Drooping Willows end

Fires on the Horizon BWP. Eligible for 20 LP!

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.

hi!

She should have been listening to the sounds of summer back home: rustling leaves, rain sizzling on the broad rocks of the Ridge, the thrum of dragonflies. The sounds weren’t that different here, but Asper told herself these weren’t the same. There was a fairy tale quality to them. Somehow this valley, remarkably close to where her mother had been born, was practically untouched by fires. The only sign she had not stepped into a fantasy was that the sky hadn’t changed. The clouds still hung low, full of smoke that left everything with a dingy, dusty color. The air was acrid, but infinitely more breathable than where she had come from. She took a deep breath.

She coughed. She couldn’t help it.

Her mother hadn’t lived here in many years. Asper hadn’t really made a lot of sense of which place was what, what things were where. What side of the mountain her mother lived? Both? But what side had she really lived? It was a desperate question, a guiding question. What else did she have.

Realizing she was making a racket even with her brief, dry coughs Asperitas immediately refocused herself on her surroundings. Had anyone heard her? There was a pool of water nearby, through the willow trees, and a shape. It was a wolf, bent down to drink. Asper’s heart stirred hopefully. The wolf on the other side did not like the taste of the water. Just another sign of the times.

”Hello!” Asper called out, without any real fear that something bad would happen to her. The coyotes that had chased her mother out probably hadn’t been around in years. This seemed like a safe place.

heeeelllo!! Long time no rp together.

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?"

                                                                                                   ⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆                                                              
"Moon Mother,
bring us your light, for the night is dark and full of terrors." 

Asper waited politely for acknowledgement before she moved closer. There was something odd in the movements of the lake-goer, though she couldn’t immediately put her paw on what it might be. Her coat was the brightest thing she had ever seen on another of her kind, but that in-and-of itself wasn’t what tickled the yearling’s curiosity. The winter-white stranger’s snout bobbed scenting the air, but Asper didn’t feel sure that the other wolf was looking her way. Should Asper sniff the air so strongly? She took another deep breath, trying to take in any helpful information, but found herself interrupted by a cough again.

This was exhausting.

”I’m Asper!” she said, awfully excited to tell someone her name. It assured her she was still here, and that this wasn’t some weird, smoke-teased but fireless dream. She closed in on the stranger, noticing all at once that she was truly, completely white, even her eyes. They reminded her of shiny river stones. They were very pretty. Asper coughed again, abruptly, and immediately apologized, ”Excuse me, I’m sorry. I’m not..not sick. I just lose my breath lately.”

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.

                                                                                                   ⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆                                                              
"Moon Mother,
bring us your light, for the night is dark and full of terrors."