Ravensblood Forest everybody’s gone in the cotton and the corn [m]

Dated for the early morning of February 6, 2017.

Home.

Ceannasach’s scent was everywhere, and the long awaited decongestion of Lotte’s sinuses was nearly her undoing. He was everywhere she looked — tufts of his espresso and mocha fur clinging to the trunks of the sequoias; imprints of his paws clearly delineated in the frosty loam; the flash of the sunrise winking in his shade of fiery red-orange. She almost resented the sun for its audacity — did resent the scents of Olive, Talewi, and Evelyn that tangled stubbornly with Arturo’s at the territory borders — and she worried quite suddenly that in her absence, she had fallen out of favor with him. Worry warred with eagerness as she tipped back her head and called to him, a low, undulating song without words, laced with imperious demand.

Whether she was to be punished for her wayward wandering or not remained to be seen, but Lotte could no longer deny the cry of her body. There was no flash of fangs or flicker of hackles as she broke the morning silence with another abbreviated howl — it would be some time before she could sing with her former degree of breath control — and began to pace, the spiced ambrosia of her scent betraying her condition. “@Arturo,” she whined, her tone wheedling, cracking at the edges, like and unlike it had been during their tryst in the weald. She was burning — she was running through fire again — and her broad muzzle parted in earnest as she sought to cool down the fever, panting lightly. Bending, she lapped at a melting icicle, catching drops of snowmelt upon her tongue and finally taking it between her teeth, dislodging it like a glistening dagger to cradle between her paws. It helped to cool the thick miasma, but could not dispel it fully.