The group, though without Chloe and Steph, were having a great time exploring the desert they were in. While Fen was being extra playful and jumping around and digging through the sand everywhere, Ari and Maya got themselves the job of navigating through the desert because they claimed it was easy.
“Sophia, could you please do something about that already?!” Another hour of desert exploring had passed when Maya was becoming increasingly nervous about the sandstorm Aura had spotted earlier. It was still there and had also gotten closer than ever to them.
“What am I supposed to do here?” The blonde tilted her head. “You and Ari are in charge of navigating, so it’s not my fault.”
“But the storm is faster than we can walk!” She got loud. “There’s nothing we can do here to get away from it!”
“Oh, you want to get away from it!” Sophia clapped her hands. "I thought you wanted to see it from upfront, too."
“Why would I want that?!” Maya just raised her voice even more.
“Because it’s cool?” Anna sided with her fellow tiger.
“It’s not!” Ari wasn’t on their team, though. “That’s way too dangerous!”
“It’s just a little sand and some wind.” The blonde shrugged.
“It’s much more than that!” Maya and the jaguar got louder once again.
“I mean, they do sort of have a point.” Aura somewhat sided with their tour guides.
“The betrayal!” Sophia didn’t like that.
“Come on, you should know that a sandstorm as massive and violent as this basically is a guaranteed death to regular people that get caught in it.” The wolf stared at her before gesturing at the massive storm that had covered the entire view to their right.
“When did we turn into regular people?” Tilting her head in confusion, the blonde looked at Anna with a questioning expression.
“That’s a good question.” She shrugged in return.
“Okay, fair point.” Aura had nothing to say there. “I just wanted to express that it’s a little more than just a bit of sand and wind. It may feel like that to us, but that’s not the case for most.” She paused for a moment. “Also, I’ll have you know that there will be sand in the cottage for months once we get home after being inside that storm.”
“Okay, that is bad!”
“How is that the thing that makes you panic?!” Ari couldn’t believe her.
“Sand gets everywhere and is a massive pain to clean!” The blonde raised her voice. “Okay, no one is allowed to enter the cottage before they’ve made a trip to our hot spring! Their clothes will be left there, as well! That’s an order!”
"I don't think I'll ever understand how your girlfriend prioritizes things." The jaguar gave up and just stared at Maya.”
“Same.” Unfortunately, she had no answers for her, either.
“Alright, with that taken care of, let’s continue!”
“Let’s go!” The tigers were in high spirits.
"Nothing has been taken care of!" Ari and Maya pointed at the sandstorm once more.
“It’s quite easy to protect ourselves from that.” Sophia smiled at them. “As usual, it’s magic, of course. If I create enough wind of my own around us that pushes away from our position, the storm and sand will never reach us. It will kinda be like being in the eye of a tornado or something like that.”
“Ohh!” Hearing that, the cat-girl relaxed. “If that’s the case, I’m okay with getting closer. Fun might not be the right word, but it does sound interesting!” The curiosity got the better of the cat.
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“You know what they say about curious cats!” Ari didn’t like her change of mind. “Also, it will mess with our navigation when we go off course now!”
“It’s fine.” Maya gave a thumbs up. “It’s been super easy to find the right direction until now, so we won’t have any difficulties getting back on track after a little exploring.”
“If you say so…” The jaguar wasn’t convinced.
"…" Neither were the other three. However, for them, it was mostly because they already knew their tour guides were utterly lost.
“By the way, where’s Fen?” Wanting to change the topic, Ari noticed that the male wolf was nowhere to be seen. “Wasn’t he with us when we started exploring?”
“Uhh, he is doing his own thing.” Sophia scratched her cheek while saying so.
"He was digging around for a while, but he's now, funnily enough, in the middle of the storm," Aura added some details.
“Why are you all so obsessed with putting yourself in danger all the time?!”
“Because it makes life a whole lot more interesting~.” The female wolf had an easy explanation for her. “You’ll understand what I mean once you get older.”
