#i saw once a pattern for a muzzle shaped face mask

[jonny-b-meowborn]

I've been thinking about making myself some crochet furry clothes, like a hat and mittens, and I think I finally have the idea of how to do it

[plaguerare]

Dawn and Marrow gifted their budding Clan the name of Dark Snow so very long ago, when they were younger and their future was uncertain; but not unknowing.

Oh, no, no, no. They knew.

Knew what curious things liked to hide in the shadows. Knew what sort of beings thrived in the cold.

Whispers that came from thin air; footsteps that echoed through empty halls.

Dragons that seemed to move unlike their kin; creatures that smiled wide and greeted strangers like they were one and the same.

Mortuus was the first--she had explained, quite simply, that the Scarred Wasteland no longer welcomed her home. And it showed in the way she held herself, her walk, her talk. The old and bloodied bandages that seemed to be wrapped almost too tight against her frame. The exposed bones that poked from her body in places that the average mirror didn't have. She lets the hatchlings, amazed by it's mystical glow, poke and prod at her amulet, but no one else.

Then there was Yersinia--and with her, she brought a looming fog and air that smelled like it shouldn't be breathed in too deeply. Though her eyes, at first so sharp and glowing with a green fire, settled into softness once she realized that they weren't going to chase her off simply for existing. She was eager to show her thanks; a gratitude of which was displayed by fending off malicious Outsiders with a quick, precise, inescapable sickness.

Then there was Equinox--fleeing from something that she seemed too broken up over to speak about. The scratches littering her skin left her weak and weary, and at first she regarded the Clan with distrust. But, soon, as the days passed and she realized that no more harm would befall her, she bloomed like a flower; taking leftover logs from construction and carving beautiful puppets out of them. ‘Old habits, you know,’ she laughed nervously when asked about her talents, though when her words were met with praise instead of resistance, she beamed. Her old family did not care for her gift, but her new family does, and that's all that matters.

Then there was Ritva--guiding a group of hatchlings that had snuck out back home by blue lights. For a while, she did not make herself entirely known, only visible due to the aimless wisps attached to her wandering soul. By morning daylight, she could be seen, and it didn't take much interaction for her to warm up to the rest of the Clan. Her vision is stronger, now, from where she is tethered to the halls and rooms filled with hospitable company, and for the first time in immeasurable decades she smiles.

Then there was Rogue--she appeared with a flurry of missing dragon posters and torchbearers with spears demanding justice. 'The fault is not mine,' she whispered through her mask. 'They are the ones who did not know when to leave well enough alone.' She hid within the Clan's furthest tunnels, until she didn't; until the Outsiders moved on and she had no real reason left to stay, yet she did. Her clanmates do not pry into her appearance, and so the electric storm that she contains, once raging and out of control and deadly, settles into a lulled buzzing.

Then there was Sarcophagus--when the old burial chamber was dug up during expansions of the Clan's denhome, it was quickly resealed and given a respectful distance, leaving the dead to rest. But he was tired of the stillness, of the suffocating dust, of the silence. He was found in the middle of the night, sat patiently by the hole in the soft earth that he'd dug through to get back to them. He does not remember his previous name, nor how long he waited in his so-called 'tomb.' He does not need to.

Then there was Phosphor--lost, weak, and unsure of her surroundings, though she had a hopeful smile on her muzzle all the same when she was found by a patrol. Her dark pelt glittered, dazzling under the light of the stars, and over time new shapes and patterns formed across it that looked more familiar to her new clanmates. The limbs at her back stretched out and grew into big, short-feathered wings, and her limbs constricted to be more proportionate with her long, mirror-like body. The others have found her, sometimes, sitting outside and staring up into the night sky. She's only mentioned her lost children once or twice in offhand comments, but the way she wistfully watches over the Clan's hatchlings says more words than she could ever manage to form with her tongue.

Then there was Wicker--no one saw him enter the denhome; one night he could just be heard wailing into the halls, followed by the smell of blown-out candle smoke. The hatchlings were the ones that eventually brought him out, tears cascading down his shielded face and his voice hoarse from his sobbing even long after they'd ran off to tell someone. He was carefully guided away, into the further dens where he wouldn't be disturbed, and soon he calmed back down and the once flickering flames of his candles blazed again. His spirit was small and weak, still raw from the tragedy of his life's end. He was thought to have left that night, only to be repeatedly seen running through the woods near the Clan in defense of it's borders, and, sometimes, curled up amongst a pile of slumbering dragons, keeping them warm by gentle candlelight.

