Viviane had left her home to travel further than the homebody had ever travelled before, seeking out the nomadic healers Paladin and Justice's mother had come from on his recommendation. Following their nomadic lifestyle while she'd been there, training with them, building on the base learning she'd gotten from Valhalla, Viviane was returning a different wolf than she'd left. A trained healer now, more confident in herself, in who and what she was, she'd gone from child to woman now. What she hadn't expected was to find that Boreas was as changed as she herself was.

She tilted her golden, white marked head to the side with a quizzical smile, watching strangely colored fireflies floating around more like tiny ghost lights than actual fireflies. It seemed that they'd dogged her steps ever since she'd begun her return home and she'd certainly never seen anything like them before she'd left. Fireflies, yes, but not anything like these odd little floating lights. Fairy lights, or will o' the wisps, more like. She blew a tiny breath of air at one of them that danced before her eyes, but instead of sending it buzzing through the air it faded out of sight entirely.

She'd begun traveling at night to make better time, and that had been when the changes had become the most evident. Like... she tilted her head up further to watch the moon. Full. Always full now. She'd never really been a sky watcher in particular, though she'd always thought the stars were pretty and romantic, but she had not been so much in her own silly world to have not noticed that the moon changed night by night. It didn't now - it had been the same full, heavy orb in the sky every night of her journey without the slightest change. And those stars - they were not the bright constant light that she had sigh over and romanticized. These seemed to blur dizzingly though the sky even as she watched them.

She shook her head to clear it of the vertigo of watching them, and sighed. Yes, whatever she had expected on her return, it had not been this. A night bird fluttered past, trailing a weird glow from some of its wing feathers as she watched it. The sight of it made her worry over Valhalla. Were the weird changes affecting wolfkind as well? She was a fully trained healer now, but the Nomads could not have taught her anything to prepare her for this. Was she going to return home to her friends and family showing these same changes? Or worse? Did the glow affect the health of the creature that was glowing? Would it poison a wolf that ate it?

She dragged herself out of her increasingly worried questions to continue her journey. She found herself following the little wisps dancing along in front of her, and couldn't help but smile. "Are you going home too, little fireflies?" she asked them softly, and chuckled. She didn't expect them to answer her back of course - they were at best fireflies, and probably some sort of phosphorescent spores like foxfire most likely - but it felt kind of nice to not be alone on her journey. She could have had an escort from the Nomads, but she'd turned down the offer and chosen to make her own way, confident now in her adulthood and her independence. Confidence didn't do much to dispel loneliness though, and Viv was not the sort of wolf who really enjoyed being alone, so the false company the lights provided was a comfort. She chose to view it that way, in a positive light, rather than a potentially creepy scary thing. She had quite enough to worry about with these changes than worrying about fairy lights.

"I hope my brothers and sister are still around," she continued out loud to the lights. "I don't expect Artur to be around any more, but Meri had only just gotten back and brought his children with him. I hardly got to spend any time at all with them before I left. I wonder if Cairo or Caelia have started families while I was gone? I do hope so - I'd love to have more nieces and nephews." She smiled fondly at the thought, but one of the firefly things touched her nose with a faint shock like static before vanishing. "Ouch! That was rude you know," she scolded the whatever they weres with good humor. It hadn't really hurt, after all, it had just surprised her. She hadn't touched one up until that point, and told herself not to touch any more of them if she could help it. Who knew if they could pack a bigger punch? Besides, it disappeared after and she didn't like that at all. If it was like a bee and died after stinging? She'd feel awful.

Taking more care now to avoid them, she paused beside a teeny glowing mushroom, crouching down to look at it more closely. It was quite possibly most adorable teeny little mushroom she'd ever seen, and the glow made it look like some sort of a fairy mushroom. Cute! But her experience with mushrooms said that many of them were dangerous even when they weren't glowing in a rather unnatural way, so she stayed well back and didn't touch it. She stayed only a moment before starting on her way again. She was eager to get home, after all, even though the unusual changes at turns fascinated and dismayed her.

The first thing she planned to do once she got back in pack lands - after letting Aurielle know she'd made it back safely - was to have a serious sit down with Paladin and whatever other healers may have joined the pack since she'd left, and probably Aurielle, and ask them what everyone knew about the oddities and when they'd first cropped up, and what the pack was already doing about them. As pretty as they were, and as comforting as having the wisps accompanying her was, she was wary about the root cause. Things didn't just happen like this. The feeling of impending doom that shadowed her reminded her of how she'd felt after the volcano erupted - something potentially catastrophic looming over Valhalla.

Viv picked up her pace, suddenly anxious to reassure herself that Valhalla was all right.

Word Count: 1067

Viviane

A cluster of mice scatter out from a nearby shrub, leaving soft blue dust trailing along behind their tails. You also find 2 mushrooms. Maybe these are worth keeping…