She sure as hell wasn't going to sit on her ass and wait for Achilleus to show himself with a smile on her face and dinner at her paws. Her brother still had yet to show himself and she was getting impatient, like she usually did. She had enough of the fireflies dancing around the lake she had taken up as a stronghold, the normal yellow and the unsettling blue ones were beginning to get on her nerves so she decided to go explore this new land she had found herself on. Nikkal traveled swiftly northwest a few miles in the early evening and by the time she had found herself in a massive flat land with numerous rocks of various sizes scattered about, the moon was well in its way into the star streaked sky. Mild curiosity danced in her dual colored gaze of sapphire blue and emerald green but it was quickly replaced with an irritated sneer when the now familiar blue lights wink in and out of existence. "I guess these damn things are everywhere." she huffed out a cloud in the cold night air.
Nikkal paused and scanned the moonlight terrain, the moon's glow still unusually bright and more blueish in coloration than normal while still stuck in its full phase. It light up the night so much that she did not have any trouble seeing into the night and even casted a shadow on the ground. Because of it, the Amanta woman almost missed the small glowing mushrooms that peeked out through the snow, impossibly surviving the winter snow and harsh cold air. The monochrome woman arched a fine dark brow over her emerald eye at the small cluster of blue glowing fungi that seemed to rain down small little stars from their caps.
It seemed Relm would never truly fit in anywhere. And what she meant by that was that she stuck out like a sore thumb. On a normal summer night, or one of these cursed winter nights. Her pelt would always make her easy to spot and hard to get the edge on others or prey. But that's why she purchased the cloak that was draped across her back and over her armor. Still her bit of neon pink was an eye catcher from her legs, and her large tusks were definitely not hidden either, the only thing she used the cloak for was an attempt to be a little less obvious.
She had roamed for the last few seasons, she didn't care for the lifestyle her uncle had in The Armada. But she was also starting to get lonely especially with Rhaegath gone now, not that she would admit. She had possibilities to explore, but also time to do so.
What she didn't enjoy were the annoying bright blue fireflies. As she walked along side the stones, her head pulled back as she blew at a couple that floated around her face, her expression easily irritated by them. They often stuck to her cloak and she could have swore they were doing it on purpose while they were hard to swat away. Her paws moved forward and she came across the view of another staring down at some mushrooms that were glowing just the same as the floating "fireflies". "I wouldn't eat them if I were you." She was sure the woman wouldn't eat them, but she still suggested. Her paw waved around at the fireflies once again, trying to get them to back off of her face.
Nikkal studied the mushrooms and tried to think of any species that would emit a glow like that but none came to her but before the herbalist had a chance to draw a few steps closer, paw steps approaching near by had the woman swinging her head towards the sound with her white and black ears twisting forward paired with a sharp gaze. The other woman, judging by the scent, was cladded in armor that Nikkal couldn't help but begrudgingly admire. And for the briefest of moments she had the urge to fight the other female and take it but luckily the armor cladded female's words distracted her enough that the urge passed by like a leaf on a breeze. Nikkal did her damn best to not roll her dual colored eyes at the other female when she warned her not to eat the glowing mushrooms and the Amanta woman gave herself a mental pat on the back. "Definitely was not on my list of things to do tonight." Nikkal replied, turning her gaze back to the glowing fungi. Her voice had a natural edge to it but it was friendly enough to not be considered out right rude.
"Is it a common occurrence for things to glow like this and for the moon to be stuck in its full phase here?" she continued, her blue and green gaze flicking back to the other woman and then glancing down at the vibrant pink fur on her legs, then back up to her face. If such a vibrantly colored wolf was something new to the black and grey woman, it did not show on her calm but stern face as she waited for the answer. She didn't really care if this wolf new she was an outsider, it would make no difference in the end but still... Nikkal sighed a soft breath into the night. It wouldn't do to make an enemy right off the bat and cause more trouble when her sister returned. "My name is Nikkal, by the way." she offered, carefully trying to tone down the natural edge to her voice and make it something more.... pleasant. She even threw in one small wag of her tail. If only her family could see her now, the bastards would never let her live it down. Only her brother received more than a cordial distant relationship.
Only someone dumb would eat the mushrooms, but it seemed Relm was really just looking to call someone out for conversation. "Relm." She responded back with some sort of tone of greeting. But she would turn back to the woman's question about the glowing things and the everlasting full moon. Relm was still young, but she was here for the last winter so she knew that this wasn't necessarily normal.
"No, I wouldn't say it's common." She spoke, shaking to get the creepy crawling feeling from the fireflies off of her. "I don't know which is weirder though. The glowing, the blue uh- fireflies? The moon. Wonder if it means something." She shrugged her shoulders, "But I try not to think of it too much."
Nikkal nodded her dark face once when the other woman gave her name. Relm. She committed the name to memory, again begrudgingly liking the name. Nikkal's face soon fell even more stern as Relm explained that the current events were in fact not normal and Nikkal looked away when the armor cladded woman voice that it might have meant something. The black and storm colored woman had not even walked this land for a season and she too had a feeling that something was coming. Even the air seemed different and with each passing day it seemed to fall heavier on her thick pelt, making her skin prickle and itch underneath as her instincts cried out to her. "I feel like it means something." Nikkal replied, her dual colored eyes still scanning the moonlit rocky landscape as if that something was going to appear any moment. Then after a few breaths, she returned her gaze back to Relm and to the fireflies that seemed to flitter about closer and closer, one even drifting closer to Nikkal's own pelt and the Amanta woman curled a lip in response, using her tail to flick the blue creature off her hip.
She suppressed the shudder that tried to dance down her spine and turned her attention back to the mushroom, taking a another step closer so that she could study the markings on their tops. "I have never seem a mushroom like this. It doesn't even have any characteristics of a hybrid species." she said out loud, not really caring if her current company was listening. She was careful not to touch or breath on the fungi just in case it released some sort of spore. "Is this fungi normally here and just started glowing? Or is it something completely new?" she asked, now more directly to Relm as her vibrant blue and green eyes returned to her, with her white and black ears perked in interest.
Relm's eyes followed where the woman searched though it seemed she wasn't really looking for anything. Relm could also feel it in the air, like something was watching them, or waiting for just the right moment to drop the bomb. If the woman was anything like Relm, she would just have to face the events on her own and learn how to move on and survive. Though Relm hadn't always been on her own, she just liked to believe it to an extreme considering her father had left her alone nearly all day since she was weened.
Relm tensed back a bit as the woman swatted her tail at a firefly, Relm's own head lowered to avoid it as it floated away even though it wasn't so close to her. Relm didn't quite understand that fungi could be hybrid, her intelligence worked in other areas. But when the woman turned her attention back on her, she shrugged, "I don't know. I've lived in the North most my life, but I've definitely never seen anything glowing like, well, everything that is these days."
A cluster of mice scatter out from a nearby shrub, leaving soft blue dust trailing along behind their tails. You also find 3 mushrooms. Maybe these are worth keeping…
