She hopped from one bit of land to the other, daintily making her way over the bog-like area without getting her paws wet. Mostly. Sometimes the ground sunk beneath her paws just enough for the water to pool around her feet before she could hop to the next part. The thick grasses and vines made it a bit difficult to tell where the water and mushy land met, and occasionally she got caught up on a tree root poking up from beneath. But she was making do well enough. It was an arduous journey, more emotionally than physically, but eventually she made it to a slightly larger parcel of land that seemed more solid than the rest, and it was there that she sat back on her haunches, deciding it was time for a short break. Inoki flicked the wetness from her front paws one at a time, taking a few moments to lick the fur around her ankles and clean up any gunk that had gotten stuck there. There was a thick fog that hung low in the air, making it difficult to see too far ahead, and so she was unsure of exactly how much further there was to go before she made it do drier land. The air itself was muggy, and she found herself panting slightly to try and cool off a bit. This was definitely not one of her favourite places to be so far.

Oh, gross. Now she remembered why she avoided this place as a whole and stuck to the lands of her family - and then the Orchard, which she very much considered a part of that. The swampland was... well... swampy. And kinda gross. The sucking sounds as her paws hit soggy ground and lifted them back up was not a pleasant sound, and she grimaced every single time it happened. Which, considering she was freaking huge at 44" at the shoulder, was more often than not. Even her lithe, nimble build didn't remove the way the natural world worked and with her size, she was just screwed. Eugh. She was still in joyful spirits, though. A miracle had happened the night prior, and even though it was hard to see through the fog that hung over the swamplands, it was still visible clearly. The fireflies descended en masse on crystals and mushrooms, feeding on them and removing them from the landscape. It was quite bizarre to witness, but the true glory was a few hours later when the rays of sunlight warmed her fur again. It was wonderful. Why she decided to immediately go romping in a foggy, muddy, swampland was beyond her. She was not always the brightest.

It. Was. Daylight. Under her very eyes, the blue creepy fireflies turned yellow, one at a time, blinking blue and then suddenly blinking yellow. Then it seemed like the fogs and the ghosts of wolves past had been sucked up, the fireflies descended en masse on crystals and mushrooms, feeding on them and removing them from the landscape. It was quite bizarre to witness, but the true glory was a few hours later when the rays of sunlight warmed her fur again. It was wonderful. Why she decided to immediately go romping in a foggy, muddy, swampland was beyond her. She was not always the brightest.

With a huff, she picked her way through the water and ickiness until miraculously, her paws hit dry land. Well, mostly dry. Dryer than the rest. She'd take it. However, something - someone - else was already there, and she narrowed her eyes briefly at the other wolf. "Well then. It seems I'm not the only one who decided to brave these irritatingly wet lands," she commented with a smirk, stretching luxuriously on the dry ground, claws unsheathing and flexing into the wet soil. After that quite wonderful stretch, she stood back up, cocking her head at the little black wolf on the dryer patch of land.

"Speech" "You"

art by gunhorse

It was as if the wolf had appeared out of thin air, their absolutely ginormous form emerging out of the fog like some sort of haunting spectre. The fur was a dark shade of blue, with some hues of purple, green, and a lighter blue throughout. It was quite breathtaking to look at, and so that's what she did, at least until the stranger spoke. Her head canted to the side, tongue mid-lick where she had frozen upon the sight of the wolf, but she now dropped her paw to the ground to assume a more proper position to engage in a proper discussion. "I wasn't aware it would be this bad when I began walking," she said with a sniff of distaste, not at the much larger female, but at the bog-like swamp around them. "If I had I likely would've gone around. This is quite... irritating, as you put it." A small smile graced her features, almost mirroring the smirk of the stranger. At least she wasn't alone in her distaste of the swampland. "Did you travel out here for any reason in particular?" She asked curiously, wondering if perhaps this woman knew of the quickest route out of the place she had found herself in.

Her mouth twitched into a wry, amused grin when she noticed that the stranger had literally frozen mid-lick. She couldn't lie; she enjoyed that type of reaction and it was quite satisfying to witness it. She was beautiful and she knew it, and she liked it when others noticed it. Of course, it helped that she was one of the largest wolves that roamed the area. No longer the largest, as many in Boreas were around her height and even a few a scant taller, but they were still rare. And many were her family, her siblings. Some others unrelated but she had maybe met one or two so far. It appeared to run in family lines, the best she could tell.

