Seems like this new wandering life is tougher than expected. I thought things would be tough in this new life but ..... The terrain I've encountered so far is so inhospitable. That Marble valley, climbing its steep walls almost broke me. I guess I needed to learn the hard way how out of shape I was. And pride got the better of me in that encounter with the grey white wolf. I could have accepted advice, found some rich source of food and had chance to at least take stock. But no, that would have meant listening to a younger wolf. Pride messing with your head. Isn't that why you are here anyway? You could have carried on with the easy life if you'd just accepted a younger wolf taking your role in the pack. But no, you upped and left. And for reasons you still don't understand you chose to come here. This place.

My god - this is an awful place. Seems like a huge crater. Remains of something ancient, some terrible event thousands of years ago that changed everything. You can never know what happened that day. When the crater formed. Were there wolves here then that looked to the sky. Saw the flaming light and some terrible, deafening roar. Did they gauge, even for a second, that everything was all over. Did they wonder if all the fighting for pack position had been for nothing, all gone in the next terrifying second. Or was this a different land before the crater. Some other land, and the wolf was just the current incumbent - holding a brief tenure until some other dark calamity.

Snap out of it. Such musing is a luxury for those with a full belly. Food is my urgent need - not eaten since I arrived in this place. There has to be something. In lieu of any prey perhaps some plants will suffice. Growing up in the mountainside on the rocky soils. The purple blue flowers look innocuous enough. What's the worst that can happen? A few mouthfuls will ease the emptiness in my belly. Help me think.

Tastes good. Ha. What's so hard about surviving in these lands anyway. Surely not as tough as it can be made out. I can do this. A wolf from the South has the brains to survive anything in this land. I just need to get out of this wind. Behind these rocks. I'll rest. Eyes feel heavy. Legs feel heavy. Need rest. Suddenly don't feel too good....

A pair of silver eyes, complete with the deep blue starburst of color around one pupil, watched the progress of a much larger wolf through her birthland. The tiny priestess evinced no alarm at his passage - on the contrary, those eyes in her pinched, delicate face simply blinked slowly as she watched from her cave-den hidden high within the wall of the gorge, not far from the one in which she had been birthed. Her mother rested within there now, coaxed from her isolation in the red forest to somewhere closer to where Alfrun could keep a close eye upon her and care for her in her declining years. Watching this stranger now, Alfrun thought to herself that he would quite shortly be finding his own decline, as the little blue flowers disappeared into his hungry maw. From this distance, she could not be sure if it were larkspur or aconite, but either way he would be meeting the gods far sooner than if he'd just chosen to starve. She watched quietly as a swarm of glittering fairy-lights followed along with him as he staggered and stumbled out of sight behind some rocks, watched as they touched lightly on his fur and darted away before returning, trailing dark red like blood. Alfrun sighed. "Jeg ser dine ønsker, Eir, valkyrie, gudinne, veileder for healere. Jeg vil adlyde." If she could save the poor fool from his folly it was clear that her duty was to do so. If she hurried, and he had not consumed too much already, she thought she could. Carefully she separated from her stores the remedies she felt she might need regardless of which of the gorge's deadly plants had been ingested. A few herbs of various types to treat his symptoms, because she knew that would be all she could really do as the poisoning itself would not be curable, only endurable. Then a carefully tapped out measure of powdered charcoal from the cupped moose shed it was currently stored in. Charcoal was not so easy to find simply laying around, and it had taken her some time to acquire this store, scraped painstakingly from the trunk of a lightning-struck oak and carried all the way back to the gorge, then powdered by rolling a rock over it with her paws, over and over, until it was evenly crushed. It would not be easily replaced, so she would not like to waste it if she could manage otherwise. Wrapping the whole of the burden in a cured rabbit skin, the ethereal viking female meandered down the path from her storehouse towards where the male had disappeared. Blinking serenely at the slate-gray form, so much larger than her own, she carefully set down her bundle. "Heill ok sæll," she said politely, blithely ignoring the meaning of the old, old greeting. A head tilt to study him curiously, then she asked, with her words lisping past the cleft lip on her pale side, "Are you aware that you ingested poison?" If he had known what he was doing, if he had done it a-purpose, there was certainly no call to seek to save his life needlessly. She saw no reason to intervene if he had sought death.

Vision unclear. Heavy mist on my eyes. And the pain. Feel like I have been felled. Something heavy crashed into my body. This land there's evil here. Did something come out of the ground and try to kill me. Or some poison in the air. That's right - something trying to kill me. This new world rejecting an intruder like antibodies resisting infection. A world turned upon the outsider.

Perhaps this evil that was trying to kill me is something ancient. Something brought here by whatever it was that had created this huge crater. Some evil from the sky. The land now infected, only the infected can survive. Sense turned upside down. Wolves from the South can't survive here because the land is too hostile. But outsider wolves like myself are supposed to be the superior ones, the ones who could do more than survive. More than survive - thrive. But not here it seems.

Eyes so heavy. Is this seeing anyway, or is this hallucination. Or maybe not even hallucination, just thoughts, an internal view, a last flicker before death. If so this vision was not what was expected from his final moments. A pair of silver eyes, no not just silver, one eye containing a shocking blue. Sinister - foreboding. And then those words - in the ancient Viking language. I do not understand their meaning, but I understood their significance - the tongue of the Viking who had devastated my Saxon forefathers lands. Many generations ago. So many generations ago. Yet still the fear and hatred lived on in my home lands - I had been taught ancient Saxon words to show fear of the Viking.

So was this silver eyed wolf the harbinger of death? If so I should not be laid low lightly. Perhaps I had been lured here by the silver eyed wolf - she had cursed me with ancient Viking words that had brought me to my knees. Would I be forced to accept magic had the power to kill - I had never believed in that before. Perhaps not magic, but plain poison - now seeing more clearly. Yes a bundle of poisons hanging from her neck. Evidently she plans to finish me off with more poison.

Yes I understand now, she is laughing at me, asking if I understand that I have been poisoned

I know I am not a fighter - but I should put up a fight. I open my mouth to let out a snarl. Raise a claw.

But weak. So weak, The snarl is empty. The raised claw feeble.

Everything going black. Darkness