Heron Lake Plateau to the waters and the wild

Owen craned his neck up and over and all around as he wandered slowly through Redhawk territory with his mouth agape. The sights and sounds of it all were still pretty overwhelming, and it was hard to know where to look—but the green smell and soft plashes of the water near a real monster of a tree at last caught and held his attention. His clumsy feet traced a zigzaggy path in that direction, though his inner feeling of unease was starting to grow. He first shied around and then tentatively reached out a paw into an errant sunbeam, and then haltingly moved onward, his tail tucking itself more firmly between his legs and ears flattening themselves closer to his skull. He crept along like a mouse, first starting in alarm at the rustle of some leaves in one direction and then halting altogether at the sister-like but altogether unfamiliar black rump that rose up before him as Owen rounded a final tree.

Owen stared in increasing worry and confusion. It looked awfully like Phoebe or Vasa's rear, but it didn't smell anything like either. It had its tail tucked more tightly than he'd ever seen either sister's, either. And what was that there in front of it, anyhow? With furrowed brow Owen's eyes wandered up to scan first Tywyll's face and then, with a sudden intake of breath, the bizarre array of spotty-topped mini-trees who instantly both attracted and repelled him. Owen's ears flickered up and down in confusion, and then he at last ventured a brave step further forward, placing himself in the shadow of and still slightly behind the other pup, the strange not-a-sister boy. Oooo...? Owen asked him timidly, though he himself felt obscurely better that by the look of the other's tail Owen wasn't the only one a little spooked, here. Owen had never seen trees like these before, and had to wonder what had gone wrong to make them look so stunted and strange, and turn their leaves into that bizarre spotty brown clump while bleaching their stubby trunks white. Perhaps they were sick? Perhaps they had caught a tree-plague! Owen's eyes widened at the thought. He hoped it wasn't something puppies could catch, if so. Though these trees didn't have runny noses or coughs or milky upchucks that he had noticed at all, so perhaps that wasn't it after all.