The smile had faded at her thoughts, though light still danced in her eyes and she smiled again slightly at the indignant huff of the smaller woman. MUCH smaller; she wasn't sure she'd seen a wolf that small, honestly. "I kinda expected it to be more dry with the lack of the spring rains so far when the crystals and mushrooms were here," she admitted. "I forgot to take into account the lack of sun... and the melting snow. I travelled here out of curiosity, though I do have some regrets now." And it was quite obvious why she did.

"Speech" "You"

art by gunhorse

She nodded along to the woman's explanation with a thoughtful expression. It made sense to her - less sun and melting snow meant more water on the ground, but her attention latched onto a specific portion. The crystals and mushrooms. So it hadn't been a fully isolated event. She had come across some of the strangeness previously, but it had not seemed to stick around for much longer after she arrived. She would have assumed it was a seasonal thing if the wolves she met had not told her otherwise. "Do you know what was up with the crystals and mushrooms?" She asked, brows furrowing slightly. It wasn't a given that the woman knew a lot about them, but as she had been the one to bring them up in the first place it was worth asking about. "I only arrived here when it seems like they were beginning to disappear, so I have very little knowledge on them." Inoki was a curious wolf by nature, and so she liked having answers to things, especially things that were unusual and somewhat mystical, and those mushrooms and crystals definitely fit that criteria.

This woman seemed pleasant enough, and Lyra stepped fully onto the dry land, shaking off brusquely away from the black wolf to get the excess water out of her coat. Each paw got shook vigorously individually, a grimace on her face as she flung the water off before plopping her butt down onto the ground. The question was something she wished she had a better answer to, and she shook her head slowly. "Utterly clueless," she said quietly. "I've been gone a couple years from my family. Came back to a sky that didn't have a rising sun, only a horizon, and days later that night had fallen. I had at that point run into the infected and generally avoided the crystals and the mushrooms myself. I didn't like what they did to the prey, to the wolves. It definitely made hunting even more difficult; I refused to hunt any infected creature. I didn't know what eating it would do to me. I lucked out by only losing a bit of weight and going a bit hungry, and that was only due to me staying in Southern Boreas compared to other regions which are even less plentiful, especially in Winter." The infection bothered her. Why did it happen? Why was it spontaneously disappearing? She saw the fragments off of prey animals, though she hadn't yet talked to wolves who were infected since the rising of the sun to see if the crystals and mushrooms coating their bodies had also been removed by the blue fireflies before they disappeared.

"Speech" "You"

art by gunhorse

She watched with a small grin as the other woman began to shake herself off, and quite vigorously at that. It was a bit more of an explosive approach that she had taken herself to get rid of the ickiness on her paws, but it was pretty effective. As the woman began to explain what she knew about the strange mushrooms and crystals, Inoki listened with rapt attention, almost unblinkingly. It sounded like it had been a whole ordeal, what with the lack of sun and safe food, and on top of that dealing with a type of sickness that caused negative effects to anyone who came into contact with it. Whatever it was. "It sounds like it was a really difficult time," she said sympathetically. She had managed to scrape by well enough as the sickness had begun to disappear very shortly from her arrival, but going more than a few weeks? It sounded absolutely terrible. "I can only imagine what happened to those who were less fortunate than you." That was even more terrible to think about, and she decided she didn't want to think about that any longer than necessary. "But that all seems to be in the past now. What do you say about maybe showing little old me a way out of this bog?" Inoki grinned slightly, hoping to alleviate any unwanted emotions in favour of a distraction for the both of them, and one where she could walk freely without getting her fur all muddy.

The attention was a bit disconcerting, but it had a level of focus to it that Lyra honestly admired about the young and small female. Curious, seemingly dedicated and a fast-thinker. Lyra could support that whole-heartedly; she was a fan of seeing that in any wolf, young or old. Seeing it in this woman was quite frankly gratifying and she appreciated seeing it, and being a recipient of the focus. She nodded slowly to the sympathetic statement, her head almost cocking to the side as she considered her words. It was difficult as far as prey was concerned, but thankfully not otherwise too difficult for her. She did not suffer from any of the variants of the disease. She had even heard rumours of some being killed by it. She was by far one of the luckiest wolves in the entire world when it came to this... plague or whatever it was. Was the sympathy genuine though? Who would offer sympathy, true sympathy, for an utter stranger?

