The Heartwood just when you got it all, you always wanna get some more

@Charon. Hope this isn't too far away!

Tail rolled her shoulders, moving and stretching the aching muscles. She must have slept oddly, or slept too deeply in an awkward position. Her intention was to remedy that with a walk, no other true goal in mind, but she soon found herself amidst ash and charred, broken trees. She slowed to a halt, ears going back as she realized how often she was finding herself alone in a creepy forest.

"What happened here?" she murmured to herself, feeling her guardhairs raise for the third time in as many days. Tail wasn't usually so easily spooked, but she supposed it had everything to do with being in a strange place. She tried to relax, moving through the debris— looking for clues, perhaps, to determine what had caused the fire.

Charon was on his way south to explore around his favourite series of mountains again and passed through the Heartwood as he did. The burnt surroundings fascinated him as a Naturalist, and so he could not help but take a little detour to check how the Heartwood was doing, and if anything was growing there again.

He thought to hear a faint voice in the vicinity just as he stepped into the ashen clearing. When he turned his head he saw another wolf and said, his demeanour neutral: "Fascinating, isn't it?" Well, to be truthful, the other wolf didn't look very fascinated. Perhaps they hadn't been around to witness the might of the storms; or perhaps they had and had lost something dear.

sorry for the wait!

Her every nerve was screaming at her to run; that she was being watched. The tension in her skin made the fur along her nape raise, and her eyes felt like they couldn't get any wider as she tried to see something— anything— that would explain it all. Apparently, the fact that she was so focused on finding something meant she wasn't really absorbing what her senses were telling her.

A disembodied voice carried out behind her, and Tail spun to face the culprit. A white and gray form that nearly blended with its surroundings. For the second time since she had arrived in the Wilds, Tail could swear she saw a ghost— something she didn't believe in. This time, she kept her cool a bit better, remembering the last time it had turned out to be someone corporeal.

Still, her voice was a little shaky when she asked for a second time, "What happened here?"

no problem :) glad you had a good vacation :D

When he got closer, Charon could see that the wolf he was facing looked pretty freaked out and like she might be about ready to leap and attack him. "Shit," he muttered to himself, hopefully not loud enough for her to hear. He didn't feel like getting into any fights, and especially not so quickly after his last one. Charon looked a little more alarmed now, physically responding to how alert she was, and stared at her suspiciously.

She asked what happened again, and he decided to answer, hoping that would calm her down so that he didn't need to feel threatened any more. "Fire. Never seen fire? Red, flamy stuff..." Actually, Charon had only seen it during the storms and so he figured that it made sense someone else might not've seen it, ever. "It's super hot, and burns pretty much everything in its way." Except for the sequoia trees. And water. But he decided not to elaborate just yet.

Tail didn't realize how threatening she appeared, for all she was really trying to do was defend herself from a ghostly attack. But as the other spoke, making no move to assault her, the yearling allowed herself to relax— if only slightly. She didn't understand half of his explanation, not really, because fire was something that only happened in stories. And truly, how could anyone understand such a phenomena without having seen it in action?

But the destruction around her was chilling enough. "That's horrible," she told him firmly, voice considerably more stable than it had been only moments before. Then, a little more fearfully, "It just happens? Like, one minute there's a forest, then boom— it's gone, because a fire came out of nowhere?" Talk about terrifying. But Tail had another reason for asking; she had a fairly rational hold on reality, and she was suspect of anything that seemed too fanciful. Despite having much more to learn about life and the world around her, one of the few things Tail was certain of was that every effect had some sort of cause.

Luckily she seemed to calm down a little, which in turn allowed Charon to relax a little more as well, no longer on edge and ready to turn around and start running the heck out of there. She still seemed rather taken aback by the whole fire thing though. Charon couldn't help but laugh when she asked if they came out of nowhere, though perhaps only because he had seen a fire start so he knew where they came from.

"They don't come out of nowhere, silly," he said with an amused grin. "Lightning storms start them. I saw lightning strike from the sky once, and next I knew there was a fire." He sounded almost proud to have seen such a miracle happen with his own eyes, even though it had been coincidence that he had been there to witness it. He didn't even think about the fact he might give her an irrational fear of storms by saying these things.

