Phoenix Maplewood [BWP] Campground #1

Please respect posting order; thanks!

Humans vacated the campground this morning, but it still smells strongly like them. There is trampled snow, the faint smell of human urine, and other strange smells about.

the blizzard was fierce, but it hadn't been sudden. aditya had seen the storm clouds on the horizon, rumbling ever closer to their improvised camp on the plains. with a sense of foreboding embedded deeper than his thin pelt, the man had roused his companions to flee, to head for more cover. to the maplewood they had come, seeking shelter from the snow.

and thank god they did! it came with a fury, bearing down on the teekons with tremendous might. when morning light came, and aditya, @Dawn and @Easy were still curled up together in tight circles, the snow still fell and the wind still howled like warring wolves. 

with a massive shiver, adi shook the snow that had collected in an icy film from his fur and stretched, his jaws gaping wide in a yawn. blinking blearily, he padded off a ways, hoping to go for a quiet bathroom break before returning to his mate's side and falling back asleep. he lifted his leg, leaning sleepily  but mid-stream, a peculiar scent caught his nose, and his eyes narrowed.

there were territory markings here--but not that of wolves. no, it was a smell he hadn't caught wind of in a very long time--not since his days wandering the southern coast--and certainly not one he'd encountered here in the vast, empty wilds of teekon. his head cocked to the side in puzzled inquiry, and he followed the scent a few minutes away, where he found prints to go along with the piss.

what strange thing was this? more intrigued than concerned, for the scent was faint and the creatures seemed to have vanished, adi trotted back to dawn and easy, giving a low whuff to wake them.

"you should come see this," he told the sisters softly, eyebrows raised.

Easy had been roused by her brother-in-law when he woke, and had crept away from Dawn to steal some time alone with him. Before she had pounced upon his back, however, he stopped and beckoned to the both of them. Drat, thought the girl, shooting Dawn a slightly resentful look. They'd gone off together while they thought she was asleep as well, and she'd waited for them to come back with a surly sort of loneliness burning in her chest.

She missed the pack.

"I met a wolf who smelled like this," she said to Aditya, tail wagging idly. She was growing, but she was still so young - if this was strange, she did not know it. "I think he was sick. He was acting all crazy and he kept calling me Alya." She did not mention that he'd seemed oddly frightened of her, or that he'd been kind of cute.

she followed Adi to the source of the scent, muzzle furrowing as carefully she took in the scent. it seemed a territory, yet the scents here faded, and the place seemed empty. she moved carefully over the trampled snow, taking in the alien scents with a furrowed brow, gaze flickering to Adi in puzzlement. it was not however, he that provided any sort of explanation, but rather, Easy. "what?" she probed, blinking once as she stood. "where was he?" the fact that Easy had been engaging with insane strangers was worrying enough, not to mention the heavy scent that hung heavy over the clearing. dimly, she wondered if whatever it was would make a good meal.

adi's eyes shot to easy with some alarm, though it melted into fascination as she spoke further. she didn't seem worried about it, so why should he? he tried to keep in mind their earlier conversation about his babying her. aditya had scouted extensively at her age, and had only come out of it with some harebrained adventures--he had been none the worse for wear.

"i've smelled something like this before," aditya mused, nostrils flaring as he wrinkled his nose in distaste. it wasn't a very sweet scent; more pungent, and acrid, and so. . .dominating. it was a predator's odor, but which one? "down south, there was a lot of it. i've never caught the scent here, though. not until today."

he thought about what easy had said with a quiet hum to himself. alya sounded nothing like easy; the man had likely mistaken her for someone else, and in a sickened stupor, at that. he thought of his own fevered delirium for a brief, unsettling moment. perhaps the sickness had spread past morningside's borders to the rest of the wilds. it wasn't impossible.

but then, why the foreign scent on his pelt? had whatever trampled down here given morningside's wolves the sickness, too? if so, the threat needed to be eradicated, and soon.

Easy jumped at the sound of Dawn's voice, not quite catching her tone for a moment. "North a ways," she replied, seeing no reason to lie. "In a bowl in the middle of the highlands. He was half-mad, but he couldn't have hurt me. He could hardly stand, at first."