Then there was Tundra--found sleeping by the steep cliffs that dropped to the freezing waters below, unbothered by the cutting winds. 'Those who reside within the land,' she breathed out, after questioning from the patrol as to what she was doing in the territory, 'learn to heed it's rights.' She stood to her full height, taller than a skydancer should be, and flashed her red-stained teeth at them in what was intended to be a friendly gesture. 'I have strayed from the Frozen Ones for long enough. Take me with you.' And so she was brought home, and so she has stayed where she can listen to what long-forgotten stories the ancient ice all around them has to tell.

And finally, most recently, there was Xquenda--inexplicably coming to the aid of dragons lost within blizzards and always guiding them back to a safe road. They grew attached to the Clan after a while, traversing with it's members even when the snowfall was light, and at one point simply followed a lone dragon back. Their soul wanders the denhome with a palpable curiosity, fascinated by all of the new-age things that they'd missed since. And whenever a clanmate needs to brave the outside weather, they're always right at their side, looking on with glowing eyes that cut through the fog of the horizon itself.

Of course, with the friendly, also come the hostile; distraught spirits that shake debris from the ceiling and leave claw marks in the trees. Things that aren't quite dragons that try to sow mischief and chaos.

But Marrow and Dawn look to their Clan, forged together with tight-knit bonds of kinship and unspoken protection, and they do not find themselves, nor any of the decisions that they've made, lacking.

For the name of Dark Snow invites all those that others have turned away, and offers them sanctuary.

[dunmerofskyrim]

47

A storm journeyed over Old Ebonheart and its first herald was rain.

Gutters overflowed and water crashed from the rooftops. The streets below were in flood, in flow, adrift with a scum of forgotten things. Dry leaves leftover from Autumn, winkled out of the corners they’d hid in. An enamelled tray, painted with a pattern of an ocean bed, with weeds framing the ripples and fish-shoals it showed underwater — a sea within a sea. Buckets and cups, wooden tableware, vessels of clay and glass.

From the hang of a balcony I fished into the flowpast sometimes, trying to snag what I could with a shopkeep’s weight attached to the end of a rope. I didn’t catch much. I wondered about walking the rooftops til I got to the waterfront; exploring the piers and warehouses to see if I might find a fisherman’s hook, a dockworker’s gaffe, a netchiman’s staff — something better suited to this new kind of fishing. But I had seen lights along the docks by night, and the drift of shouts and music, and wasn’t ready to brave it. In the main I watched things go by. I presumed at least the things I didn’t catch would end up at the harbour and out to sea, even if I didn’t. Old Ebonheart, I thought, getting leaner down the years as the weather washed it clean, and the pickers in the ruins ate up its scraps.

I saw papers go by, and scrolls, and tablets of wax and slate. They were the worst of the things I couldn’t catch. Just bills, probably, and contracts, or lists of things no longer needful. Still it thistled at me to see ink run and paper go to waste. Words lost, and curiosity gone to a strange fool sadness.

But the storm took more than the things it showed me, but wouldn’t let me keep. Wind and cold screamed in the high places and drove me from the warehouse tower. Rain flooded the colour shop in water the colour of mud, and I waded in, knee-deep, to save what I could from the damp. The sea surged on the long grey horizon and the spray of it rose spire-high, finally showing me why I had found saltlicks and dead seaweed even in the city’s highest heights. And in the clutch of the storm, all the shelter left to me was the dyery, the factor’s pits. So I buried myself there, where the air, the dust, the long-caked colours were always dark and dry, and I still had a chance at staying warm.

A heavy roof overhead, but still I heard the rain on it. Felt the thunder, as much from below as above, like it shook the earth with its every shout. Hid as I was, I braved a fire, and sat blinking from its thin close smoke, watching the dustmotes dance gold by its light. And I wondered, is that rain I hear, or the first hungry waves, tall as high towers, come to swamp and swallow and topple the city for good? The night was cold and creeping, beneath the hammering storm, and I feared what I would wake to when daylight came again.

And that was where Tepa found me. Perhaps they’d tracked me. Waited, biding their time. In the tower I’d have been safe from them but not from the storm. In the colour shop I might have had space on my side, and the rusty grate’s shriek of warning. Here I wasn’t so safe. A badger tracked down its hole, and the hounds on the way. Perhaps it was all planning on Tepa’s part, or perhaps they got lucky as my luck failed. Anycase, they’d scented me out. Though the storm had kept me awake, or sleeping light, it masked the sound of their coming. Too late by then. Close and loud and coming.

