It was a calm, blue morning; A pale sun rose over the far horizon, beginning the arduous task of burning away the grey fog that lapped between the pines like a great ethereal lake. It parted about the hunter's quiet feet, sliding over and around him with the touch of cool fingertips.

The man had left Pictou behind in the darkling hour before dawn. It was better to hunt further abroad before the autumn reached them; To give the prey that lived in Salsola's woodlands a short period of respite before the eventual oncoming maelstrom of winter.

He had already been successful this morning, and one hare bumped against his hip where the hunter had tied it to his belt. He was following a fresh deer-trail east a league up from the winding coastline when he saw the thing.

It was hanging from the bough of a stripped, old pine. At first, Lokr thought it might have been some sort of trap - Maybe the Infernians had come up with a new method of catching birds. But the closer he came, the more bizarre the thing seemed. It was triangular in shape, supple branches strapped together and bound in their corners with cord; It had, he thought, what seemed supposedly to be arms and legs, though it was abstract and strange in appearance.

Carved into the trunk of the tree from which it hang was a peculiar, rough symbol. Even as he noticed it, a queer chill ran down the Lord Commander's spine. He recognized it in spite of its simplification, as all who witnessed the fall of the Red Star would; A meteor.

Deserting the rest of his intended hunt, Lokr shouldered his hare and turned with haste back toward the far borders of home; There, he would spread word about the scouts and the hunters to be on watch. Something uncanny was afoot in Drifter Bay. Salsola had to be warned.

It began on a cool early morning not long after the waning of full night. The moon still held a crisp white silhouette in the blushing blue tones of the sky, speckled here and there with a dazzling of tiny white stars that wheeled slowly overhead.

It started not with a calamitous sound, but a hush. The quiet held deep in a damp white fog that curled up from the sea and crept inland, making hidden some things that would otherwise have been seen. It had rained overnight, and the fog and the wide stretch of plains glittered here and there with thousands of tiny dew diamonds.

Noble, who had been sleeping in a particularly pleasant thicket on the border of the Kingdom once raised by his master of old, awoke to a singular disturbance. What was that sound? He shuffled his feathers in curt dismay, and would have folded his long, elegant neck back under his wing but - Oh, there it was again! So persistent, though barely loud enough to rouse a single soul.

It is in the nature of such a bird to be curious. The sound reminded Noble of the click-clack noise that a fat juicy bug might sometimes make. Enticed by this, the peacock shuffled out his glorious plumage, and emerged from his private thicket.

The trees here in Drifter Bay were sparser than on the Salsolan side of the Pictou. They spilled out into thick scrub and then the rolling plains which fed the feral horse-herds to roam these parts. Following a familiar trail, the avian sashayed down toward the grasslands.

The scent of upturned earth and slashed grasses were good, for they likewise meant breakfast; All manner of birds would be attracted once the sun rose in full. Some even flew overhead now, drawn as the peacock had been. Occasionally, a jet black feather drifted down from the sky like strange, otherworldly snow.

The field was quiet and still. Noble left but a moment to check its emptiness before bustling down to make good use of the broken grasses. The pattern that had been carved out of them was strange, foreign, but they did not bother the peacock who was uninterested in such things. He followed the spiral, which led into the next, and found a great bounty of stunned insects among the damp loam.

A pale sun rose, and eventually, long after the bird had finished his pecking, the fog retreated; Leaving plain to sight the strange circular markings in the grass.

Somewhere in the treeline, a crow sounded a raucous cry.

The Boss gave him very specific instructions – and they sent him looking in the deep woods and the land around the borders, where these strange signs continued to appear. Abendrot? did not know what to make of their shapes. He had seen the starfall and what had come after. Even now he could remember the taste of it, and recalled that great and awful heat which had come from the sky.

Some of these signs were shaped like a comet, with sharp ends tailing behind a pointed shape which had been stained by something. It was high enough that unless he scaled the tree (which he had done once before already) the cat could not smell its source – but it was not unnatural, in his opinion.

Spotted and the rusty-red of the turning leaves, Abendrot traveled all the trails which he came across. Like all cats he stepped with velvet paws and over-awareness of his surroundings. His whiskers had only brush against a branch or tall grass to have him divert his step, to move and be as quiet as the wind. Sometimes he came across tracks – prey, mostly, but every once and a while one belonging to a canine.

He found one scent, very clear and very fresh, near a strange pile of stones. Like a small pyramid stood these rocks, and the cat was most certain that it had been placed there.

Confirming as much as he could – the scent was male, it was adult, and it was without others – the cat used his large paws to shove aside those stones he could move. Eventually, a hole large enough for his great paw formed.

There was something solid inside. Eventually, when he had managed to grasp it (more or less), the lynx yanked free a smaller stone. It was a brightly colored piece of glass, smooth to the touch and salty-smelling.

Abenrot shook his paw and expressed his displeasure by toppling the tower. He traced the man's scent as far as the river, and wondered if this was intentional. He turned south and followed the water until Salsola's borders loomed ahead.