His body and soul still ached. The gold stood in the morning sun shimmering in its light at the mouth of his cave. How long had he slept in cool reclines of that place? Hours? Days? It might as well have been months. Though is eased him, the weight of before still pressed on his back and shoulders. He shakes his whole body to feel it, and then stretches forward his front half, before sighing defeat. Crowned head looks back into the dark cave. There his wolf cloak, where he had rested his head lies tussled and twisted from use. It would be ever so nice to return to it. His eyes felt most wide awake by the sun but he could lie all day and stare out. The temptation was almost too much. He almost went. But there was another in the cave who spurred him on.

Haldir lay by the wolf cloak. His dark body curled against the cool of autumn morn. He had slept with as much need as the golden, but his spirit also still seemed low. The gold snorts at him, and the deer’s still bare head rises, those pale bottomless eyes looking out with emptiness. Unexpected twinges of the companion’s weight flinch onto his soul. The deer still morns the night on the mountain, as does the gold those moments with the damsel and, the grey. They had been challenged and conflicted, broken and remade. Having seen and thought things they had never wished to see or think, and both hearts redoubled the lasting effects on its bonded other. The dark deer looks to the golden, its eyes long and deep. Haldir did not have even the will to rise up into the sun as the gold. His small life had not held such traumas as on the mountain, and losing his innocence to it still stung fresh, and worse than the gold’s. The small babe knew not how to shoulder pain and grief. He was wrestling to find his way back to himself.

The golden could sense this with the whispers of feeling sent over their bond. The ability to feel them had steadily grown stronger, but it was not until had had come upon the babe crying that he felt the changes. He snorts again at his deer, almost in a calling, but the babe does not move. The gold looks out briefly over the Basin from his perch. He could not hide here for long, already creatures were tracing about the landscape that needed to be investigated. Not to mention, a small nagging thought reminded him, winter was coming. A tingle of nerves up his legs signaled some autumn version of spring fever. Yes, they needed to get out, to move. Haldir most of all. The golden wasn’t much a parent perhaps, and he certainly still admitted to trying to abandon the deer in his early days. Now though the deer was stuck with him, and if he was going to have the little creature about it damn sure wasn’t going to moping like this.

The gold stretches a bit taller, muscles still revolting against the thought of not returning to bed. Yet he settles it by reaching over and grabbing both his satchel and golden shimmering cloak (the circlet never leaving his crowned head, nor the golden hawk his neck). He comes back into the light, the golden cloak like a glass mirror lighting the cave. His voice reaches back into its darkness though, with a familiar sternness. “Haldir, tolio. [come]” The deer flinches away at first. Earth eyes flash gold at this rejection. The deer had been doing too much of that before. A cloven hoof lifts and slams down on the rock, rattling the small stones by it aside. But the golden had even forgot. The stomp fall silent. Ears pin back, annoyed at his own magic for a moment. How could one make a statement without stomping a hoof on rock? So the traditional ways will have to do. The gold marches over to deer lying still, and his head snakes out with quick aim to nip the dark hide. A bleat of surprise jumps from Haldir, having not heard his bonded, and he turns with hurt expression back to him. The golden snorts his demand, and the deer gives in. His dark legs uncurl beneath him and he rises.

The two go out, slipping down the small pathway from their cave to the pines below, and from there to the open lands. The gold lead his bonded to the back of the valley, towards the towers of rising steam. They were the only warm thing this morning as the rest of the vale was covered in frost. Its soft crunches silent as always under the golden’s feet. The gold walks on, head level and hips swinging, relaxed. His body may still feel strain and weight but he was in the Basin, where he nothing dared threaten him. Haldir was not as easy to look upon. He trailed the gold, with head down, sleep still seeming to linger on him. At the flutter of a bird, or whisper of the wind he might look up, but then he’d fall to the same form. The gold was not blind to it, their bond continuing to nag him about it. So he was journeying to the hot springs, hoping the steam to clear up the deer’s over treatment of grief. He was still yet on the way, when faces of others began to appear.



OOC:: @[Ashamin] and open (if that's alright with you Jen =] ). There are lots of new people he hasn't met, or might would want to check up on!
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