“I’m not sure if I want to understand.” Ari rarely was a fan of danger, after all. “Also, Sophia is only a few years older, and even if it's just a couple of days, I'm older than Anna, so that isn’t really an argument!”
“To me, all of you are little baby cubs at best.” Aura’s voice turned gentle. “Those tigers of ours, especially the blonde one, are just naturally a little more wild. Still, you’ll understand the beauty of danger eventually. You already show great potential, too, so I’m sure the future will be fun~.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” The jaguar raised her voice once more.
“Well, you have been the biggest danger to my domain so far, so I can definitely see her point.” Sophia nodded along with the wolf’s assessment.
“Urgh.” Ari had little room to defend herself.
“Ahaha.” The blonde let out a small chuckle. “Alright, let’s go and see what Fennyfenny’s doing!” Sounding extra energetic, she then pointed at the sandstorm she was detecting the wolf in.
“Let’s go!” Anna and Aura were also looking forward to it.
"Be sure to activate your counter-magic sooner rather than later!" Maya was a little more cautious.
“I should’ve left with Steph and Chloe.” Ari seemed a little tired.
Afterward, Maya and the jaguar took a little break from their flawless navigation job, and the group began moving right toward the massive sandstorm to get a better look at what was happening near it.
----------------
“Oh, I can see now why it would be considered dangerous." The group walked right up to the sandstorm, and Sophia noticed how violent it was. She was using air magic to create a protected dome around them, but while it prevented them from being blasted by sand, it didn’t improve their visibility overly much. Everything around them was just orange. The air outside the dome was so filled with sand and dust that they were able to see nothing outside the dome. On top of that, because of the strong winds of the storm, it was incredibly loud, too.
“You think?!” Ari glared at her.
“It is pretty cool.” Anna was fascinated by the spectacle around them. “Normal people would never be able to look at this calmly, so I’m enjoying it a lot!”
“I mean, you’re not wrong, but it’s still scary!” The jaguar still wasn't a fan of it.
“Do you want to know another interesting fact?” The blonde looked at her fellow tiger.
“Hmm?” The princess tilted her head.
“If you replace the yellow sand and dust with pink and purple particles, it looks just like what I see in an area with dense environmental magic. Like, when we flooded our savanna with magic, it looked exactly like this for me.” Sophia just gestured all around her. “Just, as I said, in pink and purple.”
“Seriously?!” Anna got loud. “How do you see things, then?!”
“That’s the funny part,” She shrugged. “I don’t.”
“Huh?”
“That’s why I said the other day when you were upset about it that being able to feel magic without seeing it, isn’t always a bad thing.” The blonde smiled at her.
“I guess so!”
“Wait, so you are basically blind in areas with high magic?” Maya also sounded confused. “Isn’t that the case for most areas in your domain where we live and work on?”
“Not for the most part.” Sophia shook her head. “I can kinda blank them out as long as it isn’t too high of a concentration around me. I can also move the magic particles around to let me see stuff. It’s only an issue in areas like my cherry forest or the savanna where I continuously poured all my magic into the same spot for weeks.”
“Ah, that sounds a lot more reasonable.” The cat-girl nodded a few times.
“Can’t you turn off seeing those particles?” Even Ari was interested in the topic.
“If so, I haven’t figured it out yet.” The blonde scratched her cheek. On top of that, she didn't exactly want to, either, because she loved watching the energetic magic particles and how she communicated with them, but she couldn't exactly mention it. "I'll ask Mira how she handles it if it ever becomes an actual problem."
“Yeah, she would probably know.”
“Alright, let’s try and find Fenny!” Sophia then energetically raised her arm high in the air. “I want to see what he’s up to!”
“Okay!” The others were also curious about that.
Afterward, as there was no way they could find anything the regular inside the storm, the blonde used her detection magic to locate the wolf. Even so, it still took them quite a while to reach Fen because walking around with zero visibility, even when the destination is clear, is not the easiest task.