When I awake, his eyes are open, though he hasn't stirred. He only moves once I've tumbled back into the open, dew staining my coat and my one half-closed wing, which I manage to shut. With intense pride, I roll myself onto my paws. Gale stumbles out after, scanning the area with his ears perked to their full extent. He cuts an even less intimidating figure in the daylight than in the cave, though I know now what stamina and magical prowess lies beneath it.

"We should get something," he suggests.

"Get what?" I ask. Are we going to have to loot a village? Ravage the forests?

"Food." He yawns, then runs his pink tongue over his teeth. "Might be a good opportunity to see what you've got magically, too."

I nod. "Where do we go?"

He looks towards the canopy, where sun is filtering through the leaves and brightening our pelts. The sky is silent as the forest below, save for the both of us. Gale explains, "The hunt's simple enough. Real challenge is finding anything in the wastes. Whatever has ears to hear will bolt soon as it knows we're close, and trust me--it'll know."

I creep forwards, just to get a pawlength on him, and he compensates by striding forwards so that I'm almost back at his tail. I pick up the pace, but I can't copy the grace with which he moves, especially when he's almost slowed to a stop. He seems to blend into the foliage, each movement a fluid shifting of the forest brush.

He senses whatever's there before I do. His physical body launches forwards, but it's his magic, rising up like a tide of darkness, that nails the scrawny rabbit. I watch him, unsure of how best to proceed, and he raises it up. "I don't get hungry."

I stare at the limp body, then, as he sets it down, I take one bite of the warm flesh. The flavor is potent, like tasting the woods themselves, and it fills my nose and mouth. I lick the bones clean, if only because the sensation of taste is so specific and so real that it grounds me in the moment. Running my tongue along my teeth, I begin scanning the trees again. "What else?"

"It might take us a while to find anything else." he warns me. "Prey's rare."

What else do we have to do?

We fall in line. The trees are kinder in the daytime than they were last night, when we ran, but the air is just as barren and the soil just as cold. It's as if the sun has no effect on the world below whatsoever, and even more shockingly, the woods are close to empty. I do not know why it so viscerally disturbs me, but I can hardly suppress a shudder as I look around at the trees. Something small and white glints from under a bush, and the rustling of leaves under us is accompanied by another sound. The world is close to dead.

"What happened?" I ask, beneath my breath.

"Plague victims 'll kill anything that crosses their vision, when they're bad enough. They'll eat until they vomit, past that, and their metabolisms are insane."

I look at my paws, which are shaking in the leaves. "Are there..."

He stills. There is no way to comfort me that doesn't involve some sorry falsehood. "Look. I stick around packs for a reason. If we're going to survive out here, at the very least, I need you to access your magic. Can you try that for me?"

I close my eyes. Someone is there, a little closer than the morning air, juxtaposed between the outside world and myself. I can almost imagine her watching me, waiting for me to call upon her, but I have no idea how to make the wordless connection yet. "I can kind of feel her there." I admit.

"Her?" Gale asks, an unprecedented amount of shock in his voice.

"I think so," I respond.

"It's not-" his ears fall back as his head raises, so that he's glaring at the clouds instead of me. After a long, violent exhale, he pads over to a stick and places it before me. "Is the stick living, Rena?"

"It was," I say, head tilted.

"It's a stick." he says, stepping on it hard enough that the poor thing cracks in two, hanging on by a few slim sinews of twig flesh. His face is contorted. "A weapon. You control it."

I amend myself, "I know how it works. Like I said, it's just memory that's all messed up."

"Well-"

"I was... messing with you. I like the face you make." I lie.

"I get the first part. What face?" he says, his face scrunching up further. I know, just know, that my face is split into the sunlit smile of earlier.

"You stop that." he mumbles teasingly.

"Make me." The twig from before, shunned to the side, rises into the air and taps him affectionately on the side of the head. No sooner does he swing around than I register that the action was entirely under my control, and the twig falls back to the ground, its work completed. "Wait--I did it! I did it for real!"

His shock turns to smug assurance in moments. "Thank goodness you can actually do something with those horns. With that length, I'd assume you'd be a proper Canis mage, but at least you've managed a pup trick."

