Submission (#8165) Approved

Zevjia always carried the scent of fire and minerals, it felt ancient… like it had stories to tell from deep underground. Sharp winds whistled between jagged obsidian rocks and sulfur-stained boulders and the ground shimmered in places, veined with crystals that caught the light like broken glass.

Everything about the region was alive, but not in a green, leafy way.

No.

Zevjia was like a sleeping beast; its belly full of magma and breath hot with geysers and fumaroles.

“Are we sure this place isn’t going to explode?” Shiro asked cheerily, peering over the edge of a cracked ledge where steam hissed from a deep fissure. His fluffy tail flicked back and forth with excitement. “Because it feels like it’s gonna explode. Which would be awesome.”

“You say that like it's a good thing…,” Greywind muttered. He was standing a few feet back from the edge, one arm loosely crossed over the other, a sign marked "DANGER - UNSTABLE GROUND" tucked under his arm like a rolled-up scroll. “You’re lucky the ground hasn’t collapsed under your paws already.”

“Pffft, it’s not that unstable,” Shiro replied, bouncing slightly on his paws. The rock beneath him made a suspicious crack.

Cinder gave a sharp inhale, eyes wide. “Shiro! Please step back from the edge! You don’t know how deep that fissure is, what if it drops straight into a lava cavern?!”

Shiro, instead of being scared, blinked and said with fascination, “Whoa. Do you think there is a lava cavern down there? That’d be so cool to see!”

Cinder visibly twitched at the thought.

Greywind let out a sigh that sounded like it had been building for a week. “He’s going to be the death of one of us.”

“We’ll manage,” Cinder said, stepping forward carefully to take Shiro gently by the scruff and tug him away from the steaming crevice. “Let’s focus on putting these signs up, alright? This area’s full of sinkholes and collapsing mine shafts, we don’t want tourists falling in.”

The landscape around them was stark. Red, orange and black rock stretched across the horizon in jagged ridges. Fumaroles hissed in the distance, surrounded by dead earth. Great veins of quartz and red crystal threaded through broken stones, glowing faintly in the pale sun that was obscured by dark cloud and smoke hanging in the air. The ground bubbled in some places where sulfur pools festered - bright green and yellow, deceptively beautiful.

And deadly.

Shiro trotted ahead, a wooden sign slung over his back like a proud adventurer hauling loot. “I’ll find the next best spot! Oooh, what about next to that glowing pit over there?”

“That’s literally the most dangerous-looking spot in the entire valley,” Greywind mused.

“Perfect then!” Shiro called back.

Cinder put a paw to his forehead. “I swear we need to leash him.”

“You’re the one who agreed to bring him,” Greywind replied.

“And you were the one who said ‘He needs to learn responsibility.’”

Greywinds ears flicked. “Yes, well... I didn’t think he’d try to swan dive into an active vent.”

“I didn’t dive! I was looking!” Shiro shouted back, not helping his case in the slightest.

The little group had been asked by the sparse local community to help set up hazard signs. Mary and Nico had taken Aoi and ventured in the other direction outside of the village to put up warnings; Zevjia was seeing more wanderers than usual lately; novices from Faerindell or Ealei who didn’t know better than to assume every shimmering pool was safe, every dark hole was just a cave. But Zevjia had a habit of punishing carelessness.

Cinder unrolled a map, his brow furrowed as he muttered to himself. “Okay... we need signs near the old collapsed mine on the eastern ridge, the sinkhole path to the north, and anywhere with unstable crystal growths…”

“I saw some unstable crystals!” Shiro said. “They were beautiful and almost humming and one of them exploded when I touched it!”

Cinder got pale. “Shiro!”

“I didn’t get hurt! Just singed a little. Smelled like burnt marshmallow.”

Greywind grunted. “That’s not the reassurance you think it is.”

They arrived at one of the more precarious areas; an old mining route now abandoned. The beams holding up the tunnel mouth had mostly collapsed, and the ground in front of it was uneven and cracked.

Shiro took out a small hammer and immediately began trying to nail a warning sign into the rock. “I’ll do it! I’m very handy. Like, master carpenter level!”

The sign fell over.

Shiro picked it up and hammered it again.

It wobbled.

He added a third nail, which bent.

Greywind silently handed him another sign and moved to do it himself.

“I almost had it,” Shiro muttered.

“You bent the nail with your face.”

“I slipped!”

Greywind knelt and drove the sign into the earth with calm, practiced motions. His presence was quiet but grounding, solid, even here where the land wasn’t. Cinder gave a small smile, brushing dust from Greywinds fur. “Thank you, love.”

Greywind didn’t say anything, but his tail brushed briefly against Cinders in response.

Suddenly, a low crack echoed from nearby.

Cinder tensed and his ears turned towards the sound. “What was that?”

“Sounded like it came from - uh oh,” Shiro said. He was standing a little too close to a patch of multicolored stone... which was now shifting.

“Don’t move,” Greywind snapped, stepping forward.

The stone under Shiros paws began to sag, a soft hum  growing louder. “Guys?” Shiro said. “Guys I think this crystal is alive or angry or both-”

A chunk of crystal gave way - and Shiro disappeared.

“SHIRO!” Cinder shouted, panic rushing through him and Greywind had to hold him back to stop him from getting too close to the edge.

There was a beat of silence, followed by a small voice echoing from below: “I’m okay! I landed on a mushroom!”

Greywinds eye twitched. “Why is there always a mushroom?”

They quickly found the hole; it was a new opening revealing a lower cavern, dense with odd fungi and luminescent crystal growths. The air was cooler here, mistier, damp almost, but no less dangerous.

Shiro looked up at them from ten feet down, sitting atop a very large purple mushroom. He grinned sheepishly. “Sooo... new plan: I mark this one with a sign from below.”

Greywind groaned. “No. New plan: you stay within five feet of me until we’re out of this cursed region.”

“You say that like you don’t love this bonding time,” Shiro teased.

“I love silence….”

“Me too! We can be silent together! Want me to not talk for one whole minute? I can try!”

Cinder helped lower a rope and haul Shiro back up, brushing him off with shaking paws and his voice weak. “Please... please try to be more careful. We can’t protect you if you just keep running into danger…”

Shiros ears lowered a little and for a moment, he looked apologetic. “Okay... sorry, Cinder. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Cinder gave him a hug, tail curled gently around the younger kittom. “It’s alright. Just… don’t do that again.”

Greywind handed Shiro a new sign. “Here. Go mark that fissure over there. Where I can see you.”

“Yessir!” Shiro saluted with the sign and skipped off.

Greywind watched him go. “We’re not bringing him to the volcanic basin.”

“Agreed.”

“And not near the geyser fields.”

Cinder nodded.

“Or the echo canyons.”

“…You mean the ones where sound vibrations can cause collapses?”

Greywind narrowed his eyes toward Shiro. “Exactly.”

They both sighed in unison.