Flamin' Knowledge

His ears flicked back as the sounds of two female voices and the scuff of one set of paws reached them, but he barely turned his head enough to see the female and her rider. The female was familiar… Peregrine? He opened his jaws to ask if she knew what this was, but by the way she and her companion seemed to be held in the same spell of wonder as he had been, he quickly deduced that they didn’t.

Didn’t hurt to ask, though; maybe they had an idea. He greeted Peregrine’s words with a smile and a slow wag of the tail. “And you, Peregrine.” His rich sapphire gaze turned back to the roiling, slowly flowing liquid fire, and slowly, a memory dredged its way to the surface. A story told by his grandmother.

Something about finding the Glaciem Queen here, burned by this hot stuff, and using the opportunity to bargain for the release of Azalea’s two sons, sired by the half rape by Isardis Armada, as well as a peace treaty between the two packs, in return for soothing the burned paw and ensuring a safe return to Glaciem for Sendoa. The key part of this memory was that it meant this stuff was hot enough to burn flesh and fur.

“I don’t know exactly what this is, but don’t touch it. It’ll burn. My grandmother told us about it.” Now that he’d grown used to the heat under his paws, he couldn’t help thinking that having this kind of warmth around would be useful in the winter. His eyes turned back to Peregrine as she asked, conversationally, and as though they weren’t standing right next to a boiling river of burning hot danger, “How have you been?”