Edwin
The woods weren't peppered with bones, nor was it raining. Nay, the sky over the Cradle was ablaze with cthonic retribution and everywhere around it sat still as water in a glass. Equally clear was the sky. *What the fuck was afoot?*

Akvilė intended to get to the bottom of it. 

Not fond of the prospects of enduring an Old Testament thunderstorm in March she'd packed up her rucksack quickly and fled to the surrounding wilderness, tendons framed like a leaf over her head and filaments painting its shape. Now she had made it out into the surrounding woods and she was *Aching.* She sat down on a long-fallen and half rotted log and slung her rucksack beside her; it was time to fix up the wounds she'd sustained getting out this far. 

Pain sparked up her neck and through her jaws like a barbed wire whip as she leaned a little too fast towards her rucksack, and she let out a rather loud yet fiercely fought-back yelp. She stiffened for a moment and then loosened. Turned out fleshcrafting was painful; who knew? It'd been a necessary wound to get her out of the dormitories safely, but she had hoped it'd be less painful. She always did.

Ever the deer she felt a momentary wave of panic, and her gaze – mostly her eyes on account of her neck and shoulders being open wounds – shot up towards the surrounding woods and its trails, its animals, its trees, its distinct lack of bones. She couldn't help but wonder what the hell was up.
Russell
**Vizhkir Valentinovich Dragovich**

*Pain. Suffering. Anger. Vizhkir was training. His family had survived worse. As raining bones pelted his leathery wings and bone armor he pushed himself forwards. He had to be better than his forefathers. It was the Dragovich way.*

*His powerful wings beat agasint the torrent, it hurt him but not as much as the bullets had hurt his father. This storm, as abnormal as it was, served as his proving ground. He would continue to push himself until failure.* 

*Vizhkir spotted an opening in the storm, and his body screamed at him. As much as he wanted, as much as his strong headed Dragovich will demanded, he landed.*

*A yelp alerted him that he wasn't alone. His father's words echoed in his tired head,* ***"Always answer a cry for help. Always help those who need it.*** *Autonomously his body moved to the source. His black bone armor, his size, his wings and his gait gave him the appearance of a character straight from an Elder Souls game.*

*He spotted his query, wither she liked it or not, he eventually fell on one knee, right wing spread over her as if it were an umbrella. His huffs and grunts gave away his state, and his groans gave away his pain.*

"Why...*Huff huff*... Why are you out here?" *He asked in his distinctive Russian accent.*
Edwin
With upturned eyes Akvilė saw nothing, at least not at first. *It must have been the wind.* She glanced back down to her rucksack, and slowly reached a hand out to unfasten some of the buckles holding its tongue over the top.

She barely had a moment, however, to undo said buckles. As she curled two fingers under and awkwardly propped her thumb against a leather strap running top to bottom and then to top again a sudden presence made itself known in a blizzard of feathers, and in a Russian accent it asked why she was out in the woods. Akvilė jumped halfway out of the freckled skin slung over her shoulders, and let out another barely-restrained groan. She looked up, and between her caught-in-the-headlights eyes and her slightly agape mouth and defensive body language it might've been an easy read for how this new presence made her feel. But she couldn't just stare.

"I-I-I." She begins, sputtering like a diesel engine in Antarctica before letting out a soft annoyed sigh. "I would ask the same? It is, uhm... Bad out. Not here, b-but at Cradle. I simply wanted out of it, I guess."