Heron Lake Plateau Unleash my halo.

@Phox moves closer to her, nipping at her hip. "We've returned home," he murmurs. Somehow, Towhee knows what he's saying, even though she isn't looking at him. "The caldera—our birthright—belongs to us now. I am the king and you..." His muzzle touches the lobe of her ear, causing it to flick. "You are my queen, of course." Towhee turns to look at him, expression curdling like sour milk. Why was he being so weird? And who was he to claim her like some sort of sidepiece?

"How about I'm the Alpha and you're my Beta, more like," she quips without looking at him. When she finally turns, he's not beside her. He's behind her. Towhee blanches as she feels him rear up and grasp her around the hips. "We need an heir," he purls. She snarls and bucks but Phox doesn't budge. If anything, his grip tightens. She twists around to bite him but something—his teeth, presumably—sinks into her nape, piercing the flesh painfully and locking her in place. Towhee screams.

Towhee jerked awake with a scream. She couldn't hear the sound but she could feel it tearing up and out of her throat. With a gasp, she rolled her head, blinking blearily at a blindingly white sky. She felt incredibly disoriented and lay there, staring emptily upward as several birds circled overhead, until she felt a second pinch to her nape, which made her recollect the first. It had woken her from a screaming nightmare that was already fading into the ether.

"X," she griped, "why—?" The hoarse question died in her throat as Towhee flipped to her belly and pushed into an upright position. It took a few blinks to orient herself and figure out that she was at the bottom of the plateau, where it gave way to Grouse Thicket. This was not where she'd fallen asleep last night. She'd gone to bed with her brother at the top of the falls, just like usual...

Her orange eyes sought the hawk, full of questions. "How the fuck did I get here?" she asked, noticing out of the corner of her eye that the fur on her forelegs was in disarray. "The fuck happened...?" she murmured with bewilderment and a touch of fear, ears slicking backward as X did his best to communicate a term that she took to mean "sleepwalking."