Andarin: The Mountains: fehazathant;

"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
- Sir Francis Bacon
By the flick of an ear, she heard the rustle of matted leaves beneath the toenails of some creature - wolverine or bear, or wolf even, she surmised in the quiet of their breathing, his and hers. In the moonlight, that highlighted the black shine of her animal eyes (all earth, all animal this one, too long lost in the forest that at times, she threw her head back and howled to the night, or snuffled against the earth with a nose keen on berries - on the scent of streams and wild onions, she liked wild onions), she stole glances at him - at this night’s companion in his stance of sleep, fitful though it may be - as fitful as the moon that hid her face in clouds, in glimpses of her scarred landscape of round bone that, like an awl, punched a hole in the night, in the dark that swept around them in fitful (as fitful as his sleep, as the moon above them) tides of shadow that lapped and begged at her heels to take to the trees and travel the length of them, to track - for she had tracking on the brain.

She still made tracks in the night, in the breath that left her nostrils aflutter and in the gentle press of her shoulder to his as she shifted closer, than away, as though he were too hot to touch in the moonlight, in the cold winds that blew about them, in his sleep that she envied him for. In the passage of these things: moon, cloud, wind, breath, she did not notice the change of pace in his respiratory rhythm - to her, it sounded still as if he slept and in her nearness to him, she heard nothing but the scratch of toenails against bark and thought what animal goes there? Until moonlight shuddered across her face and left it shadowed, as she felt him stir against her in the act of speech (though he had been awake for longer than she knew) - some muscle twitched, gave rise to the subject of communication and she tensed subtly beside him, waiting for the stillness to break…

And even that - whispered like so, seemed too loud to her in the still of the night and the light of the moon that threw them into sharp relief so that she shut her eyes against it, turned to tuck her face against her shoulder but found her face tucked in against his. She thinks that this is not a night for introductions, but a night for strangers to remain strangers still. It is too late for that now, she thinks, lost somewhere inside her own head and the play of moonlight upon leaf and bent limb that she opens her eyes to (her face gone from his flesh though the scent of him remains palpable upon her lips, all too real as though she had tasted him and he tasted like nothing she knew). Too late to remain strangers now that strangers share the night and the closeness of bodies, of breath pacing breath from horse to horse. “Hello,” she echoes, equally as quiet - shy even - as he was.