It was one of the rare times she got to see him smile....
The storm shook the ground as the skies opened up soaking them as they ran side by side each stride sending them faster and faster as if they were racing in silence. After a bit of climbing up the mountainside and away from lower grounds she'd guided him to sit beneath some trees that looked as if they'd broken beneath a previous storm, bent midway and falling over to provide shelter in a cove of branches. The thunder and flashes of lightning kept going on and off for a while but they'd groomed most of the excess water from their fur and when the rain seemed to slow enough she pulled back a branch aiming to thwap him on the back of the head but instead winding up soaked as a bunch of water that had been kept out poured  on top of her. Sputtering from being freshly soaked in frigid water she jumped up and hit her head on the branches making an ass of herself as her Lord began to laugh loudly, his eyes gleaming as she stood there soaked to the skin. Opening her mouth she began to sass him for laughing but was promptly cut off by the loudest crack of thunder yet sending her nearly out of her skin running back under the tree about to press into his fur when everything went to shit. A flash of light blinded her and suddenly she wasn't on the ground but flying through the air to crash sharply back into the earth, tumbling down the mountainside while gasping and trying to get her paws beneath her. She could smell burning....She could smell burning! "My lord!" she screamed but god...the sound was raw, broken, unintelligible through another crash of thunder and she began to run away from the burning tree panicked by the sudden absence of her best friend. From laughing and goofing off to this....why did she still smell burning? Turning around she looked at her body and was stunned to find that there was a good chunk of fur missing near her tail red blistered flesh in it's place that smelled like fire. Another crash of thunder and she shrieked, tucking her tail between her legs and booking it while calling out to him. She wouldn't go far, no matter how bad the weather got...not till she'd found him.



It had been weeks now, she'd waited around where the lightning had struck for probably one of them before beginning to follow the stream like they'd been doing before chaos struck.  It felt unreal...she wandered around in a daily cycle of checking off the basics telling herself "drink some water Andora, try to find food Andora, locate shelter for the day and night then move on again Andora" like if she stopped she'd stop living completely. It was only the past few days that she'd become physically aware of her body again and the ground actually felt solid beneath her paws the need to complete their mission driving her forward instead of autopilot. The numbness was more of a blessing in her opinion when she didn't think about failing what she'd been raised to do and losing her best friend in the process. Where had he gone? Had he panicked as well and lost the way back to the stream? Whatever had happened....she was alive and meant to stay that way, the stream had begun to widen and the land around it carried traces of wolves. It was the first sign she had that she was close to succeeding in their goal of finding a new pack, a new home, a place to learn of the world around them....if she could do that then she hadn't failed completely.