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?"
Reed frowned at Larkspur's answer to having seen Balthazar recently, her high-energy mood suddenly dimming. If Larkspur hadn't seen Balthazar, and if he wasn't asleep in their hut, then where was he? He couldn't miss out on all the fun! "He's not in the cabin. I checked." A part of her worried about him, but a larger part of her knew he was ok. If there was any wolf out there that could take care of their selves, it was him.
Her mood brightened once more when Larkspur declared that they weren't currently busy. Then they went on to explain the plant situation and at the mention of 'some creature', Reed started to bounce on all four paws side to side. "Oh! It must be! It has to be it! Oh, your plants are so smart if they already know about it! Look at this message I got!" At the mention of the message, Reed undid one of her several scroll cases that lined the chest straps of her harness. She popped one open with a nail and used her magic to lift it from the case and unfold it, turning it towards Larkspur. "I was out practicin' my dancin' in the woods, you know the place an' tree. This strange wolf approached me all mysterious and all and was like 'Ohhhh, you look just the wolf for the role. Ohr has a quest for you, young adventurer, with one goal.' and then gave me this scroll and then just walked off and vanished!" There was various text written upon the parchment, most notably mention of a large beast roaming the lands, but there was no specifics given, such as what the beast looked like, or where it might be. Not one to be deterred, Reed pressed on with her idea. "If your plants already alerted you of it, maybe they can help us find it! What do you say, help me out? It'll be one for the stories for sure!"
"I wonder where he's gotten off to," Larkspur mused to themself, glancing back toward the coast. They were a loner type but Balthazar hadn't ever seemed to be, especially given his bond with Reed. And they hadn't expected him to go wandering so soon after they were reunited - but they supposed that wasn't their business. Unless Reed demanded they go seek him out once more, they supposed they'd just wait until the hyena returned to them.
Besides, Reed had already taken the limited information the brindled wolf offered and was - metaphorically - running with it. They listened curiously to the message Reed read aloud, blinking a bit in surprise about the role of some mysterious wolf and a new name, 'Ohr' being brought up. They scrounged around in their memory before remembering that 'Ohr' was the name of one of the two major gods that ruled the two big-packs in the area - the one their sibling, Snapdragon was a member of.
"Sure," Larkspur agreed, stretching slightly as Folke - sensing their intentions to begin sitting up properly - quickly slithered back over to take its spot wrapped securely around their shoulders and neck. "Maybe if we find this creature, the plants will calm down and grow. And it'll be an interesting story for my sibling."
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Reed exclaimed as she began spinning in a circle and bouncing with excitement. Pip floated in the air, fluttering and squawking loudly. Her familiar was very displeased with his roost bouncing around and making so much noise. "Oh, it'll be an awesome story! Your sibling will love it!" she panted as she stopped her spinning.
Her figure swayed for a moment as she caught her balance with splayed paws, then she turned to look at the parchment that had fallen to the sands, her grip on her magic lost with her excitement. She couldn't leave it behind. It was an important part of the story! Reed reached out and gripped the parchment with her magic once more and rolled the paper back up. It floated up and through the air before resettling in her scroll case. She snapped the case shut, shook herself clean of the sand she'd kicked up during her spins, then nodded her head firmly to Larkspur. Pip settled down between her shoulder blades, muttering small squawks as he grinded his beak.
"Alright, lets go find us a beast!" Reed's head lifted up with confidence as she began marching forward in the first direction her paw stepped in. "Here's to the next adventure of Reed Blackpaw and her Second Mate, Larkspur the Unshaken!" She tossed her head and looked in Larkspur's direction as she continued forward, curious to see their expression when they heard Reed's titles for them. "What do you think? You like the titles? If yer gonna be part of the crew, you gotta have a title. It sounds way better when ya introduce yerself." Reed shifted herself to bump her shoulder into Larkspur, careful not to bump their familiar in the process. Pip protested at the jostle. "I figured you've been around long enough, it's about time you become an official part of the crew. You don't gotta use the titles if you don't want to, or any title at all. It's just for the fun of it."
