I hope you don’t mind me joining in...
500+
The dichotomous form lifted in the heavens, and yet the form was difficult to find. Despite the pied plumage, the sudden white against the black, his shape was hidden by the shadows of the night. And he was silent—still, gliding upon the dark air as if performing the task that the gods had bestowed upon his kind. But no souls were held amidst his talons. They were curled, empty, beneath black belly for the woaded wolf had not battled, and no souls required guidance across the river that divided the world of the Living and the world of the Dead. The broken beak parted and called once, it’s harsh voice carrying through the nighttime air that carried the Raven. The single eye caused his head to turn at an extreme angle, it’s gaze fixed upon the shadowed earth below. To that bird, the world may have been a single sepulchre, and edifice erected for the woaded wolf to battle, to deliver the souls of the weak to that place that the Dead seek. The Raven breathed, his shallow bird’s breath smelling something it knew all too well: Blood. The black nothingness of the pied bird’s eye was marred by a movement of something—and emotion perhaps, or something entirely different—before they fell dead again. Like tar, the image that he found below was stuck within the reflection of his gaze.
The Raven called again, his voice hollow as if the place within his breast were hollow also. His voice echoed within the halls of the Dead as if in mirthless laughter.
Cwmfen nic Graine paused. All day the Woad Warrior had traveled, her step fluid and ethereal. As if the Morrigan herself were clothed within the black, woad-painted pelt, she moved as a wraith, a faerie of Caledonia, perhaps, through the woods. But she was a simple mortal, a simple Warrior, and nothing more. The treachery of the faeries, however, did not exist within the black female. Only the songs of the world sang wihin her soul, carried by the constant hum of the furies and passions of sanguineous war.
The fluid dancing of the Warrior paused as the Raven’s voice stroked her woad-banded ears. The white orbs, glowing in the half-light, was already watching the form that sat within her path. Her gaze was contemplative, curious, calculating, as she peered upon that strange sight. There was no sign of struggle, so scent of another, and yet blood flowed from wounds upon the lighter wolf’s body. The trembling seemed strange to the black fae, as if the other suffered now from disease or fatigue, but the scent of the wounded wolf was not fevered. The trembling was something that the wolf-born female could not place. A human emotion, perhaps, that nature would not suffer to live.
Cwmfen was still. Fear did not move her. Her tranquility was unphased, that cold-blooded calm unmoved. She was, perhaps, simply curious of the wounded creature. The marred soul, that black smudge, was made curious by the wolf whose back was turned to her. The woad marked tail moved behind the warrior’s graceful form, as if in thought. The black fae was silent as she moved then, creating a wide circle to seek the face of the other.