The cold wind licked Aster’s feathers as she flew north. She’d hoped the cold would be a haven against the ooze, but even as the trees thinned—along with her safety and cover—she saw infected creatures stirring below her wings. And she wasn’t brave (or stupid) enough to venture into the true tundra, where no forests could grow, where she chanced the environment was more deadly than the ooze.

The blue jay had traveled north for a week now, seeking an end to the ooze. While she meet wolves—ones that talked instead of trying to eat her, thankfully—she saw signs of the ooze everywhere. Crystals growing in reindeer’s eyes. Strange growths on the feet of local birds.

The zombified birds scared her the most. She saw more infected mammals than she saw infected birds, thankfully, but as much as Aster hoped this meant birds had a natural resistance to the ooze, she doubted it. When elk or porcupines acted erratically, they posed a greater challenge to hungry wolves because their behaviors were more difficult to predict.

But a mentally fogged bird? Why, it took so much concentration to weave in and out of tree branches or evade a hawk. The progressive nature of the ooze likely meant its victims were too confused to fly, and that was a death sentence to any bird.

Aster’s crest puffed out and her feet shivered. She wasn’t sure which she was scared more of: becoming too confused to fly or dying on the ground. Maybe they were really the same fear. Just two different ways to die from the same terrifying thing: the ooze.

She flew past the treeline, towards the coastline. An icy block of an island loomed on the horizon, and the wind off the ocean chilled the air. Aster beat her wings against the powerful northern winds, forced to trust her instincts even as she doubted them. Usually, she wasn’t this brave; she wanted to turn back to the trees, but she’d already seen the ooze there. There wasn’t anything to learn behind her, only ahead.

Beneath her feet, the craggy land below looked treacherous to walk on. She dared not land. Rocks bigger than her body. A pocket of sand and frozen water like nothing she’d ever seen–except when she imagined monstrous maws in her nightmares—and she had no desire to check out her nightmares in the daylight. She swerved left, avoiding flying over that frozen maw, and unknowingly saving herself from tempting fate from sudden death via geyser.

When she hit the coastline, where craggy rocks became sand from the waves beating against the stone, the wind pushed her back. She couldn’t go farther if she tried. Maybe on another day, with less wind, she could’ve managed.

Springtime birds flocked over the craggy coast. Aster didn’t recognize the species, but she called out greetings anyway. None returned her calls—not that she blamed them, she probably didn’t speak their language—but she recognized patterns in their speech and body language. They were sentient, like she was, and they didn’t have any crystals growing on their bodies. Then they weren’t infected; all the birds on the coast were free of the ooze.

Aster dipped her head and glided lower to the waves. Several birds dove in and out of the water, picking up fish—free of crystals, too, maybe ocean fish were immune, she wondered—and bringing them back to their nests in the craggy rocks. She would’ve liked to stay longer, to observe them, but her presence hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Whenever she got too close to the waves or another bird with a caught fish, she was driven off. Not that she blamed them. If she got the chance, she probably would steal a beakful of fish (or try for the whole thing, even if she couldn’t carry a prey that size). But there were too many birds around, and she didn’t blend in, not with her smaller size, wingspan shape inefficient for oceanbreeze riding, and her bright blue feathers.

So she backed off, letting the rough ocean wind carry her back to the monstrous maw from her nightmares. Despite her fear, Aster circled it—once, twice—and entertained escapist daydreams. Maybe she could stay by this coast and learn the seabird’s language. If she tried hard enough, she could fish, too, right? She had always been the fastest learner of her clutch. And she was nothing if not persistent. And it wasn’t like she longed for the company of her own species or, ew, a mate. So she could adapt and live a blissful life by the ocean without fear of the ooze.

Suddenly, a harsh gust rolled off the waves and hurled her all the way to the treeline. One blink, and she flew fifty meters. That alone shattered her daydream.

Aster sighed to herself. One more lap around the maw, then she’d return to where she belonged: the trees. Unless someone interrupted her first.

The strange circling of a blue jay overhead didn't go unnoticed by Kiela. The sky wasn't something she paid a lot of attention to, at least not as much as she did the trees and the earth, but she was fairly certain blue jays weren't typically found so far north... certainly not this far north. At least in her homelands birds were a scarcity, though with all the strange happenings as of late maybe it shouldn't come as such a surprise to her. Periodically she cast her burnt orange gaze to the sky to watch the bird circling overhead, bracing its tiny self against the brutal ocean wind. Surely she felt a small fraction as cold as that tiny bird did; Kiela instinctively felt a chill creep down her spine and she shuddered a little as the wind tickled her nose.

Bracing herself she continued on, nearing the geyser now. This wasn't a place Kiela had visited before, and for good reason - even from this distance she could feel the heat emanating off the spout, a stark contrast to the merciless cold of the far north. It was among the list of the strangest things she'd seen so far in Boreas but it wasn't quite at the top. Still, it was a sight to behold, an even stranger spectacle against the rocky coastline behind it. Kiela breathed a content sigh as she took in the scenery, her attention flicking again high to the bird that circled close yet again and tilting her head curiously at the sight.