Whitebark Stream displaced

Dark clouds had filled the sky, darker than anything he could remember seeing before, to the point that they engulfed all light. Blotted everything to blackness across the horizon. It was as if someone had tipped a vial of ink on its side, spilling it forth to consume the foggy mountain peaks; and there he stood, far-off, barely able to focus upon the sight of the billowing smoke, but trying to be watchful. He thought, 'a storm..?' and began to hike towards the darkness, innocent of the dangers.

The north was, of course, teetering ever closer to the onset of winter. The leaves of the trees were burning; at first he saw them as yellows and golds, repeating in clusters as he moved at a clip between them. Sometimes when the wolf's steps collapsed upon a particular pile, they crunched, but more often than not he felt the soggy chill of frost between his toes. As he moved the colors became more vibrant — violent crimsons, transitions of yellows to golds to blacks and back again, and soon enough Larus forgot what he was chasing or why; but he saw the shadows again, and again his interest coalesced, fuelling him onward.

The scent of smoke came to him; he would've thought it came suddenly, but in truth the man had noticed it a few times, and each time was like the first, more foreign and surprising than worrisome. He braced against the hillside and finally stopped his marching, watching as the snow fell around him. Larus thought he saw a solid shape moving closer to the ground and ignored the clouds overhead to turn and watch this thing — lean, long-legged. Something about the shape called to Larus, so the wolf moved to intercept it.

He did not know that the white substance dusting his argent shoulders was not snow, but ash.