"It was," she confirmed. "And yes, I believe it was much, much harder for those actually afflicted. I have heard rumours of some dying from the disease... or whatever the hell it was." She knew she had seen prey that had appeared to die for no 'apparent' reason if you ignored the mushrooms, crystals, or ooze on them. "My family seems to have escaped relatively unscathed as welll, thankfullly." She wasn't entirely sure, but she was pretty sure nobody she cared about died. Suffered, maybe. Probably. Especialyl with the explosion of wolves her family did recently.

Very quickly, though, the other wolf changed the topic. A wry grin twisted onto her face, and she looked up and down the wolf. "I do believe I'm the old here, though you certainly fit the little." Snark was fun. Snark was amusing. Snarking a wolf that was the size of her as a puppy was even more amusing. "However.... I do believe I can get us out. No promises on us being extremely wet by the end. With my size and weight, it's just about impossible for me to nimbly move around without getting decently disgusting."

A small frown appeared on Inoki's face as the other woman spoke of some wolves potentially even dying from the sickness. She could only imagine the grief their families would have gone through at the pain of losing a child, parent, sibling, lover, or even just a friend to the strange crystals or mushrooms. At least this woman's family had seemed to get by without too much trouble. "That's lucky of your family. At least some were spared, then." She supposed they were fortunate the sickness hadn't ravaged the lands and creatures to the point of exctinction. Inoki poked her tongue out and blew a raspberry at the other woman at being called little, but it was all in jest. She was perfectly okay with her smaller stature, and had no qualms about getting playfully teased about it. "You don't know that, maybe I'm just an old spirit in a younger body," she said as she jumped to her paws in a play bow, butt wiggling in the air like she was a young pup again. Inoki shrugged her shoulders, still in the play bow position, which left her almost doing a sort of push up with the motion. "Can't be much worse than what I went through to get to this dry spot, so lead the way!"

Lyra nodded to the other woman's words. Yes, she was lucky indeed, that her family had been spared the pain and suffering she suspected many others went through. "It seems mostly to have been a combination of physical and mental symptoms. It doesn't appear many died, but enough did. And it did cause definite suffering in many, with some very odd symptoms," she affirmed. She was happy she missed getting sick with... that. Quite frankly, having mushrooms, crystals, or straight up goop leaking from her eyeballs did not seem very... nice. And some wolves had been even worse afflicted, with crystals or mushrooms over their body or goo making it hard to breathe or speak. She shuddered a tad at the images, lip curling with disgust at the thought. It had been horrible, and gone as swiftly as it seemed to have came. Eugh. Hopefully it would never happen again.

A smirk appeared on her face at Inoki's teasing, and her yes sparkled in bemusement. "Still technically young though," she shot back, while also returning the tongue-sticking and the raspberry-blowing. That amusement grew at the play bow, and the much, much larger wolf once again returned the gesture, a merry laugh escaping as she did so. To tease even further, she followed that play bow with a small pounce, claws out-stretched, though she knew for a fact the pounce was inhibited enough that she would come nowhere close towards Inoki herself to touch those claws to her. She snickered at the weird shrug in the play bow position, and with a small huff, she popped herself back standing.

"You say that now... let's see what's said at the end of this." With that, she jumped past Inoki, moving to the edge of the land and gingerly poking around to find a somewhat stable step. When she did so, she stepped out into the marsh, sinking by at least 3 inches into the goop as she let her whole weight step onto that "dry" patch. "I'm Lyra Saxe, by the way."

Inoki hadn't seen the worst of the sickness, just a few wolves around that had crystalline or mushroom growths and the strange ooze that came with it, but for the most part she had gotten away unscathed and without seeing too much. But from the sounds of it it had been quite devastating as a whole, and she was glad to have arrived when she did. She grinned as the other woman returned the childish action and play bow, skittering playfully backwards at the faux pounce in her direction. The strange claws caught her attention; they looked far sharper than normal wolf claws, and she was instantly very curious about them. But before she could say anything the other woman jumped past her towards the edge of the swamplands, and she quickly turned on her heel to follow. In the time it took her to turn and regain sight of the other woman, she promptly stepped out into the bog and sunk a few inches beneath the surface. A soft snigger escaped her at the sight, and she bounded forward to stand next to the larger wolf, looking up at her with another grin. "Inoki Piere, pleasure to make your acquaintance." She then leaped forward, managing to land on a somewhat dry patch with her front legs, but her hind legs sunk a little into the swampy ground, but not nearly as far as Lyra's limb had. Benefit of being small and light, she guessed. "I noticed you have some fancy claws, were you born with them?" Inoki looked back over her shoulder at lyra, lifting a front leg to wiggle her own blunt claws at the woman.