The Heartwood forget you, and you, and you

@Hydra had sent him out once again for a savory morsel. Not out of the ordinary by any means, but he knew her time was close. She stayed close to the whelping den she had chosen and carved from the earth and all else had mostly been left to him. He knew she would make her demands of @Lyra and @Alya both too; a short jaunt outside of Moonspear's claim would not burden or trouble them either way.

Rather than forage through their usual hunting grounds of the glen, he ventured further out. A means of wasting time as much as it was a hope to evade any trouble lurking in the deep wood—he had gone alone. It would have been easy to pull @Antares or @Osiris along with him, and he had very nearly had @Vega in tow until he had convinced her to try and tease names from her mother instead. Another mystery not yet unlocked; his dark wife wanted to keep her secrets this year.

But he soon found in the timber that he was not alone. Tangible scents lingered there, distant calls of wandering beasts that he did not discern yet. There was a flash of gold through the terrain to distract him instead, a cold bolt shot through him in an instant. Nyx? It was there, then gone, and he wondered if in all the calculated chaos of the world if stress had not worn a hole in his mind. It would have been like the universe to taunt him, if not haunt him at the very least.

He followed it, that glimmer.

Over an ashen rise he soon discovered it again and without thinking, he barked sharply.

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