❆ ❆ ❆Chapter Nineteen❆ ❆ ❆

Disturbance

[Snow]

Snow slowly pulled herself up onto the top of the owl’s nest.

She took out the pocket telescope and performed her routine seal check; examining the landscape as well as the dancing seal tornados. As Snow glanced over the forests, plateaus and rivers, she wondered; how was Aela able to manage this many seals by herself? There were so many, and if Aela was traveling on foot, it didn't seem possible to cover them all in one day. Not to mention, the training sessions they had been doing took up a lot of time. It seemed like an uphill battle.

Snow yawned. Luckily for her, no tornadoes were in need of priming today.

Just as she figured that, one of the tornadoes stared bending back and forth very weirdly at wolf hill, around where mina’s pack was living. To think of it, that might have been the same tornado she destroyed when she first got here. Snow brought up the telescope. She could see several black figures momentarily surrounding the tornado before disappearing into the landscape. “What was that?” She only caught glances of the figures but she couldn’t be certain. Maybe it was her imagination? Either way, she needed to mark that seal for Aela.

Snow got up and stretched. Then, began climbing down the mountain.

Snow arrived at the area fairly quickly. She was starting to get good knowledge of the landscape. The center easily connected to all the parts and held no significant dangers. It's when you go into the actual biomes that you must caution for white stalkers or that frost giant. For this tornado, the best route was through the wolf gorge. When she entered the area where Mina’s pack lived, the white wolves appeared hostile at her presence. Snow didn’t understand why were they so agitated. Some began to follow her.

“Mina!” Snow tried calling mina’s name but got no response.. Mina was the alpha of the pack surely that would calm these wolves down.

The wolves got closer. They were priming to attack her at any moment. Snow still stayed her hand from drawing icebreaker. Instead, looking up towards the top of the hill, she could partially see Mina, moving around.

“Mina!” She yelled much louder this time.

Mina finally noticed her and came down to meet her. Mina strutted up to her and licked her hand. Mina appeared very stressed and distracted. The boiling hostility from the rest of the pack was diffused at the interaction. The smaller wolves disbanded back to their coves.

“What is it girl?” Snow gave Mina a soft pat on the head.

Mina turned and began jumping up the natural steps to the top of the gorge. Snow followed.

Once at the top Snow could see Mina pacing and sniffing around the small rocky pen that her pups stayed at. Snow looked into the pen and saw the issue.

The pups were missing.

Mina was whimpering as if asking for her help.

Snow rubbed mina’s pelt for a second to calm her down before investigating the pen. Snow noticed some brushes located a few feet behind the pen were broken. She went to check behind them and to her surprise there was a footprint..

The foot prints went in the opposite direction of the tornado, off the gorge. Snow looked towards the tornado in the other direction. “I might not have time to prime the tornado for Aela.” She looked at the tracks. “but if I wait until nightfall those pups wont survive, and ill lose the tracks.”

Snow needed to make a decision.

“That tornado should hold out.”

Snow started followed the direction of the footprint and began to climb down the backside of the rocky gorge where there was a steep drop. Mina couldn’t follow so she just barked.

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“I'll try to find your babies mina, don't worry.” Snow descended the mountain and found some more tracks.

The tracks led straight to Aela’s shack. Where crying pups were heard inside. Snow entered with her sword drawn and saw something she never thought she would see.

Aela was holding the cubs and feeding them with a bottle.

“Aela?!” Snow questioned the sight, sheathing her weapon.

“Yo.” Aela just said nonchalantly.

“What are you doing?”

“The pups lost some weight, which means Mina hasn’t been lactating.” Aela looked as if she was a little nervous holding them. Like a kid holding a baby for the first time.

“I didn’t know you were monitoring them that closely.”

“Yeah.” She looked too focused on them.

“Shouldn’t you be running seals right now? I’m glad you are feeding them but, you could have told me to do it. Mina is freaking out right now”

“I finished my run early today. I thought this would be quick but I ain’t hot off the iron, if ya get my drift. Anyways how about you? Did you find more tornados to prime?”

“Theres a tornado by mina’s hill that needs to be primed. I didn’t get to do it because I was looking for the pups.”

“What? The seals take priority over anything else. Period. You need to go and prime it before nightfall. There's little time left so go.”

“Alright, I’ll go now.” Snow was about to leave.

“Oh by the way. Why did you think to check here?”

“I just followed your tracks here.”

“Tracks? There's no thick snow on the top of that mountain and I jumped off the back of it.”

“There were brushes that were displaced. One footprint and then the tracks at the bottom?”

“hm, impressive observation. Guess I got to stop being careless.”

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Snow got to the tornado and primed it. As she was heading back to the shack she had some time to think.

Aela has been acting very strange. First thing, was that she said she “needed to be less careless.” Like who was she hiding her tracks from? The frost giant? Then, the whole interaction with her stealing Mina's pups to feed them. Mina wouldn’t act like that if it was a normal occurrence. Clearly, that is the first time something like that happened. Another thing was that it looked like it was Aela’s first time handling the cubs. She thought back to when they first met.

“Didn’t she throw some meat in the pup's pen? Pups don’t eat meat.. I guess she just realized that.”

Snow arrived at the shack and Aela was gone along with the pups. Aela probably went to bring them back to Mina but it was starting to get dark. She would be returning soon. Snow decided to try and find out more information about Aela. Aela claimed to live here ten years and yet she seemed like she didn’t know things she should. Snow started to snoop around to find more information. She went through the chest at the foot of the bed which housed most of aela’s gear. She went through various pouches and pockets, there was a lot of magic items that she had no clue of what they did. She should probably have Lussuria teach her some more about this type of stuff if she ever got back home.

Besides the random magic items nothing seemed too suspicious.

She started searching the cabinets, they held the usual food. However most of the food was still fresh, yet aela never used the ingredients when she cooked.

Snow tried to piece it together.

“Is Aela actually a friend? Or an enemy?”

Snow looked under the bed and saw a very uninteresting wooden box. It barely fit under the bed. She pulled it out and opened it. Inside the box were special looking clothes. Snow felt them, they were very high quality. These fabrics would give even Lazarus a run for his money. Why didn't Aela wear these? A medallion fell from in between the folds, clinging onto the floor. The medallion was a red and gold ring of fire. The same medallion Warden Flora was wore. It was the medallion of a warden.

“A warden?”

“What. Are. You . doing.” She heard Aela standing right behind her. She didn’t even hear the door open.

Snow quickly turned around.

“Are these yours?”

Aela didn’t look happy, rightfully so. Aela just caught her digging through her personal belongings.

“Put it back where you found it. Now.”

Snow put it back and backed up into the wall while Aela got closer.

“Look through my stuff again and you will lose those hands.” She said with full seriousness.

“Sorry Aela, you're so secretive about everything. I just wanted to find out some more information about you.”

“You know what they say, curiosity killed the nosy princess that decided to look through my stuff.”

“That’s not how the saying.. ok whatever, sorry.”

“I will not discuss my past with you, I just met you and next time I catch you snooping around you will be sleeping in a hole outside.”

Snow decided not to press for any more information. Aela a warden though? She didn’t look like one even though she was very powerful.”