Heron Lake Plateau orange spaghetti sauce

Ignores the weather widget.

The sky was clear tonight, which gave Phox the perfect opportunity to teach Rory (aka @Bat) about navigation using the stars. Actually, one star in particular. It was early morning, the sun still hours from showing its face to the rest of the world, when he howled for her, wondering how many other wolves he would wake in the process. It was possible she would sleep through it, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity on such a good stargazing night.

He spotted Leo above, and he thought of the great cougar that gobbled up unruly children. The bears were visible too, the mother and her cub. Phox craned his neck up at them, watching as if they were about to leap out of the sky. That had never happened, of course, but he always wondered if they might do as much if he did something either very good or very bad.

Having had some time to hash out her feelings for @Tegan (with and without outside help) had made it a little easier to be around him and behave more or less normally. Tonight had been hard though: when he'd flopped down to sleep, his forelegs spread to accommodate her, every last drop of Bat's blood had gone molten at the sight. She had cuddled up beside him, trying to play it cool despite her quivering heart and loins, and pretended to sleep until she was sure he'd slipped into dreams. Then Bat carefully extricated herself, staring down at him for a long beat—her eyes may as well have been shining stars right then—before slithering off into the night to catch her breath.

She was sitting alone on one of the plateau's many ledges, staring off across the moonlit wilderness and fighting drowsiness, when someone unexpectedly called for her. Blinking herself awake, Bat took to her feet again, realizing as she went that it was Phox who'd called for her. It was a clear night, with a nearly full moon and a sky strewn with stars. Maybe that's why he was calling her?

She found him and seated herself nearby, raising a paw to rub lingering sleepiness from her eyes. Suppressing the urge to make a joke about a late night booty call, Bat quipped instead, "We gonna chill with that particularly bright dead guy tonight?" Only after the words left her mouth did she realize how classless that sounded, given their last conversation. Aw, fuck.

If he woke anybody else, he was unaware of the disturbance he caused. Rory arrived not long after he had called for her, and he was instantly reminded of her odd look. Those ears were so... bad. He hoped that the grimace on his face wasn’t too visible when he finally remembered to smooth out his features. Her question perplexed him for a split second, but he understood her sooner rather than later. Hey niece, he replied, emphasizing the fact that he now understood her final parting words from before.

I thought we might, he said, answering her question. He shifted over to her side, nudging her so that she eventually faced north. Now, look straight up from that tallest tree, he gestured, muzzle pointing in the direction of Polaris. It might be hard to spot at first, but it’s the brightest one up there.

Fortunately for Bat, he didn't take her tactless comment poorly at all. His subtle acknowledgement of their connection brought a grin to the youth's face, though she quickly acquired a more studious expression as Phox nudged her into place and guided her eyes skyward. Using the silhouette of the tallest tree as a guide, her mercurial gaze lifted, sifting through the stars until she thought she saw one that shone more brightly than all the rest.

Screwing up one eye to improve her focus, Bat panned back down to the tree, then up again, to really pinpoint the star in question. "Think I got 'im," she declared. "He got a name?"

Polaris, Phox replied. It was the name he had been taught by somebody long ago, though he could not recall who had taught him as much. Most of his knowledge came from Sassafrass and Raven when he was still a young wolf. The rest he had picked up from travelers along the way, soaking up any information he could. Some of it stuck, but he was sure plenty had been lost. Hopefully not so much that he would be useless to Rory. Trying to think of the best way to make sure she had the right star picked out, he looked around for anything useful. Something that would contrast with the snow... and then he spotted the jackpot: pinecones that had fallen, but hadn't been buried just yet.

Here, watch this, he said, plucking the cones up one by one and arranging them in the little bear's constellation. Seven stars made up the figure, and the very tail end was Polaris. He pointed to that one with his paw, then let his gaze rest on the constellation above. That's the little bear, and the tip of his tail is Polaris, he explained. The big bear looks almost the same, but as you might have guessed: bigger.

Polaris was a pretty tight name, though Bat didn't say this out loud. Instead, she glanced away from the guiding star altogether and practiced trying to pinpoint it again. She probably looked utterly ridiculous—one eye screwed nearly shut, tongue pressed stoutly into her cheek, big ears flapping with each turn of her head—but she wanted to make sure she could find the damn thing on her own.

She paused her efforts when her instructor said, "Here, watch this." When Bat saw him rearranging pine cones, she took a step back and then threw him an apologetic smile. Just like Wildfire before her, she was, "Allergic," she explained, though she didn't go far. She could still see the diagram in the snow, which she peered at studiously.

After that, Bat looked from sky to pine cones and back to the sky again. Only at length did she turn to Phox, almost sheepish, and admit, "I think I've got Polaris down... but I'm not seeing any bears."

Allergic? He looked at her quizzically, but he didn't inquire further. She mentioned not seeing any bears, and he gave her an airy chuckle. Well, you gotta use your imagination, kid. Okay, so she was an adult, but he meant "kid" in the sense that she was the student in this scenario. The big blocky part is the bear's body, and the longer stars trailing off of it are the tail. The bigger one is easier to see, so maybe try and spot that one first. It's over this way. If you follow the two near the front, it'll point you right to Polaris. Phox tilted his muzzle toward the larger of the two bears, glancing down briefly to see if Rory was following his gaze.

There's more than just that one, too. Lots of those stars up there add up to bigger pictures. There's twelve per year, actually. Some say that decides who you end up becoming, he explained. Of course, Rory probably wouldn't be interested in all that. Not if she was only planning on using the stars for directions while she was out on scouting missions. Once Phox got talking about stars, it was pretty tough to shut him up.

Bat threw him a playful squint, then did as she was told: she tried to use her imagination. It didn't help that she didn't entirely understand what she was meant to see or how. Eventually, it did dawn on her that she should connect the dots. Once that knowledge sank in, she did her best to trace a shape with her mind. But it still didn't resemble a bear in any way she could discern.

She didn't want to offend Phox, nor earn any real disapproval, so Bat simply bobbed her head. "Did you come up with that, or...?" she wondered about both the stars' names and the shapes. "And are there more? Is the sky, like, full of hidden pictures?" Wow, that kind of did her mind in a little bit. Especially when she considered it was full of secret images comprised entirely of glowing dead guys.

He went on to explain that, yes, indeed, there were plenty more where that came from. Bat found herself not quite following about the twelve per year, though she held her tongue. Instead of asking about that, she tipped her head and pressed, "Who you end up becoming...?" Sure, she'd only meant to discuss how she could use the stars to help her map the world, yet she was intrigued about all this other stuff too.

Phox shook his head. He honestly wasn't sure who came up with the names, and the wolves he had spoken to didn't seem to know either, but the knowledge was spread far and wide. There were a few variations here and there, as with all folklore, but for the most part everybody followed the same verbal guidebook, passed down and around among the wilds and beyond. To her last question he nodded, then went on to explain. Depending on when in the year you were born, some say the stars have an influence on what personality traits you'll have.

He had only met a few wolves who believed in it, and when they had given him his zodiac sign and described what he might be like, he had to agree it was fairly accurate. His sign was Capricorn, the rabbit. He may not have had all the traits of that particular sign, but there was enough there that he couldn't shake the notion it wasn't at least partially based in reality. And who was to say the stars didn't sway their lives in some way or another?

Phox rearranged the pinecones, adding a few more in until he made roughly the shape of the rabbit in the sky, drawing lines with his paw in the snow to denote where he had seen the lines between them. It looked somewhat rabbit-shaped, or so he thought. This is the one for when I was born, he explained. It's a rabbit named Capricorn.

Well, that was interesting. Bat opened her mouth to ask him what being born in April might mean for her, then clapped it shut. As far as the Redhawks knew, she'd been born earlier in the year. She could ask about January or February instead, yet then it wouldn't even apply to her.

Silver eyes followed Phox's movements as he began fussing with the pine cones again. She was about to ask him about his birth month when he began speaking, answering the unspoken question. He didn't mention a specific month, just a strange word and something about a rabbit.

"There's so much more to this than I ever realized," was Bat's eventual comment about this new information. "I had no idea."

Phox chuckled at Rory's comment. You got that right. He was pretty sure there was plenty he had either not picked up on or had forgotten along the way, not to mention all the stuff he hadn't even encountered yet. The night sky was full of knowledge, Phox thought, and he wondered if Bat was interested in learning more than just using it to navigate. He wouldn't push her in to learning, of course, and he didn't want to talk her ear off for fear that it would ruin her interest in it.

Got any more questions? he asked, tail beating the ground. He could, of course, go on to explain each and every one of the zodiac constellations, their stories, the personality traits one might expect to have, and so on and so forth, but he was more interested in tailoring his tutoring to Rory's needs.

Although surprised by the wealth of information she'd never known was there, Bat shook her head lightly when Phox asked if she had any further questions. She'd gotten what she'd wanted originally, plus plenty more. He had given her enough to digest for a while. And though she did find it intriguing, she wasn't sure she was terribly invested in exploring further down this particular rabbit hole. If she did want to know more, she knew where to find him.

For now, Bat kind of wanted to be alone again. It was such a teenage, girlish thing to do but... she wanted to go back to musing about her big ole crush, clear her mind a bit before finally getting some sleep. "Not right now. But thanks, Phox," said Bat accordingly, offering him a grateful smile and a dip of her snoot before she said, "'M gonna catch some z's now. See you later!"

As she wandered off into the dark, absently following the North Star, the astronomer's lesson faded into the back of her mind. More and more, she contemplated just telling Tegan how she felt, though Bat knew she still wasn't ready for any big confessions. Heck, she might never tell him, as it had occurred to her that she could compromise the friendship. She idly wondered if the stars had anything to say about such romantic gambles, if perhaps her fate even might be spelled out up there somewhere. The thought made Bat snort smilingly.

He could have been disappointed that she did not want to hear him wax poetic about how amazing the stars were, but he was far too used to that response. Instead, he merely bobbed his head at her excusal, which I wasn't even sure was a real word. The Redhawk watched her disappear into the darkness, and he went off to find Camilla and make sure she wasn't getting frazzled about something new.