Ankyra Sound ALL YOU HAVE IS YOUR FIRE [mandatory meeting]

With the changing of seasons, Tethys found the trees around her were beginning to shed, just like she would at the end of winter. She found herself perched indignantly on the top of one of the caves, the peak of it covered in shady grass and forest. Below her, the mouth of the cavern stretched open. This one was rather small; it was wide enough for only two wolves to enter it, side by side. But the cave's ceiling was made mostly of compact dirt and stone, and so the roots of the trees above let in an intricate mural of light into the hollow. It was one of the many conspicuous places on Ankyra's map, and Tethys had chosen it for her refuge when the weather turned malignant.

Tethys had been working to turn this small cave into a functional altar- just as Caiaphas had done with several other spots. Where the coywolf had turned her shelter, where Larus and Kevlyn were harbored, into a shrine complete with skulls, Tethys had utilized the space slightly differently. Since it was a single chamber, the black wolf had taken special steps to line the entire circular perimeter with stones that range from pale white to a deep blue. Some of them held strains of quartz, copper, or malachite. Standing on her back legs, Tethys could rivet bleached wood and floatsam into the roof of the hollow, or dig out spaces in the floor to make an interlocking pattern of white branches. She was not nearly done, but the wolf had considered her work holy and kept Nishu far away from it. It wasn't hard, for the entrance was quite well hidden.

Standing on top of it now, Tethys was privy to the howl sent up, and with a leap, she skirted off between the trees. Arriving, she could only scent the loyal male and Caiaphas. Why did she summon them when their matriarch was the only one permissible to do it? More curious than startled into anger, the wolf rounded the grotto to join them with her presence.