"What if that's why I have amnesia? Maybe my mind is just too full with magic I haven't figured out how to use." I shake my head to get the magic out, which doesn't quite work.

"That's not a thing." he says.

"Do you know that? Do you really know that?" I ask, the teasing fading from my voice.

His ears roll. With a glance to the left, he responds, "Don't know a thing about Canis magic. Education is surprisingly sparse, you know, in the woods."

Canis, I think. The name's familiar. That must be me. Canis. "What are you?" I ask.

"Impeccably good looking." he smirks.

"No, no. I mean... what's the word?"

"Ah. Canira."

Had I misheard him? "But we're different species. We are, right? Or you'd have horns."

"Pretty much. Canis and Canira? Two different species."

I squint. I think I hear him laughing at me, but on closer inspection, he hasn't so much as twitched. There was definitely something, though... perhaps in my head. Somehow that's even more concerning. With another head shake, I continue, "Are they close?"

"More than anyone else. There's a myth that Canira and Canii are close in name because Verhamera designed us to be your protectors... a more accepted, less disputed one that she made the Canii in her image, horns and long, silky ears, while their sharp-eared, elemental cousins were done in the image of her guard and acolytes. To put it more simply? Physically, no, and in terms of mythos, we live to serve."

"But we're like demigods, then." I breathe.

"Absolutely."

The forest shudders. Plants bow down in a sudden burst of wind, all the dead and inanimate things seem to stir with a burst of life, and the clouds toil in the sky, between the trees. Yes, it offers. This world is your birthright. Or perhaps it was. Before it was empty.

"Demigods," I muse.

We wander through the woods, though Gale moves as if he has somewhere to be in a hurry. His eyes narrow to slits of gold, tail swinging, and I taste the air for something akin to the prey scent of earlier. We pass a few scared animals (one catches my eye, a plump and small-eared something) but nothing speaks. There is the remnant of scent, at best, but the forests are vast and deeply empty, save for the stirring of insects and the continued mutterings of the trees.

The river finds us again, which Gale darts across, but his ears have perked. He lifts his nose. "Rena." His voice is full of fear.

The reeds twitch. My wings shoot open as fur glints in the light, obscured by the river and my sudden, abrupt landing. Gale barks in alarm as a six-legged creature dives into the water, head above, rushing forwards with gangly, short limbs. It looks almost emaciated, but most disturbing are the growths on its chest and neck: several large, horn-like structures pierce its flesh, curving around large flaps of flesh on the neck and nudging the legs apart. They impede its movement, though it is still shockingly mobile, and when it dives again a claw of darkness slams down on its head like a rock, pinning it. It writhes, distorted noise coming from its mouth, and my head buzzes.

I can almost feel the noise echoing in my head, a listless attempt at something unfairly wrested from it. My magic takes over and jerks my mouth open, light disintegrating Gale's claw and burning flesh. The voice tapers off as I return to myself, looking between Gale and the body, heart stuck in my stomach. The creature burns under its flesh. The neck flaps stop moving and the remained, charring bits of them ooze sickly ichor. The weight of what I have done holds to me like a coat of water.

"Gale," I whisper. "So that was..."

He nods. "Small one."

"I wasn't going to mention it." I say.

"I was hoping you would so I wouldn't have to." he says.

"What does it do to you?"

He lopes to its side and stands above it, just out of range, and lowers his head to the body. "See those? Those are Canis horns. The Plague attacks the spirit. Melds your mind, heart, and soul, scrambles them... your past incarnations. Your self. Your raw magic. Imagine all of that, free of its confines. The Plague does to your magic what liquefying a skeleton would do to the body. There is no form left to give it anything resembling a structure."

"Incarnations?" I say, holding my distance.

He nods. "When you die, your heart passes on to whoever's born next. So a shadow of you lives on, in a way." He stares over the body. "Don't trust that. It's not immortality." Mistaking the cause of my hesitation, he adds, "They only get you if they bite you, or if you bite them. Once it's dead, I wouldn't touch the meat, but otherwise it won't hurt you."

"We should go," I suggest.

He continues. I follow him around the body, into the woods, but the sensation of disease is free to torment me in earnest now. My fur prickles, the feathers of my wings feel as if they're being plucked one by one, and I start matching his step if only to keep from trailing behind. He slows, enough so that I'm no longer stretching every footfall, and casts me this look. I'm certain, at once, of everything he means to say. I shoot something similar, if not the same, back at him. Thank you.

His tail swings. You too, he seems to say, though I have done nothing. Is it possible I'm imagining all of this? That I'm so desperate to break the silence that I'll conjure entire dialogues in my mind?

He halts besides a tree, which carries a large, yellow structure high up in its branches. It is thick with angry noise. "Why is the tree screaming at us?" I ask.

"Those are bees," he explains. "The big structure is full of something called honey, and we're going to have some to celebrate a special occasion."

"Breaking out?" I ask, still eying the 'bees'. Something dark darts out of the structure, swinging through the air.

"Better. The special occasion is that now every day is a special occasion, because I said so. The special occasion is we didn't die today and I personally think we deserve this." His voice crescendos, brimming with smug confidence, and a shadowy claw sneaks up the tree. With a quick flick, he sends the structure hurtling towards the ground, and the noise intensifies to an angry howl as the air is filled with a storm of dark, hardly visible creatures.

Gale swipes the air, his movement mimicked by his shadow, but the onslaught continues. Bees swarm below and over, encroaching from every side, and the first one hits me right on the paw. Gale is being absolutely thrashed in his corner, surrounded on all sides, and the bees show no sign of letting up. Looking around at the swarm in frenzy, I ask, "What do we do?"

His voice cold and serious as I've ever heard him, Gale declares, "Run, Rena."

You can't outrun bees. They are deceptively fast for being small, and for every bee that gives up chase, there are six more who will run you to your grave. Gale's expression is this incredible blend of guilt and fear, and my paw locks in place. I spin around on the spot, seized by an unanticipated rush. The light bursts through me again, this time with far more control. The beam of white energy incinerates several bees and burns bushes. We stand in stunned silence, unsure if we've done enough, and Gale yips in pain as one gets his ear. I tense, on my guard, but nothing else emerges. It would appear the rage of the bees has been quelled for now, or at the very least, there are fewer bees around to attack us.

My skin burns in several places, but when Gale snatches back a small chunk of the structure, dripping in golden liquid, I take a bite and all the pain and tension seem to recede. The flavor is heavenly and remarkably bee-free. I feel my head slump as I crack the compartments, sunlight watering in my mouth, the tinge of sap amongst the unfamiliar (though equally sugary) flavor making my eyes well with water. As I finish, the taste still clinging to my tongue and the edge of my mouth, I begin to laugh.

"It really wasn't that funny." he says, smarting all over from a dozen different wounds.

"No, it's only..." I say, trying to restrain myself, "I can't believe you did that!"

His ears flatten. "Remind me never to do anything nice for you ever again."

"I was so scared of you--" I continue, voice rising.

"You were what?" he asks, sounding half flattered.

Unable to contain myself, I finish, "--and you're normal-- you're even a bit of an idiot!"

Gale's shock (was that shock?) bursts into indignance, tail puffed up to its fullest extent. "Am not!"

"It's cute." I say, teasingly. I think there's something in this honey.

"That's worse," he grumbles.

Night is beginning to set on. Gale takes the rest of the honeycomb and smashes it against the tree with his shadows, then bends down to eat it, tail half-tucked. His eyes are fixed on me, indicating an offer: Well? I take what honey I can manage, the sweetness almost sickening and my sudden need to consume even worse, and when he raises my head I lift mine as well. The bushes whisper with noise and scent, stale but still terrifying, drifts on the air. The jolt it brings passes between us both.

"We're dead," he declares.

I don't want to tell him he's right. "Is there anywhere we could go that isn't a pack?"

Gale looks at the ground. "Nowhere I'd want to be," he says, night air sighing out with him. "But if you need somewhere... I suppose we don't have much of a choice."

My eyes widen.

The sun leaves us and we begin our walk again, watching opposite sides of the forest for unseen threats in the bushes. Weariness pours off of me in waves, but I can also scent something within him, bitter in every tail-twitch. He lowers his head as the air fills with more recent aromas, and we re-enter the land of the living.