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Decat liked to mind his own damn business.

It wasn't that he mistrusted the grandfather tree. Obviously, nouls approached and retreated daily bursting with new power and idle happiness. But he was a capable enough noul without its gifts, and he didn't see the need to borrow anyone else's power to do his part. But he'd had a chance encounter recently, and -

Look. Decat didn't like to put too much stock in his chance encounters. It was a whole thing. They had a good time together and then put everything behind them. Sometimes they'd meet again, work together maybe - but nothing lasted. But Decat knew how society worked, too. He'd never laid with any adepts, and especially not with anyone bearing wings. Would those sorts of nouls have even deigned talked to him? He suspected, strongly, that the answer was no. But this buck had completely lacked adept markings - Decat had checked - and yet he'd borne a pink feather tucked jauntily into his ear.

Could it have been a bird's? Maybe, but it was big. In the night once they'd had their fun he'd asked, careful to disguise the question among other inane ones.

"This?" Jorri had laughed. "Wanderlust gave it to me."

And that wasn't all Jorri had told him. The tree now gave people gifts that didn't necessarily have anything to do with the natural world, apparently. Strange, new gifts, more than the four Decat'd been taught to revere as a little colt. "Everything's changing," Jorri had murmured drowsily, at the end of the night. Decat had not said anything, watching and thinking and wondering, but as far as he could tell, Jorri was right.

A few days later, Decat slinked out of Homewood in the dead of night, and now he was here.

Fortunately, the tree did not seem to be dallying. It had been waiting for Decat, and he nodded firmly as the roots' tall shadows loomed over him.

It didn't take long for him to be transported somewhere familiar. Dank, hot, awful...even gifted nouls could barely stand the Blackbriar Bog, so Decat wasn't really sure why the tree had put him here. But he thought it over again and remembered: he'd never shied away from difficult tasks, and this certainly was one.

It wasn't exactly easy to see where he was going here, but Decat had learned to suck it up and also to take a little bath before he made it all the way back home. That space was for guests, after all.

To be honest, Decat didn't like working here. The Barrens were dry and dusty, but it'd always come to an end eventually - there were mountains to the north, and he'd heard talk recently of a forest far to the south. The Bog was a place that nouls had given up many lives to reclaim, but it seemed like a stretch to say that nouls had claimed it at all. Everything out here was stuffy and poisonous, and few of the flora that survived in an environment like this were even edible.

Something had lived out here once, though. The dead, skeletal trees that rose up around Decat now had borne fruit once for the scuttle scales and...whatever else had made its home here once, other than flies and fog.

In the distance he could see a large, still shape, and his breath caught in his throat. Decat had never shied away from dirty work, but there were places deep in the bog where a noul could hardly breathe. He wasn't suicidal, thank you. Because of it, though, he'd always left himself breathing room in his ventures bogward. There were certainly many mysteries in the Bog that he'd never sought to explore. This was probably one.

It was his first instinct, of course, to make note of it, head back for the Homewood, and return again prepared, with a group of noulicorns - probably including an atmos noul. But the Grandfather Tree had brought him here for a reason - and, he thought, as quietly as anyone could think, it was a dream. Nothing could really hurt him here.

That didn't mean he wouldn't take some level of precaution, of course. He didn't foresee much danger from the silhouette itself: Decat was fairly certain he'd have known about a living predator its size. But if it was a long-deceased predator, that had to signal some issue with the terrain around it. He'd approach from solid ground, then, and circle around it if he needed to. Eventually he'd be close enough to observe and know whatever the tree wanted him to find.

It was with that in mind that he began, keeping his approach cautious but steady. He stopped every so often to survey his surroundings and ensure he was taking the best path. He kept his steps quiet - he didn't think catbeasts were quite clever enough to survive out in the bog, but he also saw no point in being caught unawares.

In the end, though, he took another step, and in front of him was the tree again.