Heron Lake Plateau all i needed was clarity.

Tagging @Niamh for reference but anyone can notice the italicised bit at the end in their own thread if they want. Occurs 4-5 days after the incident. The segment where he's by the lake occurs at the same time as Niamh is watering Screech here.

The plateau — —- he was at the lake's edge like before, but this time the walls of the Caldera weren't all around him. The plains stretched out endlessly, reaching distant hills that undulated until they became empty air. He could move, but didn't want to. The sun was out again — catching in the leaves of apple trees that shouldn't have been there. Apple blossoms dominated the tops of the massive trees as they loomed overhead, reaching so far in to the sky they became clouds, but the sun was always there. The warmth of summer.

There was splashing in the water. Screech startled at the sound of it and twisted towards it; he could watch as Towhee ran through the shallows with @Tegan and @Clover on her heels. A few feet away there was Raven and @Quixote, but they weren't facing his way. Somehow he knew that they were alright. They were together, they were happy — - and then there was movement by Raven's paws, and some children he had never seen before were play-fighting. One of them - a dark thing with a white patch on her chest - — they stopped and turned to regard him. Screech couldn't discern a face; it seemed to melt before his eyes, dripping in to the lake ever so slowly like thick molasses, and as the bits of blackness touched the water it dissipated like ink — --   -

- —You listenin' to me, kid? The stranger from before was back. His eyes - no, eye - was a dimmer green this time, like he was running out of battery power. He sighed as if deeply bothered that Screech had been distracted. The lakefront was abruptly gone from view; there were only the apple trees and the falling blossoms, twisting and spiraling through the summer air like tiny flakes of snow - but as they went, they seemed to become smoke and fade to nothing.

The man sighed, and turned his head away from the lake in order to address someone. He's too stubborn. I think he likes it here — - don't look at me like that, I know, I know, flustered for some reason, the dark wolf turned and began to leave Screech in the middle of the applewood forest. Before he knew it, the boy was sitting beside a petite wolf with blazing red fur. There was a sour look on their face and a squint to both their eyes.

She looked like a fox. In fact, she looked a lot like his brother Phox, but a little sharper, and her fur glowed orange in the sunlight. When she spoke it was rough-sounding, but her mouth didn't move. He somehow felt the words more than he heard them — You're going to listen to me, and listen good, you little bastard. Cowed by the tone in her words, Screech instinctively assumed an apologetic, submissive posture, but she didn't seem to appreciate the effort. For fucks sakes, Titmouse! Pretending to be sorry is different from being sorry! I don't even care if you're sorry; you fucked up and you know it — it felt like he was being reprimanded for something but he couldn't figure out what.

The blossoms kept on falling, spinning, drifting -- —

Pay attention, asshole, the woman commanded, and Screech redirected his floating attention from the strange flowers-turned-smoke to the fiery woman beside him, but she was standing, moving away from him to let someone else come close — - it was Towhee; no, it was someone that looked like Towhee, and they had a lump between their teeth. Soon enough the object was tossed towards Screech and he stared in mild fascination as he discovered it was an apple.

Well, it looked like an apple, but it pulsed. It beat, and the flesh rippled. He looked up, and the figure he thought was Towhee had become the girl from the lake shore — her face still dripped, pooling ink in the grass at her feet and tainting everything with blackness. Her mouth opened and it was like every tooth was made of oil, connecting point to point. He should've been horrified. A voice not unlike Raven's came to his mind: Bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard bastard basta̠̗̝͊̍͛͋͘͢͠͡ͅͅr̛̩̬̲͓̺̭͑̽̓͑̈͋̄̊͟d̢̳̫̻̦̳͍͙̤́̅̓̃̆̿͡ b̵͓͈͈͇̦̑̅͛͐͘͜a̷̧̬͕̻̘̩͌͛͒͑̄́̒̇ ş͔̬̫̤̦̓̈́͒̃̔̏̈̂͠ t̴̨͖̭͉̯͓͖̫̂͊͆̏̐̓͑  a̠̗̝͊̍͛͋͘͢͠͡ͅͅ  r̛̩̬̲͓̺̭͑̽̓͑̈͋̄̊͟d̢̳̫̻̦̳͍͙̤́̅̓̃̆̿͡!

The mantra filled his ears, deafening him, until he couldn't hear anything but a high-pitched squeal — like a kettle — and then, nothing. He felt himself whine but couldn't hear that, either. He couldn't pull his golden gaze away from the dripping black mess that was the girl child and his eyes began to burn.

In the waking-world, his lids lifted but it was like nobody was home; the function was not done on purpose, but there was a brief flash as a shaft of light passed through the den mouth and pierced his good eye. He sat there for a minute before the lid began to close again, shifting unbidden to a halfway-point, where it lingered another couple of seconds, until closing again.

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