This was Fern Gulley? When Azriel had heard from other loners of the valley filled to the brim with an abundance of herbs and plants, he immediately thought of Sibyl. The petite healer would have an absolute field day (pun intended) in a place jam packed with plant life of all kinds! Plus it would give her a chance to build up some of her reserves of useful medicines that they hadn't been able to during the winter. However, as silver-gray eyes now leered at the snow-laden valley, he was silently muttering a curse tot his unnatural winter that refused to let its stranglehold on the lands go. Any plants that had been growing here remained dead or dormant in the unseasonable cold, with only the heartiest of plants still owing heads and shoots out from the ice and snow. So much for impressing Sibyl with a field trip...

Azriel crunched through the snow and ice to carve a trail for Sibyl to more easily follow behind him. This was an absolute travesty of nature; whatever had caused this to occur had earned his wrath, all of it, forever more. Fuck winter. Fuck this winter in particular. The striped brute gave a rumble of displeasure while he looked over the barren wasteland that was once a thriving field. "Well, fuck... Sorry, Sib, I should have seen this coming..." he muttered and pawed at the ground to uncover some frozen earth and dry grass. "I don't know if you can salvage anything here, but you're welcome to try. We'll come back after everything thaws too, I promise." He continued to scan the empty horizon for any signs of life. If nothing else, maybe they'd find an errant deer to bring down and have some food to bring back home.

WC: 298 / 1500

"Speech" | Thoughts

Of course she was excited to be going somewhere that promised to have so many plants and herbs for her to pick from, but she was honestly just excited to be out and about and exploring again. They had done a lot to make their cave more homey and was kind of enjoying having a consistent place to go back to every night, but now that a lot of the work she could do on their home was done she was bored. She had made a couple little excursions out on her own with just Ivy as company, but with the weather being as bad as it was she couldn't exactly travel very far. As soon as Azriel offered to go with her to this Fern Gulley place she immediately agreed and grabbed her satchel so they could leave right then and there. All the way there she had been trying to think of what herbs she'd want to collect most since she was certain that she wouldn't be able to collect them all with just this small bag to carry them back in, but then they crested the hill and they came face to face with the barren, snow covered field that apparently, at some point, had been full of plant life. She frowned at the sight and followed along behind Azriel as he forged a trail and Ivy followed along behind her like a train with ever decreasing sized cars. She peeked at the ground as it was steadily uncovered under their feet, but it was no use. Everything was dead and frozen beneath the snow and ice. She sighed with disappointment, though she really wasn't all that surprised. They both should have foreseen this, but she was just too eager to get out and go somewhere to really think it through. "Oh, it's alright," she assured her partner in crime when he apologized for the disappointment. "I'm sure it'd be lovely if it was actually Spring instead of whatever the hell this season has been." Boreas as a whole had started out so lovely with fairly decent weather, meeting Fel, setting up an actual home of sorts... And then it just kind of went down hill from there. She hummed as she looked around the seemingly empty valley, wondering to herself if trying to find anything was even worth the effort. She felt Ivy brush against her leg and nudge her to get her attention and her lavender gaze was pulled to her right. In the distance, closer to the top ridge of the valley, was a little spot of green that was almost lost to a snow drift. "Oh! Look up there! It looks like some kind of evergreen bush!" Not all evergreen bushes were useful, but if it was then at least their trip wouldn't be completely in vain. Talk

While Azriel had been mentally cursing every god he could think of for this foul weather, Sibyl spoke in that sweet, lyrical voice of hers and assured him that it was fine and would be better if it was actually spring. Her voice soothed him a little and the deep scowl on his face softened a touch. He had just wanted to make her happy and give her something to do. He knew how bored she was getting waiting around for Fel to show her face again, and if he were being honest, the lack of Fel's presence worried him. He had made his way to the border of Aerie a couple of times now hoping to catch a glimpse of the silver-gilded shadow somewhere, to no luck. Had he not found the scents of at least a dozen different wolves around, he probably would have chanced trespassing to try and find her. 12:1 odds did not inspire confidence in lawbreaking though.

Sibyl's excited cry caught Azriel's attention with a flick of shadow gray ears, peering up in the direction she was pointing to spot a small cluster of evergreen bushes. He didn't know a lick about healing, but if Sib was hyped up for them, they must be something good. "Worth a look," he said with a curt nod of his head. Maybe this trip wouldn't be a waste of time after all. Az blazed the trail through the deep snow for his smaller companion up the hillside to the top where the shrubs were. He thens stepped aside to allow Sibyl to inspect the bushes and determine if they were anything of value.

