Firestone Hot Springs hotdog

She almost followed Amelie's gaze to the craters again, but stopped herself short. Something in the black yearling made her pause, and Kaihra let her attention linger of Amelie's calm visage. She stood with an ease that Kaihra lacked and smelled nothing of the fear that Kaihra knew leaked from her own pelt. Her packmate breathed with a gentle rhythm, and Kaihra let her rapid breaths slow to match the youths. In a few seconds, her mind stopped whirling, and when Amelie turned to face Kaihra again, the quivering in her legs had stopped.

Kaihra felt her heart sink deeper as the yearling shook her head. 'Not really.' So they still knew nothing of the mystery of these steaming holes. 'I just took a quick peek before the steam filled my nose.' Kaihra remained silent and cast her gaze to the ground, flicking her eyes this way and that in tune with the churning of her mind. She rose to watch the springs again, this time pushing fear from her mind to focus on the reality before her. Steam thickened and thinned with little order, but rose predominantly from the holes. The land around remained dormant. Some holes gurgled, some spat, while others only mocked with a prickling mist. Still, they held one thing in common: all radiated with that same vibrant, otherwordly heat.

Her steady breathing slowly slipped with a new wave of unease. She could think of only two things that gave heat to the world, and both left a bitter taste in her throat. Her leg began to quiver again and she turned to face Amelie with uncertainty in her eyes. "Could there be an underground sun heating them?" At a different time, in a different place, the idea would have seemed foolish to her, but not here and not now. She turned her eyes to the ground again and raised her forepaw as an imagined surge of heat scorched through her limb and along her spine. What if they were standing on fire?