Larkspur chuckled at the excitement immediately expressed by the she-wolf, taking a moment to drop down and extended their forelegs out in one last stretch to loosen their muscles for this next venture. A yawn broke from their muzzle, not out of tiredness but more in response to their body waking up. The yawn was musical in sound, something that bemused the brindled wolf - that change had come about only recently, just a few days after meeting with their sibling again and they hadn't quite figured out what or what it meant. They passed their tongue across their muzzle, once more passively blocking the sand flung in their direction with their wing before moving closer to larger wolf in case she took off without warning.
"I've never had one before," Larkspur admitted, tilting their head curiously as they mentally tested the title in their head. 'Unshaken' huh? That was a far kinder phrasing than a lot of other terms for Larkspur - like 'careless' or 'apathetic' or 'frigid.' They got 'frigid' a lot. It warmed them to be... essentially claimed by this free-lance pack they'd been introduced to. Maybe this exploration would be a good way to further know the sword-wielding wolf - they had wanted to know about the bands Reed wore after all. And perhaps to find beads to string along their own wings? "Larkspur the Unshaken - it's nice. Keeps my wings to myself too, just in case we need someone to not know."
"Where should we start on our adventure, Reed Blackpaw?" Larkspur asked.
---
Larkspur repeated the title out loud and proclaimed that they liked it, sending Reed's rump into a furious wiggle of joy. Secretly, deep down inside, she had really really hoped that Larkspur would like the name that she and Balthazar had come up with together. She found herself wishing he was here again. This was just the sort of thing he loved to do! "We should start!... uh!.., hmm," Her sentence started with vigor, but quickly sputtered out when she realized that she didn't have a clue where to start looking.
"Wait!" Reed spun around to turn face to face with Larkspur. Pip chirped and complained as he was tossed from between her shoulders and had to catch himself in the air. He hovered for a moment, then fluttered up and onto a branch to land and grind his beak. "Larkspur, you said that your plants could sense the beast, right? Do you think you can figure out which direction it might be in with yer magic?" Reed knew that Larkspur had a garden, and she knew that Larkspur had some form of plant communication or manipulation, but she wasn't sure just how far that went. "Maybe not exactly, but it would give us a starting point if ya could."
Larkspur watched with amusement as Reed promptly began wiggling like a young pup - how nice would it be for Larkspur to feel that sort of joy again? Although, inspiring that form of joy in someone was a close second they suppose, their tail picking up into a slight swish of its own before they were presented with a question. Using their plants to get a direction of the beast? They nodded in agreement, though they added aloud, "I will try but as trees have no eyes, the description may be vague."
The chocolate furred wolf delved back into the earth, closing their eyes and beginning to touch the 'consciousness' of the flora beneath their paws. It always took a moment to adjust to the senses possessed by a plant - touch primarily and spacial awareness alongside a general running sense of resources. It would surprise some creatures to hear the amount of awareness plants had for this sort of thing - their water levels, the turn of the season, the expected water they'd receive and what other plants were in the area.
The winged-wolf pushed forth the closest thing to an inquiry about the strange beast, asking for the creature causing concern. What Larkspur received back were more conflicting and confusing images - the estimated size was sort of vague, as was the species the plants tried to through out. Really, all Larkspur got was that the creature was... powerful? Full of energy at the very least. They shook their head in frustration - it would probably take them a while to decipher what exactly the plants had been trying to tell them but they supposed it was a start.
"All I got was it was strong," Larkspur reported, hoping Reed wasn't expecting anything too detailed. "Strange and unusual but not unknown. I don't know - north maybe?"
There had been a lot of interesting things toward the north after all - healing hot-springs, the first 'lion' and 'leopard' they had ever met, pillars sticking out from the ground, strange rainbow hills, a land of fire and caverns of glowing water and insects. 'North' was strange. Perhaps a strange place for a strange creature?
