Fire...what else is there?

@Echelon Quick spree to survey the damage!

They'd made it to the moonspear and waited out the storm. It'd been... a high stress kind of night and he hadn't slept well at all. None of them had. After the winds came the rain. With the rains came more wind. After that? A howl unlike any other followed by an eerie quiet that made his heart sink within his chest. Something told him whatever they found wouldn't be good. The fire that had started just before they'd departed hung with him. That picture wasn't pretty in his head.

He was restless. He noticed Echelon seemed a bit unsettled too. The fleet-footed coywolf needed something to put her mind at rest... or maybe he was just projecting his own feelings on her. Either way, he'd excused both of them from their gathering after leaving a word with Tonravik and Nanuk. They'd scout the packlands and see what remained of them.

Iqniq walked. His pace was quicker than usual as he wished to get this over with. A low grumble was held within his chest. A foreboding tightness held it there, lodged within his barrel of a chest as he pressed forward. Realizing this, he shook his head and nudged her with his shoulder, trying to distract himself.

The disquiet of the night gave away to an uneasy morning. The tension that remained in lieu of the storm was foreboding, though she assumed whatever threat there was had come to pass. Her restlessness stemmed from many things. Storms came and went, as they were apart of essential life. This one was bar none one of the worst she had sensed, perhaps among the first of ones she had truly sought shelter for.

And now as they progressed back towards the Spine, her eyes wandered at the unsettling silence that had fallen over the terrain. Life was not void of the path, but it was still. The birds chirped unevenly and out of tune, perhaps as sleepless as the wolves that crossed beneath their homes in the heavy boughs.

The touch of Iqniq gave her observations pause, and she looked to him with a blank expression. His unease was indeed projected, and she nipped at his shoulder roughly. It was as though she suggested he should not have let such a thing as a storm to rattle his cage, though to say it hadn't shook at the bars of her own was untrue. Were the summers like this? She couldn't help but wonder after that, though she had already gone through a summer of sorts there.

And the heat, well, the heat was still there. Stifling and thick, the humidity did not part for them as they carried on.

He was trying not to notice things he should have been noticing. Like the silence that hung around them. Birds were still infrequent. Carcasses of smaller animals littered the ground. It'd be a feeding frenzy for scavengers should they desire to press their bodies through the folded trees and broken bows. His lip curled as he stepped over a fallen tree trunk. What a mess.

She nipped him. He glanced at her before twisting his muzzle into a smirk and pressing at her shoulder with his paw as if to push her away. A playful gesture. It was intended to soothe his own discomfort by replacing it with something else, but that mild amusement was short lived.

"I saw lightning strike as we fled," he admitted. He'd whispered it to none other than his mate, but all who were with him saw it too. "The Spine was on fire." Was. There was ash on the air, but it was minimal. The Spine sort of contained itself, so he was uncertain as to how much would travel by wind. He supposed they'd find out shortly.

He pushed her away and she let him, broad strides putting distance between them as she sidestepped-mowed down a sapling. It sprang back up as she picked up her pace again to match his, an ear turning to catch what information he offered. A fire, huh. It didn't surprise her; the air had been so charged with something that lightning seemed like a likely culprit. So what if it had set fire to part of the Spine, she decided then and there, maybe it would give it a little bit of gnarly charm.

Maybe no one would dare to go through that part of their territory, and she could have it all for herself to bound around in and generally be a nuisance. Perhaps it would offer something she hadn't experienced too, something more to learn about and learn to move through. She offered no words to rejoin his, merely letting her eyes focus on the ruddy trail before them. So far, so good. Things seemed alright through the level plateau they crossed, but the degrade of the incline would come about soon.

Only they didn't know what they were about to find over the next few minutes.

She seemed... optimistic? He wished he could share in that... only to later curse himself for having become so pessimistic as of late. Where was all of this coming from? Stress. His first time at true fatherhood where he'd be present to watch over his children. This storm which upset all he knew to have be solid and true. He sucked in a deep breath and released it to the world as if to expel the negative energy. He could be hopeful. Had to be.

They neared the borders of their home. Altering their course, he guided them around the edges of their land towards the storm path. More trees fell. Others were ripped from the ground. Iqniq squeezed himself beneath the trunk of a tossed tree and emerged from the other side.

"Ready for this?" he asked, as he walked through the folded grass and collapsed trees that led up the slope towards their home.

Over the slant of grade and through a thick patch of ferns, the Spine pulled back the veil it seized close at heart. The wreckage was more than evident, as the tall standing spires of forestry lay in ruin as far as the eye could see. While some trees seemed standing and unscathed, the majority were askew and torn. Splintered. She fell behind to allow Iqniq to take the lead, slipping smoothly beneath the thick and ancient trunk in his wake.

With a nod, she proceeded forward. She was ready, she was always ready. Or at least that was the way that she carried herself. What was done was done and no thought or willpower would reverse what had become of their basin-bowl of a home. The earth was ravaged here, the scents wild and scattered. It did not smell familiar to her now, nor did it appear that way.

Echelon scoffed as she kicked loam out of the way, choosing to scale a fallen log with grace that was soon lost once she was standing atop the weary wood. She teetered and tottered, balancing foolishly at she moved along it. The view up there wasn't much better either, nothing but pure wreckage every way she could cast her cool gaze.

"We were wise to leave," she murmured, wondering if Tonravik had more than just a feeling of what would come. "Was everyone accounted for?" This time, her voice was louder and wondering. Their numbers were robust, but she did not know all that resided beneath them. They were fledgling initiates, apart of the pack only in name but far from the breadth of Tartok. Bodies for the cause.

They drifted upwards, plowing through the remains as if they were the embodiment of their own Pulukria. The wood beneath his feet shifted and he moved quickly to find solidity beneath the timbers. There... a patch of earth remained. He hopped over to it and steadied himself before continuing onwards. The pressed closer towards the rim of their once home.

From the ridge, he looked down into the basin that was the Spine valley and founded completely flooded. The bowl of their home was filled so that only the tips of the tallest trees lingered above the surface. On it, broken trees floated. Some trunks were torn from the winds. Others appeared as charred pieces of driftwood lingering on the surface. These lands were drowned. The lake and natural springs overflowed and their natural exits were clogged from the soot, rains and trees. Unless they all magically gained gills and learned to breathe underwater, there was no way they could continue living here.

"Looks like we'll find Tonravik her snow after all," he mused, finally finding a stroke of optimism given the circumstances. They couldn't stay here. They'd be forced to travel. His mate wanted someplace cool and now they had the opportunity to find such a location.

His ears flicked towards Echelon's question. "I didn't see Aariak or Aupârtok," he said, but Salamander had been long missing. Perhaps she'd drifted away without notice before the storm. "Nanuk said she'd greeted a new wolf on our borders. I didn't see him either." The rest... The rest all appeared to have made it. That made eight of them in total. Eight wolves... to support a new pack wherever they ended up. Perhaps they could collect any loners along the way. Surly there were other wolves out there who needed the support of a group after a storm like this. Tragedy had an uncanny way of reminding wolves of the importance of banding together.

The names that he offered didn't mean much to her. If anything they were appropriate descriptors in at least one of the wolves, and if anything else Iqniq's pronunciation was getting better. If he kept that up she supposed he would eventually pass for someone who spoke the lingo from the get-go. If he lasted, she surmised there'd come a point when he spoke the language longer than his own common tongue.

She stood still for a moment, pondering their course of action knowing that there were wolves loose from their ranks. There was a resolute part of her that considered them lost for good, but also a part of her that took into consideration that without a pack to back them up, they were essentially not much more than a few stragglers. The mention of a new wolf in their midst did not draw much out of her either, as she couldn't have been certain who it was either.

Echelon shrugged and unceremoniously slid off the side of the log.

He'd been practicing. He and Nanuk had taken long walks around their borders where he'd badgered her into lessons in the Tartok language and she'd battered him up for mispronouncing things. The language wasn't native for him yet, but he was getting better at it. Based on the way Echelon didn't comment on it, he assumed he'd at least been passible. He'd take it and keep working on training his tongue to form the strange sounds.

She said nothing. There wasn't anything to be said. All that was left was to report back. The Spine was no longer inhabitable. All they could do now was relocate. And fast. His mate was heavily pregnant and he had no desire to bring his young into a world where they had no home. Time was against them. The sooner they could report back, the sooner they could regroup and move forward.

He chuffed, tipping his head over his shoulder to suggest they head back. There was no more to see here. Their former home was in ruins and everything they once knew was lost. They could rebuild with time.

"Race you back," he challenged, knowing her small form would give her all the swiftness she needed to beat him at a run of any kind. "First wolf to add a bone to the new Pulukria wins." Hell yeah... he was recreating that location wherever they ended up.

Ass over teakettle for a moment, Echelon was probably thankful on some personal level that she disappeared out of his view. When she did emerge from the tangle of destruction, branches raked along her back and turned the fur whatever way they desired. He chuffed to her and she drew in close, jaws snapping at the air as though she threatened to pinch him, as though the blame for her sliding off the log was entirely his fault. But it was in jest; it was relatively hard for a creature so used to flat-footed earth to go meandering around akin to a cat.

His words punctured through the tension of the place, cheekily suggesting a race between them. She snorted, sides drawing up dramatically. Like he'd win, ha. "Then don't break your neck, or I guess I'll just have to add all of you to it," she teased, tongue poking out between her teeth dourly. And without any sort of countdown to be had, she bolted from the mess of what had been their home, already casting pieces of the memory to the wind as she tore across the terrain.

Their tenure at the Spine would mean nothing to her soon.

A thud, a clamor, and the coywolf was back on her feet. He lifted a wolven brow at her and neared the female, lifting a twig from her fur as she gathered her wits about her. She snapped playfully at him and he snapped back, his teeth falling on nothing but air as she fluffed herself up and considered his challenge.

And then she bolted off.

He smirked, grinning as he took off after her. His weight left him slipping and sliding over the debris as he ran down the desolate rim. It wasn't until they found flatter ground that he allowed his tongue to loll, effectively panting away the heat of these wilds.

"Consider my corpse a contribution to the cause," he jested as he gained on her long enough to nip at the tip of her tail before she bolted off again. At this rate, they'd return to the main pack at the moonspear long enough to re-assemble and be off again before the sunset.

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