Larkcall Lowlands Dust 'N Bones

Spooky RE Gift: A pile of bones turns up near your cache, but your stores have gone untouched. Who left it there? @Risaela

This weather was starting to get a little out of control. How mother nature decided it was totally okay to go from lightly snowing one day to extreme heat again the next, Sphinx didn't know, but what she did know was that it was totally bonkers. Today was one of those odd ball days as warm amber eyes glanced up at the scattering of broken clouds above that should have provided cooler temperatures and maybe another light dusting of snow, but instead trapped in the latest heat wave.

The speckled yearling groaned in the wake of the heat as her lanky limbs traversed through the dying fields around her that were beginning to lose their golden sheen and switch it out for a bland shade of brown, an ever watchful eye keeping tabs on her surroundings. Yes, the local coyotes had decided to move on to greener pastures and not a fresh set of tracks had been found in weeks, but that didn't soothe any worries about getting jumped the girl had anytime she ventured past the threshold of the borders. Bone piles still lay scattered about the lowlands as reminders of how devastating their impact was on the area.

It was one of these larger sets of bones that caught the girl's attention today. Their alabaster silhouettes glistening like beacons in the afternoon sun. Just a couple inches over was a secret cash Sphinx had made personally yesterday and she definitely knew that these bones were not here while she dug it up. A quick sniff at the surface of her hiding spot revealed no evidence of tampering, no secret visitors, but how in the world did these bones appear overnight? Freaky.

Risaela was... well... Things were going fine, and she knew that. She shouldn’t have been feeling down. Everything was going her way - she had Jessie and Can and Kalta and Kiss. Can had even agreed to share a last name with her, which was fantastic. But those nasty feelings were rising in her again - something she just hadn’t been able to shake after Kisla’s death. In fact, she had been sleeping on her own for the past two nights instead of beside Cancer, where she wanted to be.

A deep sigh tugged at her as she padded slowly across the fields, aimless and quiet in her venture. She didn’t have anywhere to be or anyone to see, so she was taking her time.

At least, until she spotted Sphinx.

The girl had grown a lot while they were apart, but she was still the same old Sphinx, and regardless of how Ris was feeling, she needed to go say hello to her packmate.

”Hi, S-Sphinx,” she called, heading up to where the other pup was. ”What’re you lookin’ for?”

Sphinx was perplexed in the wake of this mystery she now deemed mandatory to be solved. There was a special item buried beneath the soil here and the salt and pepper yearling couldn't afford to have its whereabouts discovered by.. "Wah!!" Three feet at least she lept into the air and whirled about once her toes touched solid ground again, eyes wide in clear evidence of being spooked by the fellow yearlings silent approach. So consumed in the current conumdrum, Ris's slow advance had managed to go undetected by the otherwise observant wolf.

Her heart hammered wildly in her chest while she took a few moments to bring her breathing back to normal, an amused grin peeling back the corner of her inky lips with a swift wag of her tail following suit to show all was well. "Scared me." Sphinx confessed before glancing over a graying shoulder at the pile of bones behind her then back to the tawny female, turning ever so slightly to allow her pack mate a better view of said bones. "Solving a mystery."

"Why you out here?" Not that she couldn't be out here too, but hopefully that would throw the other off the trail of her real reason for venturing out this way. If Sphinx could manage it she wanted to keep her personal cache and its contents unknown from anyone other than herself. Already its placement had been moved numerous times until she found the perfect secluded spot. A sense of embarrassment filled her gut at the thought of how Risaela would react and the Avalon girl didn't handle embarrassment well. Since their time apart both of them had grown in different ways; the darker girl losing family while the lighter gained it seemed, and it made her get all awkward since she didn't really know this Ris compared to the stuttering ball of fluff that waltzed in when Askan was still around.

But that could change, right?