She looked back to Aditya as he spoke on the scent, interest piqued. "He was saying something about that big bird, and something about spiders and plants and stuff." She paused. "Hey, maybe he was bitten? Do you see any spiders around?" She was moving forward even as she asked, casting her gaze around for signs of webs. She'd heard stories about her father being bitten by a snake, and had been duly informed of all the other small things that could bite her if she wasn't careful enough. Spiders had been at the top of that list.

gonna bounce over dawn here to get this moving

aditya smiled at easy's suggestion, looking for signs of spiders himself. it was mostly just for show; it was likely these two similar smells were connected, and spiders, though certainly potentially deadly, weren't this pungent.

"might've been, but i don't think so," aditya murmured, drawing in another breath and scowling. "something's up around here. it's so strong--the smell. . .it's a predator, and a large one, at that. and something from the south, so it's on the move."

would they stick around, be a bother to the wolves who lived past the sunspire mountains? aditya fervently hoped not. their time at the plateau was rapidly coming to an end, and if not here, where would they go? farther down the coast was too warm for the thicker-coated sameth clan, and due south of their home was right in the thick of the caldera war.

"either way, we should be wary," he cautioned, taking a step back from the clearing. "i don't know how dangerous this predator is, and from the scent they've left behind, there's more than one."

Easy sniffed around as well, silently agreeing that it didn't really smell like spiders around the area. Whatever had been here, it'd scared all other signs of life away. Perhaps they could interrogate some squirrels? Daddy seemed to be able to hear them through their thick accents and puzzle out their strange dialect, but Easy sure didn't know how.

"I don't know about predator," she said uncertainly, sniffing at some urine. "Seems more like scavenger to me. Smell here? That's omnivore piss. Smells almost like... like a raccoon. But yeah, they seem to have scared everything else away from this area."

She shot a worried look at the pair. "Could it be bears?"

he drew in one last large breath, nodding. "you're right," adi responded, giving easy an impressed grin. the girl had a good nose, that was for sure. "omnivore, then. lots of piss for a raccoon, though. . .and no, i've smelled bear piss before and it's not that."

thank god, he mused. nando--he said a small, silent prayer to his friend lost at sea--had gotten into a tussle with a black bear in the mountains and had barely escaped with his life, sporting a new, jagged scar along his right shoulder. bears were nothing to be trifled with.

adi turned his gaze to dawn, then back to easy again. "we'll keep vigilant," he said firmly. "we can stay here, but if something's just a little off. . .we should head back to the plains." and even then, he felt uncomfortable with settling morningside so close to the belly of the beast.

Easy sniffed around a little more, hiding the proud look that Aditya's words had put on her face. There was no reason they needed to see that, and besides, she really did think the area ought to be fully investigated. But when her sniffing turned up no new scents, the clearing grew less interesting. Whatever animal had been here, it was gone, now.

"It seems fine to me," she said with a shrug. "Whatever they did to that guy from the hills, he wasn't hurt or anything. He just had a funny necklace."

easy's words caught him off-guard, and he turned to her, frowning in a puzzled manner. "necklace?" he asked blankly, cocking his head to one side. "what do you mean by that?" certainly not something he'd ever heard before; he wondered whether it was a grayday-ism he had yet to learn.

"he wasn't hurt, but he wasn't right," adi continued, looking troubled. "you said it yourself--he was sick, and crazy. if that's in any way connected to this scent, we should stay away." he was reminded viscerally of his own sickness, and shuddered, feeling the chills of a fever ripple over him once more. aditya had been lucky to get away from that with his life--he didn't want something else to lock him in its metaphorical jaws.

he lifted a leg decisively, spraying his own scent over the patch with vigor. if the creatures were to come back here, they'd know he and his companions were not to be trifled with; perhaps it would dissuade them from future incursions.

"Oh, like - it was a black thingy he wore around his neck. He didn't seem to like it, but I couldn't get it off him," she revealed, disappointment clear in her voice. She really wanted that necklace, but the stranger was long gone and there didn't seem to be any point in going after him - it was thoroughly attached to him, after all.

She frowned at Aditya's words, thinking that this was true, but the man had been slowly getting better, right? She wouldn't mind a bit of disorientation if it meant finding out the secret of this strange scent. But secrets weren't worth giving Daddy a heart attack, and she knew that was what would happen if Aditya had to report something happening to her like what had happened to the stranger.

He'd probably like the necklace, though. Who wouldn't?