The click and crackle of nix came through the dyery, hard to tell at first from the snap and wheeze of my fire. Wet wood, complaining as it took the flame. Then the boiling whistle through their shells as they breathed quick, sharing their eagerness out through the pack. And beneath that, the shuffling feet and shudder-hissing breath of someone cold, moving more than they need to, all for the sake of warmth.

I thrashed free of my bedding. A tangle of legs and arms, then a creature of hands and knees, and hearthdust grit on my skin. I scrabbled amongst the things I’d gathered – jars and baskets; bottles and bags – finding my feet, finding my knife, any knife. Hearing all the while the shuffle of footsteps, the creak and hiss of carapace and long air-tasting tongues. I touched fingers to steel. The familiar cloth-wrapped handle of my spearhead knife, and the metal warm from living close to my skin.

“Hey, Firecaller..?”

I froze in a crouch, still as a crab in a pot-trap’s belly, waiting for the fisher to come. The voice was Tepa’s: hissing one moment and wet the next, clumsy at the corners, as if tripping from a tongue too thin to shape the words. They were speaking Tamrielic.

“Hey now. Hey!” Not words for me anymore. The scuffle of a nix-hound’s sharp small feet on the workshop floor. A pop and whining trill. “You’ve done your job. Now be easy… See, Dunmer? They’re not here to hurt you. Nor me. Just to find you.”

Their face showed over the edge of the pit. A strange round newt-face, spread between two wide unblinking eyes, bulging and black and far-set from each other. The smooth sleek skin of something unused to being too long dry, motleyed in pale greys and clouds and spatters of blue and sullen red, all drenched in rain and chased with firelit gold. Spines so thin they looked like feathers and moved like grass, fanning around their neck.

I didn’t straighten. Only stared up, face still half-fixed to snarl. But my fingers unstilled themselves, twitching on the handle of my knife. “You corner me. Come in the night. And you expect me to believe…”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Tepa chattered. “That I haven’t come to kill you? Hard to believe, but wouldn’t you rather believe it?”

One of the nix whistled again, and settled into a kind of rattling purr. Tongue searching the air, it looked down the pit at me, staring curious out of its eyeless long muzzle of a face. It had a strike of yellow daubed onto the hump of shell where head met shoulders. My eyes raced from Tepa to the nix and back.

Tepa settled first into a squat, moving strange and boneless, like every action was a kind of bending. Then they sat on the edge of the factor pit. Legs bundled in layers of hide and cloth all bound and wrapped eachover with rope. They swung their feet in the empty air and held out their empty hands. Clumpy mittens, three long and pad-tipped fingers and a thumb sticking blue-grey out of each.

“I saw what you did to Guls. Found what you did to Drosi. Think I want to chance what you could do to my hide, my hounds? I’d rather not. I’d rather, really rather not.”

“Wise of you,” I glared. “But way I see it, you’re still chancing it.” All thunder and no lightning, though. Half-starved and tired and cold for so long I’d not been on talking terms with my toes for weeks, I had no chance against Tepa and two nix. Not with nothing but a knife, and magic I was half-sure would kill me if I reached for it. “Must have a good reason.”

A kind of gurgling hum from somewhere inside Tepa’s head. The other nix, head-hump splashed with blue, peered over the edge of the pit and then slumped down, muzzle in Tepa’s lap and mouthparts chewing the air. Be easy, Tepa had said. “I brought fish,” they said now.

I blinked. Let myself, for what felt like the first time in a long and breathless stretch of staring. “What?”

“Catshark, salted. Got any milk? It’s good boiled in milk, I swear.”

Tepa slouched down from the ledge and into the pit. I flinched back, skittering away till I stubbed my heels on my jars, my sacks, my baggage.

“What’s that face?” Tepa asked. “Talk with words, Dunmer. Can’t read you people.”

“I killed your friends…”

“People I lived with,” Tepa corrected me. “Worked and ate with. Does that mean fondness? Tsscheh. My heart beats just fine without Drosi or Guls. They were closer friends with each other than they ever were to me. The mine though — I can farm that alone, fine, fine, more eating for me. But keep it? Guard it? No. No, I can’t. And you?” That head-deep hum once again. I wondered if it was something like a smile. “You seem good enough at threats. Murder. And you speak Dunmer, I think. You do, don’t you? Speak it?”

My belly growled, rattling empty, like the bezoar at the bottom of a finished sujamma flask. I nodded. “You came for help, then?”

“To ask and offer,” Tepa gave me back a vigorous nod. “No one stays alive long in Old Ebonheart without a tong. Don’t have things, you starve. Have things, you’ll die soon as someone stronger wants them. But with a tong..? Things stay still. Safe. You killed mine, and don’t have one yourself. The rest’s just common sense. Fish?”