Lupine carefully dipped her paw into the fermented dye she'd had brewing for weeks. She'd had to travel all the way to the burnt tree in the Dales in order to secure the needed charcoal, but she'd made the trip. It was important to her spell casting that she kept her eyes masked. It prevent the evil spirits from seeing her, or trying to take over her body. As an experienced Spellsayer, she know that there was no room for mistakes. She dealt with important powers each day, and needed protection. As she smeared the dye in a band across her eyes she focused on her intentions. Keep safe from prying spirits, to be able to work magic unimpeded.Her ceremonial dye updated, she hopped out of her burrow to clean her paws on a little tuft of grass. The dark dye rubbed off onto the spring green blades, but it took some effort. As she rubbed, a fat rain drop smacked right into her nose. Lupine wrinkled her nose. Certainly it was spring, but rain again? It seemed to be absolutely plaguing their little grove of late. She flattened her ears. When was the last day that it had just been sunny? She searched her memory, and couldn't easily dredge up a day free of rain. She frowned. Surely that wasn't right. The Golden Circle was noted for excellent weather. Lupine gasped. Was an evil spirit interfering? Lupine stared up towards the clouds. Another raindrop smacked her in the face, causing a little runnel of freshly applied dye to drip down. She shook her head. This simply wasn't right. Clearly their little grove had attracted the attention of the wrong sort of spirits, and they were being cursed with all this rain. Lupine poked a paw at the sodden ground. This simply wouldn't do. Too much rain could drown their gardens, and make the ground itself unstable. It would flood burrows too. She took a deep breath in, she needed to put a stop to this before any real harm was done.
The drops of rain intensified with each breath she took. She furrowed her brow and hopped towards the edge of the grove. She knew where the perfect tree grew to gather the required ingredients for her spell. Beyond the last apple tree there was a weeping willow. Lupine was well attuned to the spirits who inhabited the willow, and their perchant for rain. She snuffled around beneath its drooping bows, and carefully collected four fallen branches. One for each paw, one for each direction, one for each season. She nodded to herself, just how it was meant to be. She bundled the sticks into her mouth, and hopped back to the grove itself.
She picked out the centre - the spirits told her this was the exact centre. She lay one branch facing where the sun rose, and another where it set. Then she carefully set the other two in between. She reared up on her hind legs, and opened her own spirit to the weather, willing the rain to ease, to dissipate. Weather magic was always tricky, and she put all of her focus into it.
After a few more moments of getting drenched, she opened her eyes, and quickly used her back feet to kick dirt over the little willow branches. It wouldn't do any good to have them disturbed as the spell's magic worked its way up to where the weather was made. She glanced up at the clouds raining down on the grove around, giving them a little more will to leave. And with that, she was ready to return to her own burrow, where it was nice at dry.