While she was settling in to her new/old home, she decided first to thoroughly explore and mentally map the cave system that lay within the mountains. Makara had figured this would be a simple task, but it proved much more daunting once she got down to it. Every pathway forked and branched multiple times leading to new chambers and under utilized corridors. Once a wolf veered away from the main open market, it was easy to get turned around as they ventured deeper. Torches lit the way for most of the public passages, the dim light a welcome reprieve from the otherwise dim caves. Certain areas were entrenched in darkness and reminded her eerily of the months she had been trapped underground. Makara passed quickly those places, making note but taking care not to linger. If she stayed too long in the stale air she felt her head begin to swim.

After some time, she found herself growing thirsty. The air inside the mountain was thin and dry and wasted no time in stealing the moisture from her throat. Makara licked her lips several times in an attempt to wet them, but the sound her mouth made was thick. Water... there are traces of old streams and puddles, but most of it has dried from the summer heat. Even underground the heat and stale air had come together and evaporated most of what she could see. There were darker areas of stone that she was sure were once puddles, perhaps filled from some underground aquifer, but they had run dry now.

She stopped for a second to get her bearings in a particularly dim passageway. To the inexperienced eye the cave system was completely unintelligible, but she had spent enough time underground to know when the earth imperceptibly began to fall and rise and could tell when she was moving deeper within the mountain or closer to the surface. Makara wasn't intimately familiar with this place yet, but she was determined to unravel all of its secrets. It was quiet here and gave her time and space to think. Since she'd hugged Basilisk at the border, she'd been filled with an anxious energy. Time alone would help iron her out, she was sure of it.

Makara stood up from where she'd paused and rested, noting a stream of small, milky white bugs that trailed along the ground in a disturbingly straight line. They seemed intent on a singular purpose, marching infinitely forward. She knew from her time underground that this sort of phenomena sometimes meant the bugs were headed towards a resource: something dead and decomposing, plant life, or water. Since she couldn't smell anything rank or a hint of greenery, Makara was willing to bet it was the third, most vital thing. She cleared her dry throat and began to slowly follow the rank and file of bugs along the cave's floor.

She walked for a long time and could tell by the grade of the cave's floor that they were headed deeper and deeper into the mountain. Her hair stood on end as the temperature dropped the further she got away from the surface. The bugs marched steadily on, in fact growing in number. Makara pretended she was a little bug herself for a while, stately marching along with her bug brethren. It gave her racing thoughts a break, at least. Although she had been welcomed home with open arms, she still was anxious in some way to prove herself. Basilisk had said the Armada wolves could train her, but she felt embarrassed at the fact that she had to be trained at all. So much of her life up to this point had been just about subsistence and survival, not achieving and conquering goals.

After some time, the passageway she'd been walking down opened out into a large, open cavern. The air in here felt different. Makara craned her neck up and realized the ceiling above was far, far taller than the passage she'd just been in. She glanced down at the little white bugs she'd been following and realized they were marching on without her, down into a tiny hole in the ground that she couldn't follow. But then she smelled it, that cooling quality of water of the air. Her ears pricked up and she trotted further into the cavern, squinting behind her goggles. A large underground spring lay ahead of her, fed from a burbling natural spout in the far wall of the cave. Makara's tail flagged triumphantly and she skidded to a stop at the edge of the water before dropping her head down to drink from it greedily. It was funny how you could set aside your thirst over and over until finally confronted with that sweet, sweet water. She slowed herself, trying not to drink so fast that she'd make herself sick. The air down here was still and dry and the cold, pure water sluiced down her throat like nectar handed over from a god himself. Once she'd taken her fill, Makara laid down at the edge of the pool and caught her breath before whispering to the little bugs as they marched steadily on: "Thanks, bugs. You've never let me down."

speech

Citadel had spent his entire life in the Col. He’d run the corridors, gotten lost in the odd turns. Ambushed Armada wolves from dark corners… he knew the cave system pretty well by now. So when he was heading into the training cavern, and caught the scent of a wolf he recognised he paused.

After a short moment of thought, he grinned and turned, heading down through the large open cave to where his Auntie lay, watching bugs in front of an underground spring. She looked oddly entranced by them, and that was understandable. Bugs could be cool sometimes. “Whatcha doing Auntie?” He said, pleased to have an Auntie suddenly thrust onto him later in life.

"Speech"

It wasn't long before an enterprising young prince found her. Makara turned, still somewhat surprised by her nephew's sheer size, and gave him a soft smile. "Oh, I was just exploring. So much has been changed and been built out since I was your age," she mused. Much of the core infrastructure was the same, but everything was grander and more intricate than she'd remembered. The result of years of hard work. It was fascinating to see. "And what are you doing out and about today, young prince?" She turned the question on him, standing up slowly and shaking the cave dust out from her coat.

"Are you here to cash in on my offer of wrestling now while you're still small enough not to squish me?" Mak teased, her tail wagging loosely behind her. The boy was going to be just as big as his father one day and could easily bat her around, even though she wouldn't consider herself small by any means. Now was the time to savor any auntie rough housing he might wish for.


speech