Hoshor Plains Dust to the wind, Blood of my blood...

The fire burned for days, and it would continue to do so. Fire was no stranger to a Dotharan. The great grass sea lived in a cycle of birth and death, as regular and as violent as the tides of the sea. Of the destruction, new life would be born, seeds only released with the rage of fire. This was known.

So the fire was not strange. She did not fear it, not now. The danger was past for her, though the smoke and soot clung to her fur and stained her grey. She had not yet moved to find water, nothing beyond the brook that wound its way through the morning camp where she had been spending her days. Awazzi watched the land smolder and smoke around her, a blackened waste land. In time, the land would be green with new growth, after the rains came and washed away the ashes. The green would give way to gold, and the bison would return, and the land would be new again.

Awazzi had not left the morning camp since the storm. There was as good a place as any to pray, singing to the skies in her warbling voice. There were sacrifices aplenty, charred remains of rabbits and coyotes. Sacrifices and meals, the meat beneath their blackened exteriors unspoiled even after days.

Rakharo had been about, but both were too busy with their tasks to truly devote time to each other. That was fine. The khal had much to worry about, and she had her own piety to uphold.

Still, when she saw him leave that day, she followed. Only at a distance, for she did not want to be discovered, not yet. She watched the ashy mounds of fallen beasts pass one by one, and watched him pay them little heed. And she watched as he came upon one much larger. He left a cloud behind him, and it was from that she emerged, blackened with soot and dust. "The Golden Rhoa can be cruel," she said, voice carefully distant. This must have been one of his own, but she did not know him. If Rakharo wished to tell her more, she would listen. And then she would help him perform the proper ceremonies, and this wolf would ride in the night lands.