[AW] [patrol] because you are full of grief

[Andras]

and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding

Mathias smiles--or, doesn't smile so much as he bares his teeth, savage and feral as he has ever been. Something in Andras falls back into place, something that had been dislodged. It matches the tone of his own rage, this humming beast that owns him, in a way that feels right, and good, and comfortable. As Mathias falls in line behind him Andras breathes a huff that he had meant to be a sigh, or something like it.

It feels like home, as much as anything has - which isn't saying much, but there we have it.

They walk.
For a while there is nothing but the woods and the snow. The only reminder Andras has that Mathias is there at all is the crunch of his footsteps and the plates of Mathias' armor clunking rhythmically along behind him. It creates some strange song of stillness and war, like drums in the dark, or a crackling fire.

Andras has been staring for days at dead faces, so many faces he cannot breathe without thinking of one carefully captured part or another, drawn just as it had lay stretched across the ground. He wonders how much death a person has to look at before it becomes a part of them. He wonders if he will start to look like their king, haunted and sweating. He wonders what he will do when the season has passed, or two seasons, or more, and there is no more of this -- no hunts, no meetings, no bodies in the dirt.

He looks back over his shoulder.
He will have to deal with this, the silence, then.
He would rather be haunted.

Mathias shoves him. Not hard, but hard enough that a ripple of electricity runs down his back, starting first at his withers and fizzling down to the base of his tail.
"What." he says, impatiently, turning fully now. Mathias is staring at the ground, armored and grave, and it takes a moment for Andras to see them, the tracks. Once he has he can see nothing but.

Tracks and dead faces. Enemies of sleep, he thinks.
"Follow them," he says, unfolding his wings. "I'll look from up there." Andras pumps them once, then twice, until he has surged toward the canopy with this speck of viride laid out like a map. He lands in the arms of one tall tree after another, following Mathias as he goes. Waiting.

His rage is so loud he can barely breathe.

@Mathias