The cold wind wrapped long, icy fingers about them both, but apart from pulling his bearhide cloak tighter about him, Sirius' grim expression gave no sign of any hindrance. As Eris, his mixed blood provided a plush pelt, although not as warm as some of his fullblooded cousins. When topped with the heavy skin and dense fur of the mountain bear, the wind could do little but moan and gnash its chilly teeth.
His breath was exhaled in a puff of steam. The white mist curled from the nose of his mare, too. The horse was picking its way through the frozen ground - The further North the pair ventured, the keener the weather became. It seemed that Winter originated from the snowcapped peaks of Halcyon itself; Sirius eyes these white jagged lines with the heavy scowl that foreboded deep thought.
As it was, the Boss was relatively unaware of the thoughts of his Auxiliary. Eris had accompanied him on this day because it suited her whimsy - Although he had requested her company, the tall, dark monarch had given up on high expectations of her activeness. Eris travelled where Eris wished, be it business of pleasure. She ruled with ministrations he could barely comprehend; Some form of kindness that one might go so far as to call loving. It pleased him that the dark woman took the Family into her heart with such fondness - Perhaps she could make up for the lack of love the Thistle King felt for all things. He could, however, regard pack members with some level of fondness, and if that was comparable to love, then Eris, her mate and her oldest daughter ranked highest in his affections.
He and the ebony woman had always had a somewhat bizarre relationship. He had despised her weaknesses, ridiculed her for them, but she had surprised him by requesting his help in banishing them. That was the day that Sirius had become a teacher - And, in doing so, a leader. It had awoken the voracious hunger for power within him; There was not so large a gap between leader and King. Boss, they called him, those in the Family. Boss. But the Revlis man had many names, not all of them favorable. His reputation spread, as hers did, on a wave of dissent. Growing whispers circulated about the cruelty of Salsola, and as they breached eager ears seeking to right such wrongdoings, Sirius grew ever suspicious of those who lingered beyond his thistle borders.
Thus, the cause for this expedition; There were murmurs of many loners to the North. It had suited Sirius to fulfill Eris' natural curiosity for the place and his own suspicion for those who lingered in it, simultaneously. The pair rode in relative silence, but for the occasional remark from the handsome ebony woman, and the rarer grunt of assent from the man she followed.
Her company was pleasant enough, for she was well accustomed to his ways, and knew what triggered his unreliable temper. Her company could have been pleasant for another reason - She had been a willing and skilled bedmate, with a lust he had not known she felt for him - But riding and the frigid cold dampened any semblance of arousal he might have had at the prospect of getting her alone. Although he would often have preferred to make such a trip as this solitary, the Eternity woman had her own kind of value with strangers and the like. If they ran into anyone, Eris would deal with them; If they were beyond her capabilities, Sirius would end them. His mood dictated such brutality - This day, the King was not in the mood for light banter.
They neared a territory he had not traversed before. It was further North than the trading path from Salsola to Freetown, and thus beyond his relative knowledge. The ground was moist here, in spite of the frost that sought to harden their southward territory. He pulled Luna to a halt, and the silver mare snorted, unhappy with the thick scent of wolves, and the dappled forest that could have held them from view. The monarch held his hand up to signal silence and stillness, and then he dismounted fluidly, crouching to examine a print frozen into the ground and then disappearing momentarily into the nearby trees. He returned shortly, shaking his handsome dark locks in dismay. "We are alone for the moment," Came the succulent, tenor voice, growly with his current mood, "They seem to have headed further east than this." That was poorer news, still - While he and Eris had travelled around the back of the mountain, it seemed this gathering of wolves had headed back to the other side of it. The mountain was all that kept them from the slope to Salsola.
.gsiri-01 {width:500px;margin:0px auto;text-align:justify;line-height:15px;font-family:Georgia, Helvetica, serifs;font-size:12px;letter-spacing:.75px;word-spacing:1px;}
.gsiri-01 .ooc {text-align:left;font-style:italic;font-size:11px;border-bottom:1px dotted;padding-bottom:5px;letter-spacing:.90px;}
.gsiri-01 p {text-indent:40px;padding:0px 0px 5px 0px;}
.gsiri-01 b {font-size:13px;letter-spacing:1px;}
.gsiri-01 .name {text-align:center;font-family: 'Permanent Marker', cursive;font-size:50px;line-height:20px;}
.gsiri-01 .quote {text-align:center;font-size:10px;padding-top:10px;letter-spacing:10px;text-transform:uppercase;}</style>[/html]