There are wolves south too, he tells them. Try it for one night.

Most people want to do that.

Yeah she's not going to get people killed for her principles, if Morgoth isn't killing them while they're useful there's no way they can protect all of them if Morgoth wants them dead.

Not by themselves.

If they sing the hymns, the wolves stay away.

They can't live like this, long term. Not under Morgoth's thumb and cut off from everyone and--and mortal--

They're going to try going south.

The terrain looks about the same, for a while.

Idaia hid a cache of supplies a little more than a day's travel off; they're going to try to grab that and then take their chances with the desert.

Their first night sleeping away from the camp, the wolves come for them.

This is less surprising than it could be! How do wolves feel about large quantities of ice, frequently inside orifices.

They take this very badly! They can kill a lot of wolves. But there are a lot of wolves.

No survivors. They can't afford for their ice-generating abilities to be discovered.

Their reflexes aren't perfect. They manage to not die, but both have some truly nasty wounds when they're done. 

They grab the supplies, burn the immediate area to the ground as cover for how the wolves died, and flee as quickly as their injuries allow.

No one pursues them.

Their injuries are pretty bad. 

They find somewhere they're unlikely to be found by anyone not actively looking for them and half-collapse. Idaia has a stomach wound. Imliss is kind of panicking.

She hadn't thought she even could fall asleep that night, let alone doing it by accident while trying to keep watch. And yet.

When they wake up it is late afternoon.

...Okay that's weird.

And. Um. Idaia doesn't seem to have a life-threatening gut wound anymore? That's good?

Both of them are healing remarkably quickly.

There is no way in which this makes sense.

...Unless...

...The wolf victims were dragged off, not killed where they stood and a corpse left behind.

She tries something ridiculous.

She turns into a wolf.

Idaia startles badly before reconstructing her sister's train of thought. She hesitates and then also does the thing.

And also turns into a wolf.

Well then. This is--a lot, but they're not dead. They can deal with the implications later. 

They return to human form, fashion makeshift saddlebags for their supplies, and trek to the edge of the desert. 

They wait until nightfall.

They shift.

Normal wolves and horses both run faster and longer than humans can. As wolves the size of horses, they eat up the ground. They rest during the day while it's hot, one keeping watch and maintaining dreamshaped shade, and they find cacti and cut them open for the water.

Eventually they can see the mountains on the other side.

Hooray, the desert won't kill them the way the Ice did.

They stay human for the last part of the trek, just in case.

And here are mountains.

Oh, good. More passable mountains than the Helcaraxe had?

Substantially so. There's even a pass, south of here a bit.