out fire breathing dragons or mythical griffins that flew on cumulus tufted wings, staring up at a clear midnight sky brought the same sort of joy. When stars are the only things you see in your waking hours you come to know them, their names, their histories, what they represent. Like the sounds of a night forest or the tinkling of a shadowed spring.

Orienting herself north she found ursa major, pointing with a slender finger as she stretched an arm northeast.

“The big dipper. You see? It is standing on its end, with the handle closest to the horizon.”

Using the two stars at the end of the pot Pi traced a line to the North Star and spoke its name out loud, her voice soft. “Polaris.”

Tracing down this time she picked out ursa minor, “The little dipper. Do you see the constellation curving its way between the two? That is Draco, the dragon.”

The long sleeve of the black shirt she wore slipped down past her wrist to pleat at her elbow as she pointed again and again at groupings of stars, her voice melancholy as she spoke their names and gave their story. These constellations that were once strange to her now had names, characteristics and histories.

Opening her fingers she stretched them out as if she could touch what she spoke of.

“Just to north of Polaris is Cepheus, the King and there just to the west of him is his queen Cassiopeia. You can tell it’s winter for Cassiopeia is inverted to a ‘W’ shape.” She swept her finger along the imaginary line as if to trace each of the stars themselves, connecting them with the magic brush of her finger tipped wand.

When she spoke it was almost to herself. “I came to this city last summer when Cassiopeia sat reverse to what she is now.”

Her gaze searching east she finds the cluster of stars and opens her hand again her voice near whisper soft as she continued in a lesson that was not the least for Ash’s benefit. It seemed she talked more of and to herself than to him, retelling a story that sounded more like a biography than a lesson in the mere placement of stars. There was certainly more there than the retelling of constellations whose names were set aside by gods she didn’t believe in.

“Andromeda. Their daughter.” Dropping her hand into her lap she turned where she sat to finally give him her gaze, even though she doubted he could see much but her shadowed silhouette. Wind blustered a bit now, shaking the crisp dry leaves at their feet in a whirl of frenzied activity, blowing in a chill breeze to raise goose bumps on exposed skin.

“Legend has it King Cepheus chained her to a rock beside the sea in an attempt to please Cetus, the sea monster where she was rescued by the brave Perseus on the back of the great steed Pegasus.”

Her laugh then tinged a bittersweet melancholy, her voice rough and self deprecating. “Just like I am chained. With no hope of a Perseus.”

It tasted like winter, an acrid burn of threatening frost and potential rain. The season as mercurial as her current mood, shifting like the wind, blowing wither which way, today it was introspective.

Why in the world was she here in this place with this human discussing the stars and giving vague hints of her life. Why indeed.

[Ash Shevon]

Movement caught his eye, tickled his peripheral vision and then he was following her arm as it lifted up, his eyes moving to the tip of her shadowed finger and up, past it back towards the sky. Her voice filled the emptiness between them effortlessly, every soft cadence of it simply belonging where it was. Like the soft whisper of a stream, or rustle of leaves, or groan of the trees around them. He didn't question why she was telling him the names of the stars, he simply searched the heavens, finding a longing in his heart to see what she saw.

To recognize it as she did.

The vast expanse of twinkling starlight made him feel lost, like in scrutinizing the multi-hued lights he was making them blur, stealing the innate meaning away from them. He might have gotten good grades at school, might have paid attention in class, but all that was nothing compared to her knowledge. He suddenly realized, just how little he really knew about the world. It humbled him, that sudden revelation. It had him following each time she pointed, his eyes searching the sky diligently. More than any awed understanding and empathetic recognition...he felt, taught.

Like if she were the night itself, formed out of his need to escape, here to open his eyes to what he'd been staring at his entire life. He was quiet, there was no sound that escaped him, no words that interrupted her train of thought, her recollection. Every single syllable her lips formed he visualized in his mind's eye, used to paint color and depth into the smorgasbord of the vast unknown. But more than any celestial secrets, he noted the clues, the story...that she was spinning held pieces of her. He could hear the sadness, the melancholy taint to her voice, as if each bit of knowledge came at a steep cost. As if knowing what she knew was bittersweet for her. Then there were the nuggets, the priceless tidbits, the knowing when she'd arrived in town, being able to put it together in his mind and marvel at not having seen her until now.

The mythological fantasies that fell from her tongue seemed to personify her somehow, instead of focusing on the words themselves he found himself listening to the tone of her voice. Wondering, when did you learn that? What were you doing when you found it out. The last time you gazed up at the stars...where were you? How old were you? And of course the most curious question of all.

How many times have you stared at the night sky...alone?

Andromeda's name hung in the air between them as her hand fell to her lap, the motion of it somehow catching his eyes up away from the sky and pulling his gaze to hers as she turned to look at him. He found himself, sinking. Crouching, sitting down comfortably next to her, his interest in the avid curiosity and awe in his eyes as he focused on her. His breath was baited as he waited for what she would say next, he didn't want to interrupt, to intrude on her moment...but he couldn't stop the need he felt to share it with her. Wind pushed between them, catching leaves up past fingers and clothes and hair and tossing them out into the open air where the incline rested. Not a one caught his interest or distracted his focus, it only added to the intensity of the moment. As though the wind would at any moment eat away her silhouette until he found himself alone again...marveling at what he'd learned about the night.

A slight shiver did catch at him though, the sudden chill unexpected. His simple shirt and pants not enough to keep the warmth from rising from his skin and wisping away into the night at the behest of the wind. Her laugh was abrupt, it took the beauteous moment and made it all to glaringly real. Just like that she was not some figmental imaginary perception of his idea of perfection...she was a person. Her statement had him blinking, staring at her in surprise as she likened the story to herself, claiming that she was chained and had no hope of a rescue. He mulled her words over in his head, "I suppose, I would not mind being chained to the night..." he finally said, not knowing how correct his wording was.

"Surely hope...could not compare to being trapped in the moment?"