The white oak bark that Kisu and she had collected was buried beneath one of the handful of enormous sequoia trees within Horizon Ridge's territory. Jinx had risen early this morning to visit the site and investigate the overturned earth, and had been relieved to find it undisturbed. The thought of a pack mate locating the cache and making a deadly mistake with handling the goods within was a frightening thought, so much so that she had thought time and again of relocating it to her eventual den site. She refrained from moving it, though, for the simple fact she had shared its secrets with Kisu. It must be readily available for the male's use, if he chose.

Once she was satisfied with the status of their cache, the female had loped down a path carved into the foothills by a once-running stream that no longer was fed, and padded along the damp strand in the peace of the morning. There was no sound, not even the calling of gulls overhead, as she paced down the beach and eventually slipped back into the Ravensblood Forest in precisely the location she had gone when Kisu had found her. She passed by the tree they had stripped bark from, and pressed instead further into the forest. She went so far, in fact, as to reach the snow-covered edge, where coast turned to flatland.

It was there that a spectre from her recent past arose in the distance, and stopped her dead in her tracks. Had it been any other, Hawkeye or Leto or someone less recognizable, Jinx would have been on her way, and perhaps never chanced an encounter; she would have slipped by on the fringe of acceptable company and continued scouting along the inner curve of the mountains. Yet, it was not of those wolves. The wolf she spotted was perhaps the most recognizable of all the wolves she'd known: the mottling of stormy slate on an otherwise pristinely white coat was unmistakable even at that distance.

Jinx's hackles lifted in uncertainty and curiosity; would Pied remember her? Would Pied blame her? It was the Kesuk who the Bon Dye wolves had betrayed, not the other way around (so she told herself, being addled by her vision, despite it having occurred mostly in her mind), but would Pied care? Jinx did not move. She stood at the edge of the forest, staring down her once-subordinate, wondering with bated breath what the female would do... If anything.

There was a brief pause in which Jinx's breath was held in tightening throat. Her suspense was enough to make for a decent thriller action scene, but it was short-lived, as Pied's course appeared to line up directly with her position as the female lurched into motion once more. Still Jinx remained motionless, though her ears flitted downward to the sides of her head and her lips parted into an anxious wolf-smile, the sort one would greet a potentially threatening enemy with, and not a friend.

Pied's tone when she was within earshot was calm enough, but Jinx, whose rationality and poise had been taken by the horrible thing she had seen, imagined accusation where there was none and bristled indignantly. Her glare was pointed, but it faltered at Pied's own direct stare, as though for a moment her composure had been lost. Even she could not dare to stare down her once-subordinate, not when her memory recalled with fondness Pied's seamless integration into Bon Dye. Besides, the question was simple enough: where had she gone?

The answer was not so simple. The truth of it was that Jinx had found the magical fly amanita tucked into the roots of a birch, and consumed it without thought, believing it to project her soul into the spiritual realm and taking it as an avenue to increased knowledge and wisdom. The potent hallucinogen had made her perceive a wisp on the wind, and she had followed it in the belief it was Bade, the loa she served, up to the point where she had foolishly fallen into the river. She had survived the journey downriver, inexplicably, and pulled herself to the riverbank to witness a sleepy bear's descent into its den for hibernation... But the rest of the scene, the part where it had consumed a white bear and bore the red vision of Sos, had been entirely the effect of the mushrooms.

Being so zealous in her religion, she had taken it as truth. What she had seen had been real, at least to her. But the shock of nearly drowning, coupled with the onset of starvation and the anxiety of becoming lucid in a place she didn't recognize, had effectively removed her memories of most of it. She could only remember that the loa had guided her to Sos, and Sos had proclaimed himself victor, but of what, she could not remember.

So to Pied, Jinx had almost no solid explanation. Her religion, her god, and her loa were tangible only to her, and served as shaky arguments at best to anyone else. So while her glare said, you fools left my forest, her lips parted to say aloud, the loa promised wisdom and I followed. That "wisdom" was the replacement of her intelligent (for a Kesuk) forethought and her compassion with something baser and more wild, something that had no name, but governed the innermost spirit of all wolves.

Tension filled the space between them, but all Jinx could focus on was the way that Pied's lips bunched and pulled in vexation. The Kappa didn't respond physically to that; after all, while logic would have dictated that she was in the wrong, Jinx had lost the concept somewhat. Her mind was made up: they had left her forest, and gone their own way. It was unforgivable. She was too addled by the events to truly see it from Pied's perspective, which was promptly revealed to her.

They call, I obey. That was probably the most that Jinx would supply by way of explanation. That had always been the case. It had been the case when she had left Shearwater Bay in the hands of her sister, despite having coveted her precious title of Mambo since she was a young cub. It had been the case when Sos had first indicated to her that that forest was to be their place of prosperity. And it would be the case now, in her foggy and incomplete record of her short time as Alpha of Bon Dye.

Now the female's lips bunched to an expression similar to the vexation Pied had showed, and the brief lift of ears and hackles suggested, you should have waited longer. She wouldn't have expected them to be leaderless so long — it was not the way of pack to be left without an Alpha even for a day — but to leave the forest and uproot the pack, it was treason. They had sworn an oath. This belief was, of course, in contrast to Jinx's own actions: if her belief that her wolves had wronged her was justified, then why hadn't she chosen to stay in the forest when she came back as well? Was it not hypocritical?

To the final inquiry, and the grating of Pied's voice, she merely lifted a shoulder in apathy, as if to say, I am not responsible for their actions. I do not know where they have gone. There was a lurch in her heart at the mention of their names — she could have claimed Kerberos was dead, as her heart felt was certain with the macabre sight she had seen, but she did not. Nor could she account for Lecter, whose wayward wandering may have been in pursuit of Clarice, his daughter whose presence in his life was thin as gossamer. It may have been in pursuit of Sos.

She longed to put on a display to warn Pied away from the site of her new home, but there was too much tension and underlying curiosity for her to do it just yet. Respect was not established, with both feeling the other to blame for the pack's relocation (or disbanding, since Jinx didn't know what had become of it), although Jinx blamed Pied and company wrongly. There was no reason for the piebald Delta to heed her, and so Jinx waited, albeit reluctantly, for the meeting to take a turn that might permit either of them a chance to depart.