Sunbeam Lair You give cicadas a bad name

No need to tag me, I`ve signed up for PMs. Might be a good idea for everybody - you know how confusing BWPs can get!

A bushy white tail and two amber orbs seemed for a second to be the only things  to emerge from a cleft in the rock.

"Asterr!" she cried out. "Thanks to the stars. I`ve been harvesting herbs all day in this lovely little cave I found, but the skylight just went dark! And there`s rumbling, is there a stor-" she broke off , her question trailing away like the last remaining light above.

They were everywhere. There were invisible bubbles of space around the two wolves, but the plants were infested. The precious stomach-calming meadowsweet, the carefully cultivated yellow dock root, the discretion-please qualities of motherwort...all gone.

Eve could sob. But there was work to be done. Her mind whirred, and she paced back and forth until...yes!

"Quick! When the whole Pack gathers, we`ll need as much codonopsis as we can get. And the basics, coltsfoot and the like, though I beg the stars we won`t need them. Then we can hide out in that cave, and we should be okay eating the codonopsis for a few days. If the worst happens, we`ll have to send a scout out through the swarm to the underground caches."

Eve was desperate for her new Pack to survive the coming onslaught. The locusts weren`t harming any animals so far, but the prey would be spooked and the herbs...she gulped. She`d just had a morbid thought, and blurted it out through habit.

"Asterr, the swarm is taking the dragon."

What a nice thought.