Azure had taken to the habit of a midnight patrol quickly once the unusual nights began to fall upon them. Each time he stepped from the den and craned back his neck, the moon loomed full and ominous overhead - never waning, never diminishing in brightness. The stars seemed to move now in streaky blurs, shifting his thoughts to his star-gazing sister and wishing she was still around to discuss the oddities with. The random clusters of fireflies were no longer surprising to see, though still the direwolf heir still kept his distance as if to touch their glow would prove fatal. No matter how many patrols he ran beneath the full moon and alongside the glowing bugs, Azure's discomfort never faded. Something unnatural had touched their world, but it felt like the worst was yet to come. "Bean, don't touch that." He cautioned the fisher, who's tiny paw was reaching into the faintly glowing hollow of a tree. While his other two companions bore the brunt of his impatience and cruelty, Hanako loved the newest addition to their team. Allowing Bean to fall injured because he ate a glowing mushroom would probably upset the koi-wolf, and more strife was not what the newly engaged pair needed at the moment. "I mean it, get your ass back here." Bean hung his head and slid dejectedly down the tree trunk, stomping over to his master with all the frustrated obedience he could muster. "Speech"

Aris was fascinated by the changes that had crept into the world all mysteriously. Weird full moon? Weird streaky stars? Mysterious glowing objects? Yes please! It was enough to temporarily distract from her self imposed quest to better her fight skill. Not that she had forgotten how embarrassing it was to have been given a bloody nose by Ophie during a lesson from their littermate, in front of their father, but the oddities definitely put a pause on her furious skill grind. She still planned to track down Azure and harass him into fighting her, but Weird Shit ™ was definitely priority numero uno.

Of course, it was when she wasn't planning to fight him that she found him. She sauntered up to her much larger, slightly less handsome and definitely less fierce than her, older brother without any hesitation. "Why don't you just let him eat it? He'd learn his lesson then and then you'd get to see what it does. I bet its something really xool, like his insides melt or something." She eyed the weasel like creature speculatively.

Hyperaware of his unnatural surroundings, Azure had spun on the intruder with raised hackles before she'd even finished her confident saunter up to him. Aris spoke and Azure merely stared down at the child, as if gauging whether or not this sibling of whom had barely ever crossed his mind even deserved a word from him in reply. Decision eventually made, he turned from Aris back toward the fisher and shrugged. "It's not wise to risk death for curiosity's sake on a trained soldier, no matter how small and stupid he or she may be." Though he had little fondness for his companions, Azure did acknowledge how much of a pain in the ass it was to raise, train, and build loyalty and/or fear in the stupider species of Boreas, and after doing it a third time he'd found his patience was growing thin. "Besides, this one is off-limits. He has important friends." It seemed easier to explain it that way to his little sister then it would have been to admit that his fiancé (the word still felt wrong) had become too devoted to the thing. He sat back on his haunches, examining the glowing hollow from a distance for a moment before speaking once more. "It would be smarter to find some other creature to test it out on and autopsy. Have your lessons evolved that far, yet?" While Azure knew - and frankly cared - extremely little about the youngest Fatalis brood, he had at least a vague idea of where their ambitions lay within the pack. Not knowing was dangerous to his title of Heir, and they could only be allowed to fly under his radar so far. "Speech"

Aris nodded sagely at his explanation for the weasel-thing. "I have a cat like that. Mom gave her to me as a gift so I can't do anything to hurt her or Mom might think I didn't like her gift and she'd be sad." She sat back in her haunches and attempted to snatch one of the fireflies in her clawed paws but when she had her paws around one and peeked in at it, it had disappeared. Both disappointing, and excitingly weird. Giving up she instead craned her head to try to see up into the glowing tree hollow Azure's companion had been messing with. He mentioned autopaies, and Aris snorted, rolling her eyes at him. "I'd have to be getting lessons to be that far in them. But yeah, I've been dissecting things on my own for ages now. I figure I've been doing pretty good with teaching myself to fight that I can do the same with healing so... yeah lots of experiments." She grinned in predatory remembrance of all the experiments. Yeah. Those had been fun. "But hey!" she perked up. "Since you're here you can help me and we can learn something about this glowy stuff, see if its a danger to the pack or anything. What do you say, go find a critter and we can see if the glowy stuff kills them?" Without waiting for her brother's answer she was claws out and scooting her way up the tree to rummage around in the glowing hollow for whatever was in there.

Azure raised a brow on how she spoke of her companion, but in the end he figured he shouldn't be surprised when Aris was not the first child with such little compassion in the Fatalis line. He nodded in reply, not feeling the need to correct the child in that there may be other, kinder reasons to keep a companion alive. Aris began batting at the fireflies and to Azure's surprise, the things vanished as they fell behind her toes. ""Destroying evidence." He accused, deadpan. "I can see why so few wolves would be interested in instructing you." Maybe if wasn't entirely fair, but he couldn't let the time pass by without at least a few shots at his small sibling. Before he knew it, Aris was up the tree. Azure had a moment of panic, lurching forward and aiming to twack his oversized paw against her climbing form with intent to knock her out of the tree or at the very least back from the hollow. "Hey, stupid, mom would also be sad if her kid went and touched a creepy glowing thing and died." He scoffed, shaking his head. "Let me grab it, I've got longer claws then you. We don't know if it's safe on skin or fur." Azure admittedly knew very, very little on herbs but what he did know were the stories of fireflies his mother told. A weird figure in a cape with hoards of the beasts under his command had stolen his mother's horns, and Azure worried the magic that had spread across the land could only be his influence as well. "Then we can go find something to test it on, assuming you can keep up of course." "Speech"

Aris didn't dignify Azure's teasing with an answer (well, maybe a little, since she stuck her tongue out at him) and anyway she was far too busy investigating. Though she had only just stuck her paw in the hollow, didn't even get a chance to feel around and find anything, when with a solid thwack of his big dumb bear paws he knocked her right out of the tree. She rolled as she hit the ground - firefly lights scattered or disappeared as she touched them, which was cool - and popped up with an indignant "Hey!" She scowled at him but his comment about their mom deflated her ire a little. "My claws are plenty long enough," she muttered sulkily, but then waved away her own objection. "Fine, fine, you can have all the fun of picking cool glowy things. And I can keep up! I'm probably faster than you anyway, you know. More agile." She bounced around like she was shadow boxing, juking back and forth to prove her point. Very agile. Super fast. "Hurry up Bear Boy, we have an investigation to do! I'll see if I can catch one of these things without it going out while you're playing in trees." She glanced around for a big leaf and rolled it into a cone and began stalking the fireflies again, swishing the leaf-cone at them to try to catch them - inefficiently, unfortunately, since they kept dancing around like a bunch of laser pointers teasing a cat. But it gave her something to do while Azure got his big ol bear dog butt up to the hollow to snag their glowy thing, assuming it didn't disappear too.

He kept an eye upon the small wolf as she hit the ground rolling, dispersing a cloud of fireflies as she somehow rolled right through them. Satisfied she was not fully harmed, he returned his attention to the tree and placed his forepaws upon it's trunk as she gave her teenaged complaint to his back. "My claw is longer than your paw." Az told her flatly, lifting his paw toward her and waggling one grizzly-sized claw in her direction tauntingly before turning to scale the tree. The hallow was not too far up to require much climbing on a direwolf's part, but he did need to get at least his head at hollow-height to be able to see exactly what he was poking. With the glowing mushroom in sight he carefully unhooked a forepaw, hanging on hard with the remainder of his limbs as he reached in and delicately skewered the fungus' cap with a claw. Blue-tinted fireflies swarmed him, and for the purposes of not looking wimpy in front of his little sister the heir reigned in the urge to flinch away. Careful to ensure the fungus touched no other part of him, he pushed off the trunk to the ground. "Bean!" He snapped to the fisher, giving his paw a shake so the mushroom would land at the base of the tree. "Don't touch it, don't let anyone else touch it, you can let a companion touch it but if that happens, come find us so we can observe."  To Aris he turned, acknowledging her shadow-boxing and firefly stalking with faint amusement. "Alrighty then Princess, show me your stuff. Go track us a coyote, the closest we can get to wolfishness in our subject the better, I would assume." "Speech"

[/b][/color]

Azure

Your ears begin to ring loudly. You also find 3 mushrooms. Maybe these are worth keeping…

Aris

Fireflies suddenly dance around your head. You also find 2 mushrooms. Maybe these are worth keeping…