Heron Lake Plateau Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful

Owen shot his father a long, dubious look. Just water... These little starflake things looked nothing like water, or had Qui somehow missed that. Owen wasn't dumb: he had seen water freezing before, and it was treacherously crystalline and clear, almost invisible unless puppy eyes looked very very carefully and made extra-certain-sure not to step on it or bonk their nose when reaching out for an early-morning drink. This? This was stardust, dangit: it matched the little bright twinkly bits high in the sky way better than any water Owen had ever seen. Or was Quixote going to next try to convince him that all the water could change color at will, too?

Owen was a little distracted from this however by Quixote's managing to confirm his son's worst/best inner terror/delight. (Owen really wasn't sure which one, or possibly how much of each, he felt: the roiling of emotions within him was definitely setting his heart thundering either way, though.) This "snow" would cover everything? Until a spring happened. Whose spring? Was this just a spring at imaginary food, or did one have to be chasing after a real rabbit, or did one have to "spring" at sufficient starflakes themselves in order to make this next bit of magic happen? Or—and this last seemed most likely to Owen, after a few moments' thought—or was Quixote actually just making all this up out of thin air to try and pull one over on his gullible son? Owen realized his mouth had come open and been hanging ajar at some point during all this furious rumination, and closed it up with a snap. No point in making his father think he was that easy a target for tall tales like this.

Still, the mental imagery caught at Owen's mind. Starflakey snow covering everything. He squinted up at the falling white stuff, blinking the lazy motes from his eyelashes as they melted mysteriously away, and then threw an apprehensive look over his shoulder at the echoingly empty dark hollow of the den. He had a very hard time envisioning this magically appearing-and-disappearing white starstuff coating everything all at once. It seemed so unlikely, especially with how fast it was hiding itself right at the moment, exactly as fast as it fell (though Owen supposed with a start that it could perhaps be very sneakily going to ground to wait, as it collected more and more of itself in order to pop out as a sudden and unwelcome surprise all at once, if it really was going to be a matter of several months' collecting of snow, here...and was his standing here and letting it hit him going to make him into an animated snowwolf as well, at that time? No, this was all too ludicrous!). It seemed so airy and ephemeral, far too much so to ever accumulate like that. ...But. But. Suppose Quixote was right, for a change, after all...would anyplace in the world be safe? Owen swallowed hard as he looked at his old denhollow home, and perhaps his eyes were misting up a little from something besides mere snowflakes.

Owen's mouth worked silently for a moment, and he scuffled a paw on the cold hard ground for a moment. Then, somewhat indistinctly, he hesitantly agreed, ...'Kay. He suddenly did want the bumptious comfort and warmth of his fuzzy sisters all around him, for a change, as well as Mother Wolf, of course. And if Quixote wanted to try and get all of them to swallow this cockamamie story too, then perhaps Owen himself could better gauge just how he himself felt about it all, and how much to believe even a single word. Right now all he had was this endless stream of questions and doubts dancing in his head, but that didn't stop him from turning to trail willingly in Quixote's footsteps, albeit with another irresistible apprehensive glance or three at the skies.