He is moving through the dark with a slow but steady pace, a continent shifting and sliding between the trunks of closely placed trees. Six years. It had been five since his mother’s deathbed, several since his father had faded into obscurity to meet the same fate. He had since been a roving enigma on the fringes of the consciousness of strangers all over the islands.

Never stationary, always making deep the deer paths that crisscrossed every island in some form or another [except Salem, which he religiously avoided]. Five years of being a vagabond, of avoiding the call of his need for others, of keeping himself from touch and bonding and speaking.

When he comes upon the Forest once more, it is intention and not wandering that brings him. He beaches like a great boulder of flesh, not terribly bothered by the salt that clings as the water evaporates from off of his flesh. His height was not the tallest, but his sheer mass made him an impressive sight to behold by any means and his presence was solemn and even more looming than any physical form could acquire.

His vantablack form is broken up only by the shine of wetness and the places where panther-like dapples caught what his color did not consume. His eyes are the brightest thing about him - golden like his mother’s had been. His mane and tail are thick, long, tumbling down the side of his neck and face, snapping against his thick neck and haunches.

He does not wait on the border, but sets himself to the trail of the landmaster’s scent - supposing that simply finding him anywhere might give any resident a shock and preferring to go right to the source in order to design whether a life here would be possible beneath their rule.He calls in a deep bass when he is about twenty yards or so from the individual in question, standing with the same casual self-confidence that accompanied most enormous beasts.