Whose memory had it been? Or rather, whose dream had it been? It had not seemed like her own. Had it been her mother’s? She had been unable to shake the dream off even after some time spent roaming the borders in the darkness; she had thought that time in the mists and earth smells of Iromar might put her mind at ease. It had done little more than get her lost so that when the sun had begun to rise, she had found herself at the meeting place of the grotto and Iromar’s moors. Rocks rose from the earth and earth sunk in response, sloping down, down into the dark shadows of the caves and stone labyrinths below. The sun had been but a sliver on the horizon, but the stones in front of her came alive with deep red light and shadow.

She had dreamed of Iromar, but it had seemed unlike the Iromar she knew well. Though she recognized the territory, it had a different feel; the mud did not rise from the water in quite the same way, its islands and paths different from those she knew well. When she had tried her usual way through the pack, she had been met with confusion for the paths she had created did not exist. In fact, even Avery’s own paths did not exist. Still, it was Iromar, and she had been at home in her dream – she had gone to the boneyard, or where it had once been in its prouder days. Uncertain, she had hoped to find familiarity there but even it was different to what she knew. In the water, she could see a great amount of bones, and even the hint of waterlogged flesh and skin beneath the murky waters. Elk antlers rose from the depths and empty alligator heads started up from the mud. She had moved to look into their empty eyes, and yet she had been met by her own reflection instead. She stared into her own black face, and yet the yellow eyes that stared back at her were not her own – she did not recognize the intensity. They stared up at her from the water, sharp like teeth and full of judgement. When she had moved to step back, the reflection had suddenly disappeared, the deep red-black of blood blooming and spreading from the very moors themselves until it lapped at the shoreline. Ruby could have sworn the very air of Iromar had been growling...She had awoken somewhere between startled and afraid, and it had taken her some time to feel as if she were not still in the dream.

Her arrival at the Grotto had put her more at ease. Though she had been lost enough, it comforted her to know that the well-worn path she had followed for the most part still lead to the Crags. It, after all, had not done so in her dream and so, she was glad to know she had left it. Still, she wondered if she might find some water in the lower levels of the Grotto’s entryway. If she could...she could check once the sun had risen enough to show her reflection. She wanted to be sure she recognized her own eyes again.

So she roamed into the deeper shadows, slow and steady along the stone and grass as she blended into the morning darkness. Somewhere ahead of her, she had caught sight of movement. It had made her pause, but curiosity had always been at her core, so even as her heart gave a strained flutter, she had to follow. The movement had been brief, if it had even been there at all, but she could have sworn she had seen red move in the darkness. Red, but not the red of blood or sunlight, but the red of fur. The red of her own fur, or another’s.