Gyrfalcon's Keep one evening as the sun went down and the jungle fires were burning

All welcome!

NOTE: Each of the traveling threads is a day apart. ♥ This is day one, March 21, 2017.

By the time a sliver of citrine light limned the horizon, Ravenblood Forest was empty.

Lotte and Arturo had taken it upon themselves to ready Teaghlaigh for travel days ago; instructions had been given the moment Ceannasach had returned from his trek with Chusi and Dakarai. The black-masked gangster had spoken of a faraway forest tucked in the shadow of a forbidding mountain chain and bisected by a river — it sounded idyllic, but Lotte found she was displeased by two things: one, the fact that they had to move at all; two, the fact that she had not been invited on the scouting journey. Though her face was a mask of Solene’s unruffled serenity, inwardly, her emotions were hurricane-wild, whipping madly about.

Banríon knew that the journey would be hardest on Olive, Dakarai, and their three little ones. Driven by a desire to provide for and protect her Family, she offered what help she could and said little else, but beneath her competent and confident mien there existed a lurking worry about her own welfare and the lives of her cubs. The changes in her body she’d been so impatient to see were happening at what felt like breakneck speed now, and she didn’t have time for the pain and the cramping and the nausea that she’d missed during the first trimester. The fur on her abdomen had thinned considerably and her appetite was nigh insatiable. She’d always appeared thick-waisted due to her plush fur, but now her sides swelled in an unmistakably convex manner. She felt ungainly, unattractive, and uncomfortable.

Lotte had attempted to locate the sheepdog — she still harbored the distant hope that Coelacanth would relinquish custody of Julep, Isengrim, and Moorhen so they could be sheltered somewhere safe, and she hadn’t been able to brief the inky ingénue about the visit from Blackfeather Woods — but no amount of singing or calling had summoned the tiny Groenendael. It was with a heavy heart that the songbird turned away from the coast and turned her attention to the current task: finding somewhere to settle for another hour or so while the cubs and Olive rested. Turning to face the pack, a smile she did not feel settling warmly and peacefully upon her dark features, Lotte said simply, “Next sentries.”

For her part — since she had served as a sentry last shift despite Arturo’s misgivings — Lotte hunkered down beside Olive and leaned forth to gently bathe the woman’s face with a tender tongue. Then she lay her head heavily on her paws, singing so softly that her voice did not carry further than their group:

“One evening as the sun went down
and the jungle fires were burning,
down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, ‘Boys, I'm not turning;

I’m headed for a land that’s far away,
beside the crystal fountains.
So come with me, we’ll go and see
the Big Rock Candy Mountains.’”