#the sable

[ID: Wu Xi, wearing a sheer black veil, smiling and nuzzling the sable on his shoulder.]

Somewhere in the deepest parts of the woods four gods eyed one another warily, clearly tense. The others had arrived at the cabin after calls for a meeting - agreeing that the cabin was the most neutral location. But as the old woman puttered about, fussing over biscuits and tea, trio remained swathed in weighted silence. Buried in it.

Finally, one speaks, the man with the smirk. "Those were my men."

The beautiful woman standing across from him kept her arms crossed underneath her bossom, looking bored. "He wanted something very badly."

Strangely the pair both hail from the same place, after a fashion. She hasn't figured out what that might mean, what any of it means. She just knows she finds the both of them to be cynical to the extreme and tedious besides.

"I don't like being interferred with-" The man takes an angry step forward.

"Oh hush, as though any of us know anything." The old-woman tuts. She settles down on a worn cloth chair, her eyes clearly showing that she wishes for them all to sit. It feels ridiculous, yet The Dreamer finds she obeys just as readily as the other two.

And then more silence, the old woman content to say no more apparently. I suppose I'll begin. "She's right. I know who I am, but I also know I am both ageless and newly formed. We are what we make of things." A glance at the man, still frustrated with what he'd done to that poor, grieving girl. "I propose we make an agreement among ourselves, not of specific souls… but rather of purpose."

"You pray very hard, for a man who believes in little." Her words are self-satisfied, as though she has already figured him out completely, decided the outcome of this encounter. Beryn is too tired to care.

His heavy shoulders shrug. "Without her I am not half a man. What else can I do but pray?"

Her luscious body shifts as though considering - a practiced gesture. Beryn had known many a woman like her in his youth and had never lusted for such false promise. Woman like her almost made a mockery of his dear Briseys.

"What would you give, for such a woman?" She looks at her nails, almost uninterested. But her hand is an obvious one and a better man would have chased her off.

Without his wife, Beryn isn't a better anything. "Any price."

The men are hungry and hurting, but alive. The wolves have kept them fed and safe though Beryn notices very little. All he can think of is his beautiful Briseys. He promised to come back for her, to not leave her in the dark. Oh how his Tully-bred wife feared the darkness. And yet he'd left her.

Left her.

The others wish to explore but Beryn refuses to leave, utterly heartbroken that his beloved wife did not cross with them. He weeps and prays and rages. He's nothing without her - survival means nothing. So they stay, and wait, and hope.