The fires were getting worse. Rashina could not see the hazy skies or the way the sunset was vibrant in red. Instead, she felt the changes: the scratching at the back of her throat, the smell of burning wood, the heat of summer added with hot ash. When she licked her coat, she tasted it in her mouth.

The priestess wrinkled her nose, heading just north of Willow Ridge, where there was rolling hills, a pond and smelling of foxes. She came to the water's edge, sniffing around for the pool and going for a drink. She hoped to get the awful taste off her tongue and sooth the backside of her throat. Instead, the water tasted just as fowl, causing her to reel back and hack.

Things could always be worse, she told herself, and somehow each day, they had.

Ra silently scowled at the fowl tasting waters, deciding that it would have been best to seek out flowing water like a river, creek or stream. Here in the lake, it was still and tasted as though much ash had settled on the surface there. It probably had. For a moment, she just sits, taking a break before taking the slow, wide steps it would take to return back home.

That is when she heard the voice of another. It sounded young, happy and just somewhere in front of her. Surely across the lake instead of actually in this filthy water.

Ra's head tips up, colorful opal eyes moving somewhere into the others direction yet not exact. Her nose sniffs her out as it is lifted. "Hello there to you." She says with a soft kindness, her feathery tale waving over the earth behind her. "And who might you be?"

She heard the footfalls pick up of the other wolf. Her footing was light comparatively to some others she knew. Light as Naimh's was, not like Hagar or his three eldest pups were. Ra assumed she was a smaller woman, then. She coughed then and announced herself. Her voice excited as she did so. Her tone and her scent suggested a youthfulness in her.

While the other made way, Ra remained still, allowing the woman to approach her. Her stance neutral, tail relaxed behind her yet ears and head high with alertness. After all, Ra wouldn't walk if she didn't need to in this situation, lest she mistakenly poke into personal space or outright smacked into her.

After another series of the young woman's coughs, Ra replied. "That is fine, Asper. The smoke has not been kind to us. Yet, I'd think kinder to us then some." After all, they were still very much alive and had not been driven from their homes entirely. Not to mention, where the fires actually were, burning everything in its path. "I am Ra, of the Archer family. I'd come for a drink but, seems this pond here is tainted with the ash fall."She said with a hmmm of disappointment on her lips.