azar;

[Ivar]

I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take Silence is natural for him now. There is no sound as he slips beneath the cool black water in the lake north of the mountain. The moon overhead is barely visible in the brilliant glow of the sunset, but Ivar eyes it thoughtfully as he lingers a few inches beneath the surface.   It is brighter by the time he emerges. The spindly tips of the redwoods reach toward the glowing crescent, spidery and foreign in a way that he finds fascinating. The base of the trees are obscured by the same fog that Ivar now moves through, and the pines stand like sentinels. There is a steady stream of water dripping from his sleek scales and tangled hair, but the sound of it is muffled by the billowing clouds that roll in from the ocean to his right. The water here is brackish – he’s come up from the depths where the river meets the sea. The salmon struggle upstream behind him, undeterred by the swiftly growing night.   Ivar is sure he will find her here; where better for the daughter of a bear?   At their last meeting she had asked if she’d see him again. He had wanted to tell her ‘No’. He’d wanted to say that she wouldn’t need to see him again because he’d stay – or maybe that they’d go together. He was not that confident though – not yet. For all his good looks and charm, Ivar is exceedingly cautious when it comes to things as complex as courting.   Instead, he’d told her yes. Now he intends to keep his promise.   It’s not been terribly long – autumn still holds Beqanna firmly and refuses to cede to winter – but Ivar is finished waiting. He has not been back to Sylva in the in between; he’s not been back to Sylva in months. He had bid his parents farewell – though not a forever goodbye – and has spent the spring and summer resting his head wherever he happened to be when weariness overtook him.   The shore here is half sand and half silt, but the squelching of his hooves is muffled by the lapping of the water and the cover of the fog. The forest floor is as cushioned as Sylva’s, though the fallen needles are far more fragrant as he crushes them in his wake. His senses are dulled by the earthbound clouds, but luck is with him, and he catches a familiar scent only a few dozen meters away.   Ivar comes up beside Azar, quiet but not intending to startle her. He says: “Boo.” anyway, but its accompanied by a disarming grin.   kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis