Redhawk Caldera haunted

She had taken to venturing outside of the dark woods at times. The pale youth enjoyed exploring the world outside. There was something about the comfort of the darkness, of the glowing mushrooms and the spirits all around her that made her feel at ease and at peace in the Blackfeather Woods, but the spirit was also happy enough to see the world beyond those walls. It made home feel like home even more. In the outside world, she looked slightly less impressively pale, considering she stood in a world of colour rather than darkness, but the snow helped highlight her and hide her. She travelled by night, for it was her favourite time of day.

The spirit climbed the outer walls of the Caldera and arrived at its edge, where she looked over the edge and stared at the waters of the Caldera. It looked mighty impressive -- nothing like anything she had ever seen in the Blackfeather woods.

Dash had also climbed up the slope of the caldera, hoping for a look at whatever lay guarded within the oblique walls. Neither was he disappointed by the view. He inhaled slowly as he took in the view of the impossibly-still lake, reflected upon its surface the image of the waxing moon. The sight was a reminder that the winter solstice had nearly arrived. 

How had such a landform come about? It seemed to Dash as if the top of the mountain had simply... melted, crumbling inward upon itself like an anthill in the rain. How odd. He had never before known a mountain to melt. 

The boy's gaze began to trace around the rim, searching for any sign of what may have occurred here. His eyes were immediately drawn the spot of brightest white in his view, save the moon's reflection itself: the pelt of a child, so pale and ghostly she nearly shimmered. 

"Hey, kid!" Dash called, voice upbeat and youthful. "This valley is nuts, right?!" Lucky him, the gods had seen it fit to send him someone with whom he could share the incredible view.

The spirit lifted her head and looked at the over-excited wolf that joined her. He was clearly not a threat, eyes full of glimmer and voice upbeat as he greeted her with the name 'kid'. A word unknown to the spirit, though she, giving wolves names to remember them by, figured he was the same and that 'kid' was just what he had named her for today.

'Nuts' was another word she did not know, but judging by his cheerful disposition surely it was something positive. And she had to admit, this was a good place -- Nuts was right. "Do you live here?" she asked casually while she scanned the view, looking for oddities.

"Fuck no," he answered quickly. "I mean... shit no," he ammended himself, remembering that she was a child with delicate ears. It completely escaped him that his language correction was hardly an improvement over the original statement. 

"The way I see it, this place exploded. Boom! And that's why there's this huge-ass hole." Dash tilted his muzzle to direct the kid's attention to the sloped outer edge of the bowl. "All this around the edge, it's new growth. So there must have been fire everywhere."  Especially when taking into account the ancient forests that surrounded the caldera, the vegetation here was comparably quite young. Dash had heard stories of mountains that intermittently erupted into rivers of liquid fire, but he had never seen anything like it himself. What a sight that would have been.

"Like hell I would want to live in a place that explodes randomly," he added after a short lapse of silence, belatedly remembering to finish answering her question.

A toothy grin showed how very little the spirit cared for his use of words. She didn't even really recognise "fuck" as a bad word, for she had not heard it often and when it had been used, it had not been explained as such. Bad words were a foreign concept to the spirit.

Boom? she wondered out loud, and she stared at the large water-filled gap. What's exploding? Did you see it? Not this explosion, perhaps, but another? The spirit had no idea what such a thing was.

Shit, he had forgotten how thick kids can be. "Uhh.. like... the mountain top? The peak? The peak exploded. Like, it blew apart into a million teeny-tiny pieces. Boom." Dash's brow furrowed in an uncharacteristic display of thoughtfulness. Staring at the lake a little longer, understanding settled upon him. He continued with more confidence, "The top exploded off, and then it left that huge-ass hole, and the rain filled it up. So now it's a lake." 

"No.." Dash blinked. Like he would be caught dead on a mountain that was about to explode. He took in a deep breath, figuring he would need to explain the exploding mountain thing a little more. "Okay so like.. sometimes mountains catch on fire, but not on the surface. Like the fire starts waaay deep inside the belly of the mountain. And-- have you seen a fire before?-- 'Cause anyone whose seen a fire knows that fire likes to grow and spread out. Except there's nowhere for fire to spread inside a mountain. So when it gets to the point where there's so much fire the mountain can't hold it, it explodes out the top. Boom." 

The words had flowed easily enough, but Dash couldn't remember for sure if that was how the exploding mountain thing really worked. Oh well. It was probably close enough.

It was amazing to learn of the history of this place, although the pale youth wondered warily if he was telling the truth or not. Wolves tended to spin tales larger than truth. His answer was elaborate and he explained things by hand of fire. She had not seen fire, but she knew from stories what fire was, so she nodded when he asked that question and then continued his story of the exploding mountain.

This was a mountain? the spirit questioned, though he had already answered the question. She sounded as if she thought the story a bit far-fetched, but then again, it did look a bit like a mountain without top. She looked at him inquisitively, hoping to catch a glimmer of whether he spoke the truth. Did you see it? she repeated, then realising she should clarify: Somewhere else? Maybe not this mountain, but another, perhaps? What would make a mountain's top blow off? It was all new and intriguing to the youth.

"This was a mountain?"

"Uh-huh," Dash affirmed. Well... he was pretty sure, at least. 

Again, the girl asked if he had seen the explosion. Gods above, were all kids this slow or was this one especially thick? She clarified, asking if he had seen the phenomenon somewhere else, which was only a slightly-less-dumb question in Dash's opinion. It was an explosion for fuck's sake, it wasn't conducive to leaving behind witnesses. 

"Uh, no.. it's not the sort of thing that people would usually, um.. survive if they were close enough to see it happen. See, when a mountain explodes, all this liquid fire spills out and floods the earth as far as the eye can see. Everyone dies." Exploding mountains were really just legend and hearsay, but Dash wasn't about to tell the kid that. Now that he had been mistaken for an authority on all things mountainous and explosive, he was reluctant to give up his newfound expertise. 

"Did you see it?" he asked, suddenly curious as to what such a young kid was doing up here all alone, in the middle of the night. "Were you here when it exploded? Are you a ghost or something?" It seemed like a plausible conclusion.

The spirit listened curiously to what he told her, saying that when mountains exploded liquid fire would kill everyone near. She wondered what it would look like. She wondered what it would feel like to die. The spirit gazed out into the caldera, but she doubted she would know. She'd not experienced such an explosion before, after all.

When he phrased his questions, asking her if she had been there and subsequently wondering if she was a ghost, she did not doubt a moment. The spirit looked at him, dead in the eye, and she nodded slowly with a serious expression on her face, trying to look as unnervingly ghostly as she could. Yes. She was not that eloquent, but it seemed to fit her role of spirit quite well. She stood one paw in the spirit realm and one in the real world, so it was not that hard for her to pretend to be a spirit. I lived here once. Her white gaze stared out across the caldera, the same emotionless expression resting on her pale face as she did.

"Oh." Dash could suddenly feel his heartbeat in his chest as the ghost confirmed that she was, in fact, a ghost. If wolves could go pale, Dash would have been as colorless at the moon's reflection upon the lake's glassy surface. The seawolf opened his mouth to say more, but for once in his life he was completely at a loss for words. What was he supposed to even say to a ghost? 

"That.. that sucks.." he said finally, eyes darting for some kind of excuse, or escape route, or.. or something. He cleared his throat. "Maybe I'll just, uh, leave you to it then, Ghost Kid." Dash wasn't sure exactly what sort of threat the ghost posed, but he was thouroughly creeped out. He began inching away as the ghost gazed out over the caldera.

It was clear that she was getting on his nerves now, which was exactly what her intention had been. The spirit just continued to stare at him as he simply said 'oh' and nothing more, hoping to further unnerve him. Eventually he decided that he had had enough and said that he would leave. She simply kept staring at him as he inched away and let him leave in silence, a mirthful expression on her face that would only change into a smug grin after he had gone out of sight.

The ghost kid had no reply for Dash, which only compunded the creepiness level. After Dash spoke, the ghost kid's gaze remained fixed upon him, and that pretty much mailed it in for the seawolf. 

"'Kay, you have a good one kid," Dash offered. It was the most polite farewell he could come up with on the fly-- the last thing he wanted was to piss off a ghost.

With that, he turned tail and hauled his fluffy ass back down the slope in about a quarter of the time it took him to climb it initially. 

Dash's exit. xD

thanks for the thread, this was pretty funny :')

She stared after him as he scuttled off, seeming a little nervous. The spirit contemplated saying something bad to fuel his superstitious belief that she was a ghost, but she decided against it. After all, she was sort of half a ghost and she should not take advantage of such facts. She stared after him and then, eventually, her expression broke into a smug grin as she turned back to look at the Caldera.