Swiftcurrent Creek my whole heart

For @Paarthurnax - keeping it vague because the re-joining thread is in progress! Setting this not long after Bazi came back - like, hours.

Bazi left Saber at the edge of Duck Lake after a short exchange, moving trance-like back towards the heart of Swiftcurrent. She wasn't ready to make new friends yet; especially when she kept imagining herself seeing the ghosts of long departed ones.

Perhaps another golden wolf had joined the ranks, Bazi thought sourly. Nobody could hold a candle to Paarthurnax - or Danica, for that matter, even though the pale queens' mind was now fully invested in demonizing her alienated friend. It still hurt to think that she might never come back, and that her last words to the Duskfire Wolf had been: freeze.

Bazi walked stiffly through the sparse orchard of trees to the east of the river, blue eyes fixed on the black, reaching branches. They looked like they were begging a mightier power for mercy, somewhere up there in the clouds. Nonsense, of course.

But Bazi would finish the day by wondering if such a power did exist after all, or if chance and coincidence really could be so extraordinary. Fifty yards before her, wandering in the same direction, were the rounded hips of a wolf that she knew.

"Paa..Paarthurnax?" she croaked incredulously, slender limbs picking up pace. "Paarthurnax!"