Is she so out of place, and he so camouflaged, that she judges him with the same critical eye as she uses to observe the wasteland they stand in? Or is it because of her tense limbs, her too-pricked ears, her bright eyes, that she is out of place? Where, he wonders, would this bronze sword belong? The flowers suit her sharp figure ill, and her blade is a shocking, unmistakable red against the ash of this side. She would be fresh blood in snow, and her taut silhouette would stand out brashly amongst even the harshest cliffs. He cannot imagine her hiding amongst trees, nor bounding through meadows. She seems, to him, a creature beyond the humble reaches of the nature, as if her anomalous existence has driven the natural way of things into the wake of her bold footsteps, unimpeded by the desires of such frivolous things as destiny and fate.

When she rises, swirls of ash follow the movement in lazy curls of silver against the bold brassy red of her fur, and Aulerion's cool eyes slide closer to her- not quite on her, this time, but watching her blurry flame from the corner of his vision as she sidles a slow and thoughtful circle around the charred carcass upon which he rests. She's more verbose than he'd expected of her, with her brief greeting, and though his head remains still, his ears follow her, greedily lapping up every throaty word.

"Life," she says, and, "Death." Beauty. Terror. -And, perhaps most telling of all, Gods- a word she lays out as casually as a summer dress upon her bed, but that bares all manner of her naked thoughts to him. He tilts his head back, still not quite looking at her, and smiles with pink lips sweet as nectar. "...You cannot have one without the other," she declares, and he inhales long and slow; exhales in a throaty hum between his slightly-open jaws.

"But if I had to choose a side… I would choose the dead."

He ponders this, her last bit of exposition, for several long moments of quiet- and without leaves and grass and petals to rustle in the bleak breeze, it is very, very quiet. He can hear her breathing in the utter silence as his eyes at last train themselves upon her again- first her feet, stained dark and grey with ash; slowly up her legs; lingering a moment on her breast, where her fur ruffles gently as the muscles beneath contract and release with each breath; up her long throat; coming to rest finally upon her mouth, and not shying from it as he considers her, and her words, and her steady inhales, and the unflinching pulse of her heart that he cannot hear, but can imagine with such certainty that his own heartbeat falls into time with it.

"...How sad," he murmurs at last, in a voice that is almost honestly kind. "By your own admission, you find yourself irredeemable..?" When he pushes himself up, it's with a multitude of snaps and crackles as he forces his way through what remains of the tree's brittle roots, coming to land with a muted thud in the snowdrift of ash that makes up the earth of this place. Shaking the black twigs from his pelt with an explosion of smoky flakes, he picks his way toward her through the graveyard with delicate steps.

"Isn't that a slippery slope? To choose this side and only ever watch the other," he purrs, his face all sickly sweet pity, but his eyes burning with a genuine, eager hunger for her answer. "-No, to choose to defend those with whom you have declared yourself unfit to join. ...Doesn't that ache and claw at your insides?" The fur of his shoulders rolls like hackles rising with each step, but still his tail sways appeasingly and his ears rest submissively to either side, his head hanging low upon the flexing muscles of his neck.

"...Can you really resist the long, empty hunger while feeding those who have never known starvation?" His voice is growing deeper; chestier; lustful in little thirsty increments as he slows near her side, leaning his head marginally closer to her throat, and whispers tenderly, "Is a hopeless sinner capable of fending off that madness..?" His ghostly eye beneath its ghostly lashes stares up at the regal profile of her face for a beat- and then he turns away, shuffling placidly along the tracks her red feet cut in the ash, his voice once again all hushed, brainless honey.

"Well, but it's a noble thought."