She peered at him a bit incredulously, only adding to the disbelief and horror already present in her body language. Storms and lightning had never bothered her before, but that particular world view was beginning to shift. The fact that the white male seemed to find all of this amusing, if not something to enjoy, only made the yearling more uncomfortable. So, fire didn't come out of nowhere— not technically, but it might as well have. There was no controlling the weather, no preventing it.

"I don't like it," she declared, her tone almost scolding. Tail fell silent immediately after, unsure of what to say next— introducing herself seemed silly while she was sort of annoyed with him, but she wasn't so upset that she felt justified in storming off. She settled for fixating her blue-grey gaze on him in judgment.

The stranger seemed even more upset by his story, though Charon couldn't really grasp why. He was just explaining how it went, and if there weren't any storms, it meant no burning to a pile of ashes randomly. Gods, this stranger was acting like a tyical woman, being irrationally replacement angry at him for something he had only pointed out something else did. Geez. The way she said it it was like she thought him to be Thór himself, personally responsible for any rains of thunder.

"No need to give me the evil eye for telling you how it is," Charon said, his voice a little snippy. "Not my fault you're a weeny coward." This was stated matter-of-factly, as if he had tested it to be true that she was, in fact, a weeny coward. As soon as the words had left his lips he realised that this would likely only upset her further, but, well, that was girls for you. If they were in a mood, there was nothing he could say that'd please them.

Her lips peeled back in a soft, warning growl— calling her a weeny coward was the biggest mistake the male could make, and only added to the long list he had already developed. "I'm not afraid," she corrected him, "at least not more than any other sane wolf would be. You're just acting so damn happy that this happened." Her tail lashed side to side, catlike in her annoyance with him.

"Wolves probably died here. Have some respect," this was complete bullshit, of course, but Tail wanted to knock him down a peg. She continued relentlessly, not really sure why she felt so compelled to argue with this complete stranger, "What if you had lost someone to the storm? How would you feel if someone grinned as they talked about it, like fire is some super cool and fun thing? It destroyed an entire forest."

What timing to grow some balls, Charon thought to himself as the female growled at him. His hackles rose in instinct and tail twitched tensely to betray his irritation. "Happy?!" Charon snapped when she said that he was acting happy; he didn't consciously realise that he'd been telling it so cheerfully (which was mostly because he always enjoyed a good informing of dumb wolves so he could feel smart, not because he thought storms were funny).

Charon bristled when she started to belittle him, telling him he needed to pay more respect. Now it was time for a growl to rumble in his throat, and conveniently he had the best comeback. "I lost my little brother in this storm," Charon said snippily. Well, at least he wasn't sounding too happy anymore. "So maybe you should pay a little more fucking respect!" He managed to suck in a 'bitch' just in time, though when he finished speaking he thought he really should've. Too late now.

I'm sad that Tail is probably going to settle across the map, now. These two would be fun to have nearby. XD

If she had known Charon's true reason for being so incredibly chipper whilst talking about death and destruction, her reaction probably wouldn't have been much better. She was of the philosophy that there weren't such things as "stupid questions", particularly if those questions were asked with the intention of increasing knowledge. She felt a mix of emotions as the male's mood swiftly changed, and he bombarded her with a particularly emotional explanation.

While she definitely empathized with his loss of a brother, the explanation really just made her that much more exasperated. The situation was escalating, and fast, but she couldn't stay silent when there was something so obviously wrong with his behavior. "Are you crazy?" It was a serious question, and her posture changed to one more defensive. If she was dealing with a madman, anything could happen. The smart thing to do would be to put as much distance between herself and him as possible, but she couldn't abide being called a coward again.

"I was only trying to learn more about what happened here— there's nothing wrong with learning things. You're the one grinning like an idiot about a storm that you lost someone in. I was the one concerned about wolves like him when you decided to start flinging insults. What's your damage?" In her ruffled state, the word vomit was out before she had a chance to think about the wisdom of it. Way to poke the bear, Teagan.

haha, so true xD

Charon responded with no more than a growl to the insulting question, because he could hardly take a question like 'are you crazy' seriously. Charon puffed up his appearance, making himself tall, and after her next fitty about his amusement he had a witty answer ready.

I wasn't laughing at the storm's viciousness — I was laughing at how dumb you were for not knowing this shit! Charon wasn't the kind of teacher that thought no dumb questions existed. If he was going to educate dumb wolves with weird thoughts, at least he felt he deserved mocking them.