A cove of bright blue water. Along the shoreline, the tides have carved the rocks into inlets and pools where the tide catches. There are many caverns and rock formations to explore here. The tide can rise quickly, flooding many of the areas without warning. An excellent place for gathering shells or hunting crustaceans.
Larkspur landed lightly on the stones, a fish clamped tightly between their teeth on the beach. Having lived primarily in forested areas these last several months of their life, they enjoyed once more having a slightly more exposed area. After the flood and their subsequent experience with drowning, they had felt a bit wary finally approaching the cove where Reed and Balthazar primarily stayed but they had quickly grown to like the sound of the crashing waves and the cool, near constant breeze stirring up. It made flight so much easier to have so much wind beneath their wings. They'd been counting on it as a distraction from their latest issue.
They sank down to their belly, allowing Folke to curiously flick its tongue out near the fish - likely, the reticulated python had never encounter such a creature in its lifetime. They took a small bite from the creature, ripping off barely more than a mouthful and set it to the side to allow the snake to taste a new quarry while they closed their eyes. They focused on the sand beneath their paws once more, feeling the light of hidden seeds beginning to ping in their mind. The dark furred wolf extended a thin tendril of power to the nearest once, trying to replicate the actions they'd attempted take earlier in the day albeit, to no success.
"What is bothering you?" she asked the seeds buried beneath the white sand. Rarely did the plants they touched simply elect not to hear Larkspur's whispered encouragement and advice on avoiding rocks and finding the water-table. But all day it had been the same thing over and over again, the brief acknowledgement of their power followed by the seedlings doing the equivilent of turning their attention away to something else, receiving information from the stretching, winding roots of the trees further inland that acted as the plant-version of an information web. Tapping into the root-structure crawling beneath their paws, all Larkspur could ever get are vague and confusion flashes that seemed to contradict each other. Without eyes, trees could only give the wolf impressions - impressions, they might add that weren't what you would call reliable at times.
"I can't understand when you're all speaking at once," the wolf grumbled.
"LARKSPUR! BALTHAZARRRRR!" Reed shouted their names at the top of her lungs as she crashed through the tall grasses that created a makeshift barrier between the sea and the forest. She had news! "LARKSPUR!" she bellowed again as she leapt over a sand dune, lost her footing in said sand, fell forward on her chest, and promptly sprung back up to continue her full speed sprint towards their small community area. "BALTHAZAR!" she yelled again, darting into their shared hut to search for him. Usually he was asleep during the day. Perhaps, though, he'd stepped out for some reason or another.
"Larkspur! Are you here?" Reed swung her body around to search the rest of the area, completely oblivious to the brown wolf as they laid upon the sands with their snake. Instead, Reed rushed to the area where Larkspur worked when staying in the area. Her nose fell to the ground and she sniffed and snorted. Larkspur had definitely been here. Her head shot back up as she heard a squawk from her familiar, Pip. Her ringneck parrot flew at her, beating its wings in her face, and Reed giggled. "What? What is it, Pip?" Her bird flapped at her face once more for good measure, then turned and flew out towards Larkspur's direction.
Reed watched and suddenly the figure of her friend became apparent. "Larkspur!" she yelled again as she bounded over to them. "You won't believe what I've heard!" She slid to a halt, sending sand flying through the air, and forced herself to remain in a sit as her butt wiggled with excitement. A downside of having little tail to wag. "There's this giant thing and it's roaming the lands and there's gonna be others who are gonna try to catch it or something and there might be fighting and maybe a war and ohmygoshLarkspurWEHAVETOGOSEEWHATITIS!" It was only then, when she actually looked at her friend, that she realized she was interrupting a meal. "OH, um, are you busy? By the way, have you seen Balthazar?"
Larkspur's ears pricked the first time they heard Reed yell, but rather than get up and try to draw her attention, the wolf elected to remain where they were on the warm sand. They watched with patient amusement, a slight wave of exhaustion washing over them at the sheer energy the other was capable of exerting in everything she did. Reed was a fun wolf to be around, but sometimes Larkspur gets winded just thinking about trying to approach life with quite that much vigour for anything outside of rare occasions.
They raised a single wing in greeting when Pip began flying toward them, leading Reed to where the wolf was resting with the irritating plants all still trying to push vague images into their head at once while still ignoring their requests to root deeper. They quickly pulled their spread wing in front of themself to shield against the wave of sand that flew through the air, impacting lightly against the glossy feathers before sliding back to the ground. They chuckled lightly, shaking the wing out.
"Hello Reed," they greeted pleasantly. "I haven't seen Balthazar today - figured he was asleep."
As they spoke however, the flurry of images being pressed toward them from the plants became ven more intense, hundreds of utterly conflicting bits of information pushed toward them as Reed spoke of a 'a giant thing.'
"No I'm not really busy," Larkspur noted, folding a wing back toward themself and allowing it to meld back into their body. Tossed their head with annoyance toward the sand they'd been staring at, "The plants have been refusing to grow. They're distracted by some creature roaming the land but trees couldn't tell a stag from a frog - perhaps that's the creature that you've heard of?"
