what wounds can mend, the heart will follow

The situation in the world had gone from odd to horrendous in a matter of just a few weeks. The wolves around her had slowly begun to show strange symptoms mimicking the glowing crystals and mushrooms that had started to appear over the past month. Strange, neon colored ooze dripped from their body and through open orifices, such as their eyes, mouth and nose. The very same crystals and mushrooms had started growing from their bodies as well, affecting even her very own loved ones. In addition to that, an almost sightless illness had affected her son and grandson, Takeshi.

She often saw them talking to themselves, or at least seemingly to themselves. If she stayed long enough, it often startled her to see that the conversations almost didn’t seem one sided. It was as if they were replying to something or someone only they could hear, a whisper on the wind only meant for their ears. What frightened her even more what was they seemed to be telling them to do. She’d almost had to fish Takeshi out of the shrine pool more than once after he’d suddenly thrown himself in, staying under water long enough that her poor old heart had begun thundering in her chest and she’d rushed forward, panic in her silver eyes. But then, he would resurface, a moment of clarity in those bright, glowing red eyes as he paddled himself to shore and laid there panting, staring at the sky in a panic. She’d hold his wet body, hushing his whimpers as he told her he wasn’t okay.

She could see that plainly.

Her son, Hanzo, had turned the opposite of his son. Instead of threatening to take his own life, he seemed content to take the lives of others. He killed prey more often than before, almost as if in a frenzy, and would yell at their corpses asking them what they wanted from him. He uttered names that shocked her, knowing there was no way they could respond. The wolves he called to were very much dead. She worried for his leadership, knowing that if she was seeing it, the other wolves of Ashen were seeing it too. It seemed Venom was untouched, thank the Gods, but Kiyo worried that wouldn’t last very long. She needed to find a cure somehow, somewhere, or she knew that she risked losing all that she held so very dear.

The woman had woken up and shouldered her own medical pack, bringing along her companions who, as of yet, were not infected. How the trio had managed to be unscathed despite the amount of inspection they’d done on the glowing mushrooms and crystals was beyond her, but she didn’t want to count her blessings just yet. Every day seemed to hold too much unknown to allow herself to lose her edge, to let her guard down. She ventured toward the Fjord, unsure just yet what she was looking for, but knowing she would find it when she saw it. And, she saw it.

Just beyond her, she could make out the form of a woman, perhaps around the age of her son and daughter-in-law, cloaked in a pelt of mottled blacks, greys, tans and russets. Crystals poked out of her body in various places, some in thicker bundles than the rest, and she seemed to be noticeably stumbling, shying away from one side in a way that she’d seen many times before. It was the wariness of a newly blind wolf, one whose senses had not yet adjusted to the partial loss of one of them. Surely they would, in time, become used to it, but she’d heard it be described as like losing a limb. She thought momentarily of Magnus but shook her head, removing thoughts of him from her mind, no matter how charming they may be. She had a job to do.

She let out a chuff of greeting, staying back a good distance in case she happened to be wrong and it wasn’t the meander of a wolf newly wounded, but of a wolf with no sense. She’d yet to see the craze accompany the crystals or the mushrooms, but with the way that the illnesses seemed to be progressing, she wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d suddenly morph together into some sort of...super ooze.