As he usually did, Azriel took post watching their surroundings from the top of the hill. Everything was so still and lifeless, it didn't feel real. It was as if the world had been put on pause, with nothing moving and nothing happening. Life was at a standstill. Silver-gray eyes surveyed the area, and locked onto the distant shapes of moving creatures. He focused his vision and realized it was a traveling caravan of tremendously large wolves trudging through the snow, their backs heaped up with supplies by the pound. He cocked a curious head while he watched them move, trying to figure out where they had come from and how they got so damn big. "Hey, Sib, you seeing this?" he called over without taking his eyes off the travelers in the distance. They didn't appear to be threats—but he also didn't know that for a fact.

WC: 1181 / 1500

"Speech" | Thoughts

Sibyl grinned as Azriel easily agreed that it was worth a look and then allowed for him to forge a path for them up the hillside, following along in his tracks till they reached the push she had spotted from the valley. There were actually a few of them clustered together, looking almost as if they were trying to huddle against one another to escape the cold. Snow had built up around them so it took a bit of shuffling and digging for her to get to them, but a grin pulled across her face when she spotted the little red berry like seeds hanging from the branches. Most of the exterior of the bushes was bare with just some oval shaped green leaves, but toward the middle of the bushes and in the space between them there were a few good groupings of them. She slipped the bag she was carrying off of her and was able to slip it down in-between the bushes while Ivy slipped under them, wiggling her much smaller form through the bushes to reach the treasures hidden in them. While she was preoccupied with gathering up her finds, she heard Azriel comment about seeing something and her head popped up with a curious hum, turning away from the bushes to come stand beside him. Her lavender gaze landed on the the caravan of wolves that even from this distance looked huge and her eyes went wide as she looked at all the stuff they were carrying on their backs. It was hard to tell exactly what they were carrying from this distance, but it certainly got her curious. "We should go see if they'll give up any of that stuff," she told him as she nudged his foreleg with her shoulder, tipping her head up to look at him with an excited grin. It was the first interesting thing to cross their path, so to speak, in so, so long and she was just eager to get into any and all kinds of mischief. She hurried back over to the bushes where Ivy had just finished dropping the last of the wintergreen berries and a few bunches of the leaves into her bag. She grabbed the bag by its strap and slung it back around her neck and behind one of her legs, tucking it out of the way against her side. "Come on! Lets go!" she insisted, nudging Azriel's butt with her head and pushing him to go down to where the giant wolves were passing by. WC: 1605/1500 Talk

He had still been carefully studying and considering the strange wolves when Sibyl mentioned they should go see if they'd give them any of their supplies. He turned a confused and surprised expression towards the ambitious little fae, wondering just what kind of herbs she'd been taking in secret to prompt such an outrageous decision. Go up and talk to the monster wolves? They might as well go throw themselves in the sea for how safe that all sounded. It turned out that Sibyl wasn't giving him any choice in the matter, however, as the littler wolf began to nudge and bump his fluffy butt with her head, shoving him forward like a parent trying to get their pup to go play with the others. Realizing he had no chance to changing her mind, Azriel heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes, saying, "Oh, all right, fine. Let's go meet the monsters."

Azriel led the way down the valley towards the caravan of wolves. They still hadn't been spotted yet, and they were standing downwind of them, so he could smell all of their scents readily. They didn't carry scents he was familiar with; were they a different breed of wolf entirely? As the duo drew nearer, Az gave a short howl in greeting to them. The caravan stopped and turned to face the newcomers, and up close, Azriel began to realize that they were, in fact, humongous wolves. Bigger than any dire wolf he had ever encountered! Despite his anxiousness to willingly put himself and Sibyl in this situation, he maintained his composure and confidence while they strode up to the wolves, still carving a path through the snow for Sibyl to follow him more easily up to the group.

"Good morning," he called out to the wolves and dipped his head in greeting.

"Dobroye utro," one of the wolves responded back in a thick foreign accent that emphasized their bass heavy voices. "Who are you?"

Azriel came to a stop a few feet away from them, gesturing first to himself with a paw, and then to Sibyl and her pet behind him. "My name is Azriel Morarian. This is Sibyl Argyris. We're travelers and were passing by when we noticed your caravan and wondered if perhaps you'd be open to some trading."

The larger than life wolves titled their heads and seemed to consider the smaller brute for a moment before exchanging looks and muttered short sentences in their language between one another. After a few minutes of deliberation during which Az was warily looking between the gigantic wolves in case any of them showed signs of aggression, the wolf he had been speaking to motioned for another to come closer with a paw. The second dire wolf trudged up to them as if the snow didn't exist and dropped their large leather bags to the ground, unwinding and unwrapping them to reveal a smorgasbord of fragrant herbs and flowers. Another wolf came up and dropped several thick fur pelts of animals Azriel couldn't quite identify for them to inspect.

"Look. Browse. We trade," the extra dire wolf grumbled.

"Thank you," Azriel replied, then turned to Sibyl and stepped aside so she could inspect the herbs, a wry smirk on his lips as he said, "Go on, darling. Pick yourself out something nice."

"Speech" | Thoughts