When Sol asks about the murders, Mateo is all too happy to enlighten him. “Well, last fall two pages were murdered. Moore and Casper.” They were gentle souls, always so eager to lend a hand wherever necessary. “Not only that, they were eaten, their bodies left in the forest.” His lips curl in distaste– the two had not deserved such a gruesome death. “No sign of the monster has been seen since, although… there are stories…” ever the thespian, his voice lowers dramatically. “I’ve heard that on moonless nights, when the hour is darkest, a deathly hush falls across the Viride… and then a groaning cry fills the forest from every direction, rising from the earth itself like a wicked fog.”
He clears his throat, too old to be afraid of ghost stories (and yet…)
“Anyway, the beast has not been caught yet. Obviously.” There where whispers that it would never be caught, that it had starved in winter or moved south to Terrastella. But these whispers did not comfort Mateo… he did not like an unsolved mystery, and when he started unraveling a story he was stubborn enough to see it through to the very end, wherever it took him. “Citizens are supposed to travel in groups of three or more, and the borders are supposed to be closed, but… everyone is getting lazy, I think. Comfortable.” Himself included– a self-aware, cheeky grin sneaks across his face.
“Nice to meet you, Sol. I’m Mateo.” He stretches a wing out and brushes it against one of the behemoth’s in greeting. “Whenever I don’t know where I’m headed, I end up at the library.” It seemed to always be where his feet took him, or his wings, whenever his pesky mind didn’t interfere with things. Like now: with his brain split between conversation and staying alert for any particularly hungry beasties, he intuitively steers them toward the library hidden among the trees.
“So, where do you come from?” Immediately, a more interesting question comes to mind. He asks it before the man has the chance to answer the first. “Where are you going? Or is this as far as you had planned?” He gestures to the forest around them, and pauses speaking for a moment to listen to the wind dance in the treetops– and, of course, to give his companion the opportunity to get a word in.
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@Sol Bestiam sorry for the wait! <3
