The Sunspire crimson lotus

That morning was a cool one — well, cooler than usual for summer. Red was feeling like a homebody that day, and so she decided, for once, not to go to the Alabaster Wood, though she knew she would miss it sorely while she was away. And, as silly as it seemed, she hoped some part of the forest missed her back. She had been a presence there for quite some time, and she imagined the aspen trees would, perhaps, feel a little lonely without someone to play sentinel for. Regardless, she knew she had been — unintentionally or not — skipping her duties to her pack, which mainly consisted of patrolling the borders. As a Warden-in-training it wasn’t good for her to be skipping these kinds of things. What would Ferdie or Jace think of her sneaking off to her private forest by herself all the time? No, that wouldn’t do. She’d need to stay home more often if she wanted to stay in her pack’s good graces.

And so it was because of this realization that the coywolf found herself bounding down the mountain right at Amekaze, a wolf she hadn’t officially met yet. The only place she remembered seeing her was at the border skirmish with Fox and her minions. That had been days ago, now. And the thing was, Red didn’t actually mean to go running full-speed into the black female. However, she hadn’t been paying very close attention in the last few minutes, which was a dangerous thing on a mountain. Suddenly, she found she had lost her footing and was now skidding painfully on her paw-pads to stop herself from slamming into her packmate. She let out a yelp, half in fear, and half to try and call out to Ame so that she could get out of the way in time. This was either going to end very badly, or they were both going